Organizing for Innovation (Part 1) - Why?

Last week I traveled downunder to visit our team in Brisbane. One of my outcomes from the trip, I hope, has been to better align our 'engineering' team in a more market-oriented way.

In the first part of a few posts on this subject, why did I feel this was necessary?

Just because we happen to do software engineering as a critical part of our software company, this doesn't make our focus 100% engineering. I wanted to see our developers get more on the the front foot, to take ownership, of what I called "delivering successful products". To do this, I needed them to expand their horizons to incorporate all of the varied activities that go into creating successful products. This is not to say that they didn't appreciate it previously, but I just felt we needed more.

I am a big believer in software engineering and its' capability to emerge as a profession. But just like being a lawyer might be your profession, it isn't really what your firm does or why it exists. To illustrate my point take a look at the home pages of Silicon Valley's largest firms of lawyers, Wilson Sonsini or Fenwick & West. Lawyers are clearly a profession, yet the closest they come to saying they are a law firm is that they are "the premier provider of legal services to technology and growth enterprises worldwide." It is in the language of their clients' and they are clearly structured around practices that are even more focused. You would see the same at a hospital filled with doctors.

Just like in a law firm or hospital where there are many practice managers for different areas that worry about the issues in a particular field, so I felt we needed practice managers at Ephox who woke up and looked in the mirror in the morning thinking "how will MY clients be more successful today?". To become experts in their respective customers' challenges and goals. To be entrepreneurial.

EditLive!'s success had a momentum that was like a rubber band pulling us back to its' vision and not enabling us to dive head first into new territory. With these changes the team will have a brief that will see us grow into new areas that deliver innovation beyond the editor and, also, to a deliver our existing best-of-breed technology to a range of customers that we previously haven't worked with.

In the next posts I'll dive into what the changes we have made. If you are interested in a preview, Adrian is discussing what his new role will include.