Fabiola Amador - Strategic Leadership to Innovate
Strategic Leadership: Paving the Way to Innovation
Hello, I'm Fabio Amador, CEO and Executive Delivery Manager at GFT Mexico. I have accumulated more than 20 years of experience in managing portfolios and programs across different sectors including business, information technology, and continuous improvement for financial and insurance companies, software factories, and consulting firms. Today, I want to share insights on the pivotal role of leadership in innovation.
About GFT
We are a German IT consulting company with 33 years of experience in digital transformations, utilizing smart technologies to add value for our customers. We service the banking, insurance and industry sectors across over 16 countries, boasting six nearshore development centers and employing over 7000 professionals.
Our Services
- Cloud Management Services
- Advisory and Ideation Services
- Proof of Concept Project Implementation
- Application Management
- Capacity Services
Do remember to visit our website at www.gft.com for more details about our services.
Strategic Leadership to Innovation
Implementing strategies that promote innovation is crucial for countries to stay competitive in the market, especially with the rapid pace of technological advances and digital transformations. Concepts like strategy, leadership, and innovation have become paramount for organizations to retain customers and stay innovative.
Innovation: Then and Now
In the 70s, innovation was primarily focused on marketing, with the main goal being to capture the market and outwit competitors. Fast forward to the present, we now focus more on addressing customer needs and enhancing customer experience. The big players today are organizations that identify needs, address them, and add value in the process.
Some examples include the likes of Apple, Airbnb, Netflix, Amazon, and Uber. For instance, Apple revolutionized the cellular phone world by introducing features like video calls, internet access, and GPS to the iPhone, thereby fulfilling a whole new range of customer needs.
Establishing an Innovative Process
To establish an innovative process, understanding industry needs is crucial. Organizations need to keep abreast of the current technological environment, new product developments, government policies, competitors' products or strategies, and customer preference.
Creativity vs Innovation
Creativity is the process of producing a new or useful idea, while innovation involves adopting these creative ideas and implementing them in a way that adds value to both the customer and the organization. In a nutshell, creativity breeds innovation.
Role of Leadership in Innovation Processes
Effective leadership can significantly enhance an organization's innovative processes. Leaders need to identify and address the unmet needs within a team or an organization, encouraging a culture of optimism, action, and collaborative work.
To establish a culture of innovation, organizations should uphold values like teamwork, collaboration, creativity, commitment, and ability to learn from failures. Moreover, they should promote a fluid structure that encourages co-creation and innovation, and effectively communicates the innovation strategy and strategic objectives.
Principles of Innovation
Lastly, let's consider the three principles of innovation:
- Innovative businesses create new values, not just new products and services.
- The final customers are the ones who evaluate the value of innovation.
- The prevailing focus should be on what the customers value and are willing to pay for, not the company's perspective of innovation.
Final Thoughts
For innovators, it's crucial to dream big, create, and make those dreams a reality. Continue adding value in your respective fields. If you have any queries or would like to learn more, feel free to contact me.
Views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect those of my employer, GFT. All information is provided on an as-is basis and I make no representations as to its accuracy or completeness. Thank you for reading.
Video Transcription
OK. Well, uh let's start um as, as uh told before, my name is Fabio Amador. I, I'm CEO and executive delivery manager in GFT Mexico. Uh My conference is about the importance of leadership in innovation.Um I have more than 20 years in of experience, managing portfolios and uh programs in different areas such as business in information technology and continuous improvement uh for financial and insurance companies, software factories and consulting firms. Um I'm proud to work in GFT because I can learn and grow new areas of opportunities in business and technologies. But let me start by introducing my company, GFT GFT is a German it consulting company with 33 years in the market. We are experts in digital transformations and derive technologies by using it smartly and giving value to our customers. Our principal sectors are banking, insurance and industry. We bring a technological perspective that extends video sectors, sharing our insights to generate value for all of them.
We have presence in 16 countries with six near shore development centers that give support to the rest of the countries and we are 7000 employees. Our DNA is based on excellence in delivery give value and look after our clients and establish a win win partnership. We are a big family and everything we do is based on our five core values, caring, committed, collaborative, courageous and creative. Our six services are cloud manage services, advisory and ideation services, proof of concept project implementation, application management and capacity services.
We are partners of GCP AWS and assure we give consultancy to the organizations to define a road map for the digital agile and processes transformation. We also define new products or services using our innovation lab. In conjunction with our clients, we then create a proof of concept to show our clients how the new products or services we will implement. We help our our customers to maintain their applications updated and we support them with specialized staff. Finally, we have different solutions for every sector, banking, insurance and industry. So I invite you to consult our web page, Triple wgft.com for more details. Now getting our topic, strategic leadership to innovation. This topic is relevant because currently the most successful countries are not those with the most natural resources, rather those that create products with the highest added value for this. It is important that companies rely on strategies that promote innovation. Nowadays with technological advances and digital transformations.
