Chief Innovation Officer of ServiceNow, discussing the role of “innovation” in the COVID-19 economy

In the field of enterprise technology, the term “innovation” is rampant-usually meaningless or thoughtless. Dave Wright, ServiceNow’s chief innovation officer, knows too well that this term has some interesting meanings to some people. For example, what exactly does the chief innovation officer do? How do you measure the success of “innovation”?

Wright hinted at some of these in a conversation with Ray Wang at the Connected Enterprise event of Constellation Research, saying that his job roles are diverse-not just about technology. On the one hand, Wright not only focused on thinking about the future role of the Now platform for ServiceNow customers, but also crucially convinced people that these “innovative solutions” are necessary. He explained:

I spend all my time researching this technology and then trying to develop it. Will this technology affect us? Will this be something our customers can do? But it’s not as influential-like I can’t say “we must do this”. Then I have to convince many people. But this is the key to innovation and can persuade people to do it.

Some roles are also studying how customers operate on the platform, and then say: “Hey, can this be produced? Is this what other customers should know?” Some of them are looking for gaps. What can we do to make the story more complete? Maybe we need to buy software to do this? Maybe we need to build software to do this?

Wright said that messaging also plays an important role in the “innovative” world. For example, how do you actually explain to people what can be done with the “platform”? The platform can do anything. Therefore, Wright took time to understand the customer-where is the problem?

Innovation in the COVID-19 world

Due to the changes in the economic structure caused by COVID-19, the “problems” that customers want to solve or the “problems” that are solved using the Now platform are constantly evolving and adapting. In the context of ServiceNow’s strong performance in the third quarter, we saw evidence this week. CEO Bill McDermott emphasized that buyers are recognizing the importance of “workflow” in a distributed world, and companies must adapt to their working methods.

Wright used his time to highlight two very interesting use cases that emerged in the early stages of the pandemic, including two well-known American customers-Los Angeles and the NBA. The problematic use case directly talks about what Wright said earlier, and he said that the “platform” can do many different things. It was impossible to predict some months ago that ServiceNow customers are currently using some of its features. He said:

So we asked the city of Los Angeles to say that they wanted to develop an application that could test 4 million people and save the results. I know this is not something we all know, but they built it there. They did it in 96 hours. Therefore, it all has to do with agility.

But the coolest thing is what the NBA does. The NBA went out and said, well, we still need to play games. Therefore, they created the concept of “campus” in which they wanted to do all the processing to make the game possible. So what they did was, they looked at many different products, and then they said that if we can build all of this on one platform, it would be a better solution. So they actually use it for all medical examinations, all room booking workflows, and take people to various locations-now, it’s actually in the NBA’s workflow. Therefore, I think we did not think of this before COVID.

Leverage distributed knowledge

Finally, in a world where companies are moving to a distributed operating model, Wright also has some interesting ideas about the role of knowledge workers (and knowledge bases). Wright believes that if the data is used correctly, the platform can also play an important role in demonstrating this knowledge in the future, and that AI and machine learning will also transform conversations from “past problems” to “solutions.” future’. Wright explained:

When I think of the knowledge base, I always think of the whole concept as a hero who uses you. If you look at most companies, about 10% of people really know how to accomplish tasks. All you want to do is take knowledge and publish it there so that everyone can share that knowledge. But the reality is that you end up with all these knowledge bases, and people don’t have time to use them.

Or more importantly now, there is too much data to use and no one cleans it up-you take a look, and then go, “Oh, this is how we fix it”, and then you find that you fixed it in 2009 Way, but not how you solve it now. So what people are starting to say is, if I have this knowledge, why can’t I use artificial intelligence to surface, and no one leaves to find answers and return. Send data to me in real time. If anyone is doing the same thing as me, I want to know. If this problem happened 7,000 times and we know how to solve it, then I want to know.

I think the popularization of knowledge is one thing. Once you understand what is happening and understand what is happening, the next stage after that is, how do we stop it from happening? The AI ​​world has changed a lot, and in my opinion, it has shifted from predictive (everyone has it now) to more prescriptive. Give me something illustrative. Give it to me, so it says, “Hey, this is happening, this is the action you need to take to prevent it from happening.” So I want answers and questions.

Wright specifically commented on the impact of COVID-19 on this thinking, adding:

When talking about tribal knowledge, everyone at the beginning of the pandemic suddenly realized, where did my tribe go? It is everywhere. As a result, people started to shout, okay, how can I build a digital workflow to truly achieve what we used to do in the office? Some of them simply need to recruit people remotely, or need to suddenly stand up for groups in other offices that they weren’t before. However, at that time our personnel were very concerned, and now we are in this COVID economy, what do we need to do? “

Innovation mainly revolves around providing solutions, and solutions are a way to solve problems. However, once such a major crisis is encountered, a large number of new problems will emerge. As a result, it started to drive the way people see things, and in the past eight months, people have been more open to innovation than ever before. However, if you think of it as a company-level product, you want to generate sparks, the original idea. Then, when you have this idea, how do you start zooming in on it?

I take

It’s great to see Wright realize the trap that “innovation” may fall into, where noise is more important than anything else. However, talking to customers, understanding the problem, thinking about future use cases, and considering the role of “knowledge”-these are not related to technology. This is what I want to see when I think about innovation. Consider people and processes first, and then look for adaptive tools.