Innovation Series - Episode 11

In my 19+ years of experience, I have seen stereotypes defined stating if you are from a certain technical or project management based background changing the focus comes with its own challenges and benefits. I have also been told when you are working with SAP and for a services organization and not directly working for the product development there is not much for you to innovate from a patenting point of view as it is seen as a packaged solution.

I am proud to have broken that chain and the journey to do the same hasn't been overnight. In this episode I am sharing my experience around what does it take to innovate and being able to patent the same. I joined IBM way back in Sep 2010 and since then being in SAP service line across different roles innovation meant coming up with new ways of resolving client problems and requirements by using different products and business rules. But since 2016, 2017 I started reading different patents and felt innovation goes beyond just solving immediate client problems but thinking beyond what is not obvious to see if you can make a difference to the functionality and new features which people are yet to think about.

That's when I was fortunate to get my mentor way back in 2020/2021 and I started discussing with him what are patents outside my work and what does it take to apply for patents and he patiently explained me through the process and we started brainstorming the problems rather than the solutions to identify what business problem or technology problem are we getting bogged down by today and how can we make that better and what does it need to make that explainable given it cannot be a black box.

Since then my thought process towards problem solving has changed and I started looking at everything I interact with in my daily work or in life by identifying a potential problem and then once I do enough thinking about what does it mean to others, I start looking for a potential solution / approach and what would or can make that problem go away with a feature which is not so obvious or a mere solution which might already be in place.

I would like to summarize some key takeaways if you are from SAP background and thinking what can you do to become an inventor

• Do not limit yourself to your core work profile: think outside the box and think as what is that simple activity or observation which is either an inconvenience or something that is bothering you, once you get it you can expand your skills as well while trying to look for the solution
• Do not shy away from research and reading new stuff every day at least for an hour: People ask me how am I able to do so many certifications consistently over a period of time. The secret sauce to that being when you keep researching, there are going to be topics which are going to ignite that spark for you to get know more about it and the best way to be knowledgeable of the topic and to bring the right perspective is to challenge yourself to complete that certification
• Do not let others tell you the idea is not patentable, as the perspective you might have could be different from what people think it as and unless you validate for yourself it is always the right thing to pursue towards patenting the same over a period of time by refining it to the right level of details
• You do not have to be alone when trying to think about problem statements, expand your network and build micro networks with people you can share your passion with to brainstorm and let them call out what you are missing and always can have additional pair of hands to make the ride fun for patenting
• Never ever give up or say may be you cannot do it anymore as I have seen and was fortunate enough to discuss with few on how they do it and the only key takeaway being keep pushing yourself every day to keep thinking differently and that not only provides you opportunities for innovation but also helps improvise your client delivery skills given you start looking for more details in the problem rather than jumping to solution from Day 1.

I would like to thank you for reading through the journey and hope I was able to share some insights and help you along your journey towards being an inventor.

Here are the links to the previous episodes of the series. Looking forward for more of my colleagues to share their experience. If you want to join the innovation journey, join us at #IBM with an email to [email protected]

#teamHCM #letscreate2succeed #manage2succeed #innovation #ivnention #patent #ibmconsulting #mentoring

• Innovation Tech Series – Episode 1?- By Deepak Gupta
• Innovation Tech Series – Episode 2?- By Sarabjit K Rakshit
• Innovation Tech Series – Episode 3?- By Siddharth Saraya
• Innovation Tech Series – Episode 4?- By Mukundan Sundararajan
• Innovation Tech Series – Episode 5?- By Kiran Nayak
• Innovation Tech Series – Episode 6?- By Siddhartha Sood
• Innovation Tech Series – Episode 7?- By Vinay Parisa
• Innovation Tech Series – Episode 8?- By Manish Gupta
• Innovation Tech Series – Episode 9?- By Deepak Gupta
• Innovation Tech Series - Episode 10 - By Amit Deshpande