The Ultimate Corporate Entrepreneur

The Innovation Challenge - Learning from Darwin's Dilemma

Charles Darwin was successful despite his cautious nature. But the outcome might have been different had not a 22-year-old's correspondence lit a fire under him to take the first step towards publicly sharing his evolutionary theory some twenty years in the writing. 

Yes, fear can be a powerful motivator.

Alfred Russel Wallace received credit, as did a host of others, in Darwin's great work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection published November 22, 1859. 

Darwin's differentiator? He supplied the how of evolution. It was his discipline and painstaking work with barnacles (not sexy, but useful research in the end), which made his ideas on evolution credible during a time when skepticism reigned in England.

[Richard Conniff's Smithsonian article On the Origin of a Theory <<< great read]

Innovation is essential to business and, increasingly, the company you keep will play a critical role in your own career success. But despite its importance, persistent shortcomings exist in creating it in the workplace.

What can we learn from Darwin's dilemma? 

We can't afford to be too cautious and wait for innovation to evolve. The current economic meltdown and global problems have raised the bar for companies to transform their organizations and create innovation at a faster clip.

Innovation is Just Play!

Since innovation and discovery are play behavior, you'll get a chance to see it action during this week's Coach for Innovation show that airs Sunday, August 16 from 6-7pm Pacific on BlogTalkRadio. My guest, Mike Alvarado, social anthropologist, innovator, and president of Going Evergreen will walk us through his five actionable steps for fast tracking you and your teams in creating better and more useful innovation.

We'll be taking your questions on Sunday and I'll have the chat room fired up, so crab your favorite beverage and join us live. (If you do miss our live show, you can always catch the replay).

46th DAC - Endings Bring New Beginnings

Preliminary attendance numbers for 46th DAC have come in 12 percent over last year's conference--good news given the overall state of conference attendance in this economic meltdown.

Although never a shortage of smart people at DAC, even the smartest folks in the room see an uphill battle on innovating their way out of the challenges facing the EDA industry.

Pressure to reduce chip design costs, meet government emissions and energy regulations, and improve overall ROI will drive some of the more established EDA companies to adopt disruptive technologies sooner rather than later. Start-ups altering the landscape, such as Xuropa, look to reinvent software sales processes for the 21st century with its Cloud-Computing application that SaaS-enables existing software applications.

Dealing with technology disruptions and discontinuities is challenging enough, but equally challenging is how EDA companies are transforming their workplace environments and reinventing workforces into nimble innovators capable of meeting these industry challenges head on.[In a future series of blog articles I'll highlight how EDA leaders and teams are tackling these challenges and raising the bar at the same time.]

Seizing an Opportunity

The final day of a conference typically offers one-off opportunities, with exhibitors more relaxed and willing to chat about the event and provide their own industry perspective. 

Which is how I got a chance to sit down with Rich Goldman, Synopsys Vice President Corporate Marketing & Strategic Alliances and CEO Synopsys Armenia.

Moving into the industry leader's position with Cadence dropping to second place, Rich and his team assumed ownership for designing this year's DAC exhibits and interactive events for Synopsys (their first crack at it).   

"I felt that Synopsys needed to step up and support DAC with a strong presence."

Social Media - Synopsys Raises the Bar

The Synopsys challenge was figuring out how to speak with their customers in new ways. One thing Rich knew from the outset was that social media would play a big part for them at DAC. He just didn't know what it would look like.

"Given that our focus is geek-to-geek (G2G) we know that our customers don't respond well to marketing b.s. Building the engineering relationship is about providing them with the right tools and the right answers at the right time to solve their problems - this is what builds our credibility in the tech space. It also makes it easier to build trust and credibility in the marketing space--something that social media is allowing us to do."

Rich challenged team member, Karen Bartleson, a standards guru and Synopsys blogger to own the learning and understanding of how people were using social media. One of her ideas? The popular Twitter Tower at DAC. 

Armenia - A Differentiating Factor for Synopsys

There are those who think that Synopsys took a big risk in establishing a strong presence in Armenia.

"It's definitely not for the faint of heart," Rich laughs as he recounts the country's infrastructure challenges, "it requires a strong commitment."