You know your IT operation, and your company at large, could benefit from an increase in innovation. But how do you make that actually happen?
"Innovation begins with hiring the right team and then pushing them to innovate and succeed," says James Keningsberg, chief technology officer of 2U, a SaaS company that powers online learning for UC Berkeley and UNC Chapel Hill among others. In this interview, he shares some insider tips on how he and his team foster innovation at 2U.
The Enterprisers Project (TEP): Creating an innovative company begins with having the right team to create that innovation. How do you make sure you're hiring the right people?
Kenigsberg: Obviously, the right person for me is not the same as for you, so it's a process that depends on the climate of your organization. For 2U, there are a variety of reviews to make sure the fit is right for both parties. This includes asking open-ended, high-level questions to see how someone would contribute to the company culture. For instance, "If you were the first project manager I hired, how would you set up the department? What would you do with it?" That way, we can see how their goals, vision and style align with ours.
TEP: How do you compete with bigger, more high-profile people for top talent?
Kenigsberg: As far as staying competitive goes, we show potential candidates that the work we do at 2U is great. We're blessed to transform education, and because the breadth of our work is so wide, people can be involved in a variety of projects suiting their interests and skills. We have a great mission that people can get on board with, and we can show people, especially millennials, that the work they'll be doing is compelling, engaging and challenging. We have a great gym next door, too.
TEP: Once you have the right team, how do you unleash their innovation?
Kenigsberg: Innovation is a very broad term. What innovation means to me is to get things done in the most clever, efficient way possible with maximum satisfaction for users and stakeholders. Exposing teammates to benefits and consequences of their work, giving them responsibility, pushes them to innovate and succeed.
I unleash their innovation through the way I set up my teams. My developers are tightly aligned to areas of the business, so their goals are also aligned with the business function. If they work in marketing, their goals are the marketers' goals. This way they have ownership of the business area; they are stakeholders, not tech mercenaries. They feel responsible for the work they create and are willing to take risks to make sure it's great.
TEP: What approaches definitely don't work?
Kenigsberg: Innovation paralysis can come from too many voices and is definitely a pitfall. If you put too many voices in the same room, giving them free rein, you'll just get a lot of people trying to talk over one another to sound smart. The project will lose direction being pivoted in myriad ways because of all this excessive input, which leads to paralysis.
I also think the idea of creating Potemkin Villages in a business doesn't work, that is, doing and building things just to make it seem like you've done and built a lot. Don't just have people trying to cross off a check box. Instead, have people genuinely working to build things well, efficiently and creatively.
TEP: What advice would you pass along to other CTOs and CIOs looking to increase innovation in their organizations?
Kenigsberg: Advice to others I'd like to offer is, as much as possible, separate maintenance from innovation. Maintenance is the greatest black hole of innovation. Trying to make sure all of your existing systems are working and streamlined, dealing with bugs and kinks, will absorb all your time and distract from a larger mission. I'd recommend within a team or project, have people dedicated to maintenance and people dedicated to innovation. Divide to create, while keeping transparency across both parties.
James Kenigsberg is 2U’s Chief Technology Officer and a 2U founding team member. James is an entrepreneur and technology evangelist who finds the passion and fun in using technology to improve education. At 2U, James has translated his passion for technology into creating award-winning learning management platforms, client relationship management systems, mobile applications, and cloud-based architectures. He also takes great pride in building the industry's most impressive and driven technology team at 2U, Inc. 2U partner programs include MSW@USC, Communications@Syracuse and datascience@SMU.
