How do you notice great ideas and nurture it to make great products?

Last Wednesday, I went to the Royal Ascot to meet Avanade, yes them and not the queen. However, I did take some pics of the queen when she came in her royal entourage and captured a smiling Princess Sophie.

Well, back to Avanade. This company formed as a 50:50 JV between Microsoft and Accenture can be put in the system integration space. Today, Avanade is 78% Accenture and 22% Microsoft. I was speaking to Mark, who is the Managing Director of UK. While the usual discussion on the market was going on, he spotted 'The Lexus and the olive tree' by Friedman and our conversation drifted towards globalisation.

I asked him, in this globalised world, ideas can come from anywhere. How to you create a system/process/framework to tap those ideas. His answer was simple. He said that Avanade has a colaboraton software with access rights for everyone. Avanade has a incentived program for contributing to the collaboration tool and the incentives are linked to their KPIs. The time spent in contributing is also factored in. Mark said that Avanade has done away with the old model of having an innovation team confined in a building in some corner of the world. I found it prety impressive. Mark has invited me to have a look at their systems. I just can't wait. Will update on what I see.