Vidhya Srinivasan

Innovation at other companies

As I was researching innovation at other technology companies, I found a couple I thought was worth sharing with all of sun.

1. Innovation at Intuit - Intuit has a Google labs like approach where they release "beta" like software for FREE to customers. It is just roughly baked ideas that they make available to customers and get their feedback. They call it "RoughCuts". Unlike Google labs, they do not try to graduate every roughcut into diamonds :-) . Their Terms of Use is pretty extensive to cover illegal use of the software. Its worth checking out their site - Intuit Roughcuts

2. Innovation at BT - I did not expect to see this sort of Web 2.0 embracing from a telecom company. They share and evangelize practices within BT and also to the community. Their focus to innovate has been through partnerships with university's and also business schools to get the right mix of bright ideas with the biz skills to productize it. They have innovation classified into categories . BT looks and sounds more like a software company then a telecom company. Link - British Telecom Innovation zone I am hoping to look at a couple more like HP and Yahoo to see what their approach is.

Posted at 08:55PM Feb 12, 2008 by Vidhya Srinivasan in Personal  |  Comments[0]

Social networking - SaaS platform

Sun has been really good at coming up with products but we don't necessarily think about what happens after sales. We talk a about providing support for our products and in the same conversation, talk about reducing the support costs. If we can deliver the right services and tools/ways to help customers to self-resolve issues/questions, may be we do not have to worry about costs so much.

Companies are doing it well. The equation seems to be pretty straight-forward.

Product + Service(s) + Community = Successful Product

Sun definitely has all the variables in this equation but have to deliver it together to be successful. We think about service after the product has been launched. We talk about building a community in a reactive manner. I think, given the web and the innovation around it, there are a lot of tools that enable companies to deliver the successful product equation.

As our team is working to incorporate some community aspects into the service delivery process, we were researching variety of platforms including Google Apps, our own support forums and other tools. One such platform is Kickapps.com. You should check it out. Like Google apps and Ning, it is a SaaS for social networking at no or minimal cost.

I will have more after some research and evaluation.

Enjoy.

Posted at 09:50AM Jan 31, 2008 by Vidhya Srinivasan in Personal  |  Comments[0]