Jeff Jaffe’s Blog

Most of my topics are about Novell’s externally facing strategies and products. These are driven by key internal processes such as Novell’s implementation of Integrated Product Development (IPD) (that ensures we are prioritizing features appropriately), and Engineering Excellence (that assures process discipline that guarantees schedule and quality.

In our dynamic industry we require focus and encouragement on innovation. After all, Novell was founded on innovation. With constant change in customer needs, core technology, and available infrastructure we must continue to remake ourselves.

Innovation comes in many varieties
We innovate in the large – by taking groundbreaking products to the marketplace. We innovate in the small – by empowering all engineers and employees to perform their function with autonomy.

We have many initiatives that give the focus on innovation. Aside from detailed product innovations that I write about regularly, some of our efforts include:

• Participation in the Open Source community – the software industry’s innovation engine. Our pure open source efforts such as openSUSE, Open Office, Mono, etc. are great examples of this. But we also introduce open source into our mixed products.
• Hack week, which we introduced over a year ago and continues to be a source of innovation.
• We measure innovation. Our patents are an indicator that we are creating new knowledge. At the same time, Novell uses patents in a defensive way, by being founding members of OIN, and participating in the Electronic Frontier Foundations efforts against bad patents.
• Recognition. We recognize our top innovators with the Distinguished Engineer title. Last year we took it a step further by naming our first two Novell Fellows.

Breakout move initiative
In 2008, we have introduced a new initiative called the breakout move initiative. Here we spread the innovation net further – to reach everyone in the company. We asked people to write about a candidate new product which would take the industry in a new direction.

The response was fantastic! In roughly one month time, we received 265 ideas for new areas. We will select a small number of the proposals and incubate them as new businesses within Novell. We are currently in the middle of the selection effort – and will continue to develop and expand the selected proposals.

We did more than ask for submissions. We also conducted workshops – idea factories – at our major sites. We set aside time at each of our eight largest development sites and had innovators coach people to further develop their ideas. The Chief Technology and Strategy Officer of our Open Platform Solutions business unit – Nat Friedman – personally traveled to five sites in three continents to stimulate dialog and discussion. We demonstrated to ourselves the bright spark of innovation that lies within us.

Disposition
No company has the funding to simultaneously develop 265 ideas – nor would it make sense given the need for focus. In reality, many of the ideas overlap, and several of them don’t require the creation of a brand new product team. In many cases it is a new feature of an existing product, or a new market focus to take an existing product to a new set of customers. Those ideas will be absorbed into our regular business, using our IPD process.

We will select a small number to actually chart new courses for our company. In the end, we will demonstrate this bright spark of innovation – not only to ourselves – but to our other stakeholders – our partners and customers.