“What Does Sustainable Innovation Mean To You?”: Perspectives from TIBCO Executives

Blog: The Tibco Blog

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We are approximately 30 days away from our global TIBCO NOW conference, and while this year’s event is going digital with the TIBCO Connected Experience, we are relying on our ability to enable you to sustain innovation. This year, we will provide valuable content and resources that will help you maintain the pace of ideas, collaboration, and market impact as the evolution of technology accelerates. Our goal is to help you build a sustainable capability and culture of collaboration and innovation—in our organizations, our communities, and across our world.

So, we asked some of our executives what the term “sustainable innovation” means to them to help you get a better understanding of how you can apply it to your organization. A few of the themes they touched upon were to identify new business opportunities, build a technology foundation for operational excellence, give humanity a seat at the table, and foster a culture of innovation to make the world a better place.

New Business Opportunities to Drive Impact

“The ongoing data explosion impacts every industry and every aspect of our lives. It also poses significant challenges: ‘How do we innovate to take advantage of this new reality? How do we future-proof our technology and skills to achieve leadership now and into the years ahead?’ Unlocking the power of transformation just one time is hard, but sustaining innovation is the only way to extend leadership, pivot ahead of the curve, and prosper in an environment where change is the only constant. Sustainable innovation is the singular most important capability we must all develop.”
— Dan Streetman, Chief Executive Officer

“Sustainable innovation means adapting to new economic models and market conditions that you didn’t even anticipate. You have to shift your innovation to be even more agile to bring both products and ideas to market quickly. We have to be ready to act in the short term but committed to driving innovation on an ongoing basis to drive true business value and impact.”
— Fred Studer, Chief Marketing Officer

Building a Technology Foundation for Operational Excellence

“Sustainable innovation is about building a balanced foundation upon which ideas that drive the business forward can be continuously explored and tested. This foundation must be flexible enough to accommodate trends as they come and go, and strong enough to support pushing the limits in terms of technology and, often, an organization’s culture. Innovation is not a one-time event, nor is it just about technology. It is a process that needs to span all aspects of an organization’s DNA so it can contribute to success now and in the future.”
— Nelson Petracek, Chief Technology Officer

Humanity Has a Seat at the Table

“Sustainable innovation is a technology culture that frames innovation in the social, environmental, and sustainability context in which they live. While the obvious areas of sustainable innovation are ones aimed at climate change and global health, the less obvious areas include the impact of automation and AI on the human condition. How, through better human-to-computer interfaces, can we democratize advanced technology and create opportunities for tech-displaced workers? How can technology help level the social playing field with low-cost, cloud-based capabilities available to all? Sustainable innovation is giving humanity a seat at the technology table to help make the world a better place.”
— Mark Palmer, General Manager of Data, Analytics, and Data Science

“Sustainability is all about enabling more people to be part of the innovation process. To that end, crowdsourcing both ideas and hands-on analytic applications from the organization is key. The best ideas come from people active in the business, working with their customers. And the best software innovations come from hands on the data. Every minute matters so we want to constantly strive to make everyone more productive for our innovation to be sustainable in the long term.”
— Michael O’Connell, Chief Analytics Officer

Foster a Culture of Innovation to Make the World a Better Place

“I think of sustainable innovation as being a driving force for change. Not just a simple tweak or adjustment that gives the illusion that we are keeping current, but actual change that either allows us or forces us to rethink how and why we do things. This drives us forward to innovate and transform our culture, our products, and the way we do things – without looking back.”
— Michele Haddad, Chief People Officer, TIBCO

“Sustainable innovation means three things to me: the ability for an organization to create and maintain a culture of innovation across all aspects of the company; the ability for the resulting innovations (ideas, concepts, processes, products) to be sustained and evolved, and finally, that the innovations themselves and the processes that create them to understand the impact of the innovations on the world. Ultimately sustainable innovation is about creating a sustainable culture of innovation that can create sustainable innovations that make the world a better place.”
— Matt Quinn, Chief Operating Officer

“Sustainable innovation means understanding what innovation is and what it isn’t and creating a climate that is conducive to, and rewards, innovation. To do this, you need to build a culture of collaboration and incentivize that behavior by designing an engine to make innovation real and consumable through hiring for innovation and ensuring that learning is desired and rewarded.”
— Jeff Hess, Senior Vice President, Customer Excellence

“From my perspective as CFO, investing in innovation at TIBCO means improving our ability to build and deliver better products to our customers while lowering operating costs over time. For our customers, innovative new products should be easy to turn on in their environment and require very little attention during their lifespan.”
— Tom Berquist, Chief Financial Officer

Sustainable innovation is about building a balanced foundation upon which ideas that drive the business forward can be continuously explored and tested. —Nelson Petracek, TIBCO CTO
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Join us for this year’s TIBCO Connected Experience, September 22-24, where you will be able to access a wide variety of content around the theme of sustainable innovation wherever and whenever you want it. With three different packages, you’ll be able to take advantage of all of the content and educational opportunities we have to offer. Check out the TIBCO NOW website to learn more about these different packages and how you can register today.