Boardroom Discussions: Digital Transformation & Product Management Lessons from Business Innovation Congress Manila 2018

How do Filipino business executives perceive Innovation and Digital Transformation? What language of business should corporate innovators or product managers understand? How do we get better executive buy-in?

Those were the learning objectives or guide questions I had when writing the training sponsorship letter to attend the Business Innovation Congress in Manila last November 15 at Conrad Manila Hotel. Thanks to our general manager, I got clearance to attend!

How is it different from the usual conferences I’ve been to?

Instead of a Marketing Director or a Head of design speaking, the opening inspirational message was from a Chief Financial Officer of a top conglomerate. Most of the slides had a value chain diagram or a process flow. It was a ‘corporate and executive’ event so I had to send my coat from the office to the venue via Angkas. The raffle prize was a business class flight from Turkish Airlines instead of a MacBook Pro or a Wacom tablet. Lunch table had a full set of utensils more than I really need to eat. And instead of designers and developers, the business card titles usually had Director, COO, CFO, CMO, or COO.

Overall, we’ve most likely heard about the Innovation and Digital Transformation talks from Head of either Marketing and Technology. But what is it like from the boardroom? And how can we get product managers get better buy-ins from stakeholders?

Below are some of my takeaways:

1. Pitch Products & Innovations with the language of business.

For design conferences, you’d usually get a video montage or a hand-drawn Venn diagram to communicate an idea. For BIC, it was a gamut of value chain diagrams, process diagrams, and flow charts everywhere. Why is it still essential? Partly because Digital transformation is really complex and those diagrams are the language of business today.

Digital Transformation is not just about using an Arduino iOT device, digitizing an application form, or making the website mobile responsive. High impact projects usually deal and disrupt current supply and value chain of the company to find new sources of growth or providing better customer experiences.

Takeaway: There’s no doubt that technology is already disrupting the current business. But next time you propose a booking platform, a new app, a website redesign, or chatbot, consider that the consumer interface side might be the easiest for the business to approve or change. At least consider the back-end process, the SLAs internally, or the compliance requirements for consumer data (DPA) protection. Will it have to be a small pilot or a dedicated team? BBFC. Will your solution make things bigger, better, faster, or cheaper? If it’s a new product or an extension to the current core business, plot down the value chain so you can visualize and identify where your solution is providing the most business value. What processes in the company have to change so that we can grow?

2. Digital divide — understand the gaps between Innovation proposal and Innovation budget approval.

Dentsu Aegis Network’s PH CEO and Boss Donald Lim, who apparently is one of the speakers, explained the digital divide as a barrier. Donald shared the visual of library card cabinets. The digital education divide between a generation pushing for innovative ideas VS a generation who are technology risk-averse but the ones holding the budget. On one side, a generation who graduated from school and have taken MBAs knowing that they had to use a library card for research. Meanwhile, more than half of their current workforce today believes that a library card is irrelevant when you graduated up with Encarta, Wikipedia, Dropbox, Youtube, and Google. Instead, a library should have good lighting, electric plugs, and fast wifi.

Related to this, the 2017 report from Altimeter identifies that Low Digital Literacy or expertise among employees and leadership as the Number 1 challenge for Digital Transformation Initiatives.

Takeaway: It will still take years (and a new generation of business leaders) to have Innovation and delighting customer experience as a primary investment. Meanwhile, Innovation projects should be communicated with the language of business, value, and return to business. It should also be supported with up-skilling, trainings, and programs to make the project less ambiguous. Understand that traditional CEOs and Executives would have their bonus tied up to the current revenue targets. So when you propose a solution: are you delivering revenue this fiscal year or providing new sources of growth for the next? What are your boss’ KPIs and how does it align with your projects? Is your solution a guaranteed one or a ‘test and learn’ pilot so that you can have an internal case study to learn by doing?

3. Companies will try to be a like a startup but it can’t fully be like one.

The current reality is a so simple digital solution can feel like a ‘Disruptive Innovation’. Because it disrupts the status quo and comfortable approval layers in a company. Meanwhile, for startups, innovation is the lifeblood. Their first language is to bootstrap or to deliver despite limited resources. They don’t have years of ‘legacy systems’ to maintain the business. Startups are familiar with comfort in identifying opportunities with emerging technologies by rapidly prototyping, testing and iterating with the market. While some companies would rather acquire / acqui-hire another company that will help disrupt their current workflows. But with the emerging new set of leaders and managers, that will have to change.

When it comes to emphasizing the need to understand Digital Transformation holistically, here’s my go-to visual:

Takeaway: So what does this mean for aspiring product managers and digital transformation officers? Corporate Innovation sounds too good to be true most of the time but it also means there’s a high demand for the new management and leadership talent with technical and entrepreneurial skills in order to deliver. A better set of questions that we should learn to ask are: how can digital transformation leaders and product managers communicate better clarity despite chaos and ambiguity? How can we understand the language of business better? Who are the external partners we need? How can we balance the current core business with future growth opportunities? Do we balance based on feasibility or impact? What startup tools can we use to communicate a new way of thinking in a corporate setting?

The frameworks below might help:

So what does this mean for aspiring product managers and digital transformation officers? Corporate Innovation sounds too good to be true most of the time but it also means there’s a high demand for the new management and leadership talent with technical and entrepreneurial skills in order to deliver. A better set of questions might be: how can digital transformation leaders and product managers communicate clarity despite chaos and ambiguity? How can we understand the language of business better? How can we balance the current core business with future growth opportunities?

Lastly, I was hoping that there were more discussions and insights about multi-national companies working with startups. The closest one is the Innovation Culture talk by Google which I’d love to share in a future post. For now, here’s a bonus resource (not discussed during the workshop) worth skimming on how Companies could take the discussion further: #500Corporations

That’s it so far. Some takeaways on Corporate Innovation, Digital Transformation, and Technology Disruptions from an executive conference on business innovation.

What do you think? What can I improve?

Let’s discuss it below!