“DEFINE INNOVATION TOO TIGHTLY AND IT LOSES ITS ESSENCE”: FORMER IBM, TELSTRA CEO DAVID THODEY

Former StartupAUS CEO and chair Peter Bradd, whose enterprise innovation consultancy Beanstalk Factory was named one of Westpac’s Businesses of Tomorrow, recently sat down with former IBM (ANZ) and Telstra CEO David Thodey to discuss the the value of (and barriers to) innovation plus the need for processes that ‘allow people to move faster’. 

Asked by Bradd to define ‘innovation’, Thodey, who is also chair of Jobs NSW and CSIRO, said he preferred to use a ‘very broad’ definition, explaining: “ you define it too tightly, you lose the very essence of innovation… it could be a process, it could be a new product – it can be anything.” Whatever the case, he indicated that a precondition for any innovation is ‘a desire to improve and create’.  He also distinguished between ‘innovation’ and ‘entrepreneurship’, saying the former is ‘closer to creativity’. Read more

James Harkness - Dynamic Business - 12 Apr 2017