Miguel talks about Education and Innovation. And disrupting ourselves.
Another good “The Innovation Pub” talk this time about how a PhD understands innovation, the future of education and our own future as “small organisations”
Who’s Miguel?
Miguel Mira Silva isn’t just another Professor, very good from a theoretical point of view but no hands-on experience at all. He is an innovator, he already created a few companies and helped hundreds on their innovation journey. He is also probably one of the most best loved Professors in the country by his students.
I thought it was interesting to have him with me in “The Innovation Pub” to get to know his disruptive thoughts about innovation, education sector and our own education and future. And I was absolutely right because Miguel shared powerful thoughts in a language that I think everybody will understand a little bit more of this ‘innovation thing’.
Many thanks to Miguel! What an amazing moment!
Welcome to The Innovation Pub, Miguel. Tell us about yourself.
I am an associate professor of information systems in the University of Lisbon in Portugal, and leader of the Digital Transformation group at the INOV research institute.
My research interests are focused on the adoption of management practices, namely in the IT governance and management areas, using engineering techniques such as modelling. Examples include models and maps for well-know frameworks and standards, methods and tools for co-evolving models, and gamification for managing projects. I am also interested on new pedagogical methods.
My objectives for this year (in which I am on sabbatical) include:
- visiting several international research groups
- performing a systematic literature review about digital transformation
- learn more about new pedagogical methods (MOOCs in particular)
- experiment with novel models of collaboration with companies.
What’s innovation for you? It seems that everybody has a different definition! Can you give a few examples?
There are two extreme types of innovation:
- incremental
- disruptive.
A good example of incremental innovation happens when your telecom operator upgrades your Internet connection from 20 to 100 Mbps. It’s better, but it will not change your life. And probably all competitors already did or will do the same.
The other extreme happens when a startup launches a completely new (usually worse but much cheaper) product and/or service to replace something that already exists in the market. Contrary to popular beliefs, Uber (for example) is not disruptive because the service (including the price) is similar to taxis. But Netflix was disruptive. Google Docs was disruptive. And autonomous cars “as a service” will be disruptive.
Why it’s so hard for established companies to innovate?
Established companies are (almost by definition) successful, otherwise they will not exist anymore. And they are successful because they sell good products and/or services to many customers.
But innovation means selling new (typically worse) products and/or services that only a small number of customers will buy (in the beginning) and usually for a lower price.
So obviously an established company will innovate only incrementally, making their products and/or services ever better but also ever more expensive! The book “The Innovator’s Dilemma” explains this issue very well.
If you had the chance to redesign a big and successful organisation from A to Z, what would you do and how?
The single most important change to innovate in a company is to start supporting the creation of new products and/or services without the usual resources, processes and values.
So I would create a mechanism to support those people (both inside and outside the company) that want to experiment with launching new products and/or services, a kind of “company incubator” (including money, methods, etc.) free from the rest of the organisation.
Imagine company A is making a lot of money with a very mature product — how would you advise that company that should start searching for their next ‘cash cow’ instead of relying only on the current status quo? Where to start? How?
Just look at Kodak and many other examples, including Volkswagen and Samsung right now. Look also at successful “turnarounds” like IBM (completely reinvented four times already) and even Microsoft with Azure. Give them examples of companies that did not invest in the future, and those that did, and show the difference. Companies that did not invest in the future have disappeared. Even GE is struggling now.
What can big corps learn from startups?
How to innovate. And that’s easy if large companies create (or invest in) new small businesses that are treated like startups.
For example, today I was told that large Portuguese banks are putting their own branch managers “helping” the companies to which they lent money (many of them now bankrupt in practice) to reinvent themselves. But how can a branch manager, that never managed a company, be able to properly help a struggling company if themselves only had a good job all their lives? If (almost by definition) they don’t like risk? If they never had to take important decisions? If they never worked for a small company? It’s just impossible.
How can a big corp work with a start-up in an effective way. Is it more than playing around with incubators?
Large companies may invest (a lot) in startups, like most are doing these days, but being “effective” is the real challenge. If they take too much control of the startup, the startup will not be able to innovate. On the other hand, if they just behave as investors do, there is no advantage of being a large company.
So they need to find the right balance in order to leave the startup to innovate while, at the same time, help them (e.g. with their research, customers, partners, etc.) to experiment and scale better than a typical startup. But, to be honest, I have not seen this perfect balance anywhere yet.
Tell us one story, or more, about innovation / transformation
Innovation also applies to ourselves, since we are (each one of us) small versions of organisations. So we also need to innovate incrementally (i.e. being a little bit better every year) as well as disruptively from time to time.
And although some people are able to get better a little bit every year, only a few are truly able to reinvent themselves from time to time.
However, in the long term, the main reason to succeed in the job market is to learn a new trendy job at least every 15 years.
In the good old days, an MBA was the standard solution for that problem. But today anyone can take one year off and reinvent themselves easily and cheaply using online courses. We now need new types of “educational organisations” (aka schools) to scale this approach to many more people than a few visionaries. Well, that’s an idea for a new business. Anyone?
As a teacher, what’s your vision about the future of education and how can universities keep the pace with innovation
The future of education will be increasingly more “lifelong” than today and (obviously) with ever more technology, not only using the Internet but also simulations / games and new interfaces such as virtual reality. But of course these investments will have to be balanced against the need for research at the highest level.
The real challenge is how to innovate when universities complain they have no money to invest and professors argue they have already reached their limits. However, innovation can be both disruptive and cheap if universities adopt the approach I mentioned above: create new products and/or services outside the normal University environment (buildings, departments, etc.) by giving a few professors the freedom to experiment e.g. with online programs, pricing strategies, and/or pedagogical methods.
Miguel, what about your next 15 years. Are you going to disrupt yourself?
I’d like to contribute to the disruption of the education industry, so that education becomes much better and much cheaper, completely changing the lives of most people and so unleashing a new sustainable economic and social boom that will last many decades.
Final question before the well deserved pint: Your favorite quote? :)
“Alea iacta est” (there is no turning back) — Julius Caesar
Thank you guys and keep following #TheInnovationPub!