Concepts such as strategy, leadership and innovation have become relevant in all organizations, not only for retaining customers, but also for optimizing production costs and staying innovative. Some may wonder how the most innovative organizations remain at the forefront. Simple, they establish a culture of co creation and innovation promoted by managers. Some fun facts in innovation are describe uh are described into the Global Innovation Index 2020 report. They mention that with COVID-19, the financials to innovate decrease but they hope that countries will manage this situation.
Stellar innovation performance found in developing economies and innovation is concentrated in the level of science and technology. In this graphic, the global innovation index show the principal economies to innovate. In 2020 the top five innovative companies in 2020 are apple alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft and Samsung.
Few years ago, such as research product development production, even marketing were responsible for innovation in companies currently leading the cultural innovation is the responsibility of the CEO achieving goals. As an example being supported by all of the departments in the organization, innovation has always been present throughout our lives. There are three great strategies that mark the evolution of innovation. The first was focus on marketing. During the seventies. There was a war between all companies to conquer the market and destroy competitors, blocking the competition to the market leader was the strategy to follow their focus was over well, customers with advertising to attract them. Second was focus on customer needs in the eighties, the Japanese management model arose which was inclined to battle with wisdom and think more about the client here. The most important thing was to master the success factor, anticipate the needs of the clients that is create needs for them.
And their strategy is focus on giving value and customer experience. Currently, the focus is still on the needs of customers, offering them value on helping make their lives easier. Now, organizations base their strategy on making your inventors temporary partnerships and buying technologies from their competitors.
Cases such as Air BNB, Netflix, Amazon Uber or the financial sectors have been transformed And through their services, they solve problems that customers have a clear example of giving value to the client through generating a need is in the case of Apple iphone, allowing users to make by video calls, take pictures, having internet access, listen to music and have G GPS.
This came to transform the world of cell phones and we cannot conceive a cellular phone without having those benefits to establish an innovative process. We must understand what the needs for innovation in the industry are which we work with the constant changes. Companies must be aware of the current technological context and deal with their own turbulence in terms of one new products, two government policies, three competitors. In this case, companies must be aware to what their competitors can develop and seek to be. One step ahead as Gilt did for many years, he where he was ahead of generating new innovative products before his patents could be used by his competitors. And finally, customer preference. For example, the new generation prefer to buy online and are more interesting in ecofriendly products, companies must innovate their products and service to attract new consumers as well as advertising media to reach them. And for this creativity and innovation are of great help, but it is the same thing to create us to innovate. Now, creativity is the process of producing a new or useful idea. But by itself, it doesn't add value to the organization. On the other hand, innovation is the adoption of a creative idea until it is implemented and adopted in the market. It must give value to the customer and organization. In other words, without creativity, it is not possible to have innovation.
However, both health decision making processes and problem solving being a great support to the leaders. Moreover, another important factor in the equation is leadership. Since through it, the ability to the tech problems must be developed, defined and evaluated where others cannot.
The responsibility of the leader in innovation processes is to satisfy the needs that are neglected in the group. An example of culture of innovation is the deo company where its values are centered on optimism, action and collaborative works. Its business structure promotes a fluid and constant collaboration in all stages of the creative process. This company is the number one in innovation processes. These founders created the design thinking methodology. There is a case study about the shopping cart. Their team modified the traditional shopping cart and stopped shopping carts being stolen. The modification consists in using removable baskets in the supermarket to transport the products to be purchased after the people pay for them, the cashier would then remove the baskets and the client would hook the bag into the shopping cart to transport them to their cars.
ID EO form a multidisciplinary team and managers help them to solve issues or give support, but they didn't have influence in the ideas and solutions proposed by the team to define a culture of innovation. Four aspects must be considered, one, define the values and behaviors that you want to have within the culture of innovation, such as teamwork, collaboration, creativity, commitment, and learning from the failure to establish at the tools, skills, spaces and time necessary to promote co creation and innovation.
Three foster a collaborative and fluid structure where all the people within the organization can contribute ideas and solutions to the problems they identify and four communicate innovation strategy. The general management must share the vision and the strategy with the organization in such a way that it achieves an intrinsic motivation in each employee. They should also explain how they were transcends the daily task that they are doing and contributing to something greater.
They should show the benefits that are achieved through their work within the innovation processes and explain what makes the organization unique and what makes it different from the competition. And finally, the strategic objectives must be explained clearly specifying the goal to be achieved but not the means to reach it so that the work teams generate innovative ideas to achieve the objectives. And widely used tool is okr in which the strategic objectives are defined and the people involved in them establish the key actions that will give the results. In summary, a strategic leadership for innovation must come from the general management. In addition, three principles of innovation must be considered one. The concept of innovative business refers to new values, not new products and services. Two, those who decide if there is a true innovation are the final customers. They are the ones who give value to innovation.
And three, it doesn't matter what the company thinks about innovation, what matters are the final customers and what they are willing to pay for it.
Thank you so much, Fabiola, are you, is this your last little bit just to wrap up quick?
Yes, it's the last one. Thank you for innovation for, for innovators. Think like Plato and innovate like Aristotle, never stop dreaming and thinking that you can create things even when they seem impossible to achieve and then you must create them to bring them to reality, give value.
Thank you for assisting my conference. If you have some doubt, you can find my contact information below. Thank you so much.