Picture: ServiceNow
Dave Wright: How do you see the CEO’s role in innovation?
Bill McDermott: Every CEO must create outstanding experience for employees. After all, the battle for the best talent is unfolding, right? Without rich experience, you cannot win talent. In addition, every customer experience must establish strong customer loyalty. The true value of a very satisfied customer is well known to all of us. But how do you get a great customer experience? If it is not a number, it will not be realized if it does not run smoothly.
Dave Wright: When you talk to customers, everyone has their own ideas about what innovation means and how to create good solutions. What are the main innovation challenges facing companies today?
Bill McDermott: Everyone must accelerate the innovation cycle. In most industries, the next product release is too long to be on the market. This is a big risk, especially if the sales of old products are not high enough. These business models are changing so fast in our industry. We have seen everyone go to the cloud, but now “in the cloud” is only part of the job. Now you must also be mobile, user-friendly, at the same time highly secure, always available, always ready for operation and absolutely reliable.
Dave Riggt: How do you determine the quality of an idea?
Bill McDermott: I always try to think about the CEO we serve. They try to take care of their team and customers so that they can gradually increase their productivity. What are you focusing on today? What are they trying to achieve? Then, I tried to look at the task from the perspective of each industry, because each industry is a little different. Where is your digital transformation? Are there best practices from other industries that can be transferred to new industries?
The best CEOs know that it doesn’t matter what they say. This is asking the right question. And listen carefully to understand the thinking behind it. Then immediately gain energy for this idea and motivate the team so that it can change the rules of the game for customers and take advantage of market opportunities.
Picture: ServiceNow
Dave Wright: The good thing about a software platform like ServiceNow is that it has amazing features and can go according to the wishes of customers. We can build anything flexibly and see it everywhere. And this is what innovation is all about.
Bill McDermott: The basic idea is workflow, because every manager must break silos and make the team work in harmony. It is about digitizing paper-based diagrams in the workflow. In the United States alone, this is a $226 billion market, while in the world it exceeds $400 billion.
Dave Riggt: People usually think that innovation depends on the individual, but the individual cannot drive innovation alone. There is no individual, not even a team. This is culture. You must make the entire company think like this. What are the main steps executives can take to drive innovation across the company?
Bill McDermott: Our entire challenge is to help technology innovators bring their ideas into the minds of entrepreneurs. Therefore, when they design their dream and future business models, we will help them and cooperate with them throughout the innovation cycle. Design ideas, innovation, prototype design and finalization of solutions, market testing, and then observe their work.
The most powerful part of a large company is its culture. Great culture is related to empathy, first of all listening to and feeling the pain or opportunity in the world of others. What our technology can do is almost limitless. So the question is, where do we have to go? We must go where customers need to go. In the end, only the customer decides whether we win or lose.
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