Embarq CTO charts innovation roadmap

LAS VEGAS -- A telecom service provider that wants to embrace innovation needs to systematically establish innovation as a core value of the company and establish processes and settings that support innovation, a corporate culture that embraces and awards innovation, and a process for measuring innovation's success, Embarq Chief Technology Officer Dennis Huber said today.

One key plank of Embarq's strategy is "to innovate in all we do," Huber said, speaking at the MetaSwitch Forum 2009. To make that work throughout the company, Embarq has established innovation councils at different levels of the company, created an Innovation Lab, brought in people from companies outside telecom to explain how they innovate, and encouraged its employees to pursue patents for their new ideas, among other things.

Among Embarq's innovations was the eGo phone, a device that combined a home phone and Internet connections into a more intelligent device.

Innovation only succeeds if it can be monetized to produce revenues and profits, Huber said. To do that, "you need to establish innovation as a discipline and establish a systematic view of innovation focused in five areas: setting, capability, process, culture" and measurement, Huber said. Innovation has to be valued at the top of the company, and Embarq does that through its CEO Innovation Awards, given out quarterly to employees who come up with new ideas for products, processes, cost-cutting or other aspects of the business, Huber said.

Embarq created a physical setting in an Innovation Lab that features round tables, bright colors, an array of gadgets and technology and white boards, to let employees collaborate on new ideas. Rules for the lab included "there is no such thing as a bad idea," Huber said, and "All questions do not have to be answered," an approach that prevented ideas from being shot down prematurely.

The entire development organization went through a personality assessment to enable teams to be assembled that could capitalize on free thinking skills at the outset and more analytical skills later on, Huber said. Embarq also created an innovation checklist that took ideas and insights through a formal process intended to root out potential successes.

Innovation Councils were established at the executive and at the management level and met regularly to review the status of new projects and ideas and to explore innovation in other industries, Huber said. Innovation review became a regularly scheduled process, which then also was measured in terms of new product revenue, cost savings, etc.