Swedish telecommunications giant Ericsson has seen just about every “next big thing” its industry has to offer — and contributed quite a few innovations of its own. The company was founded in 1876, the same year Alexander Graham Bell patented his design for the telephone in the United States. In the 144 years since, Ericsson has helped drive the evolution of the how we communicate, having invented Bluetooth and built everything from 1G to 5G cellular networks.
As the company enters a new decade, it’s turned inward to find its next big idea. It has launched an internal accelerator program, Ericsson ONE, to provide a space for entrepreneurially minded employees to develop their ideas for new products and businesses in-house.
No matter how good the idea, nobody enters Ericsson ONE with a fully formed MVP, perfect pitch deck and complete business plan. To help get them there, Salman Taj, the head of Ericsson ONE’s Silicon Valley innovation hub, said his team leans on internal subject matter experts who provide hands-on coaching in everything from creating a business plan to technology development and team building. For more than a month, Taj and his team have worked to recreate this aspect of the company’s internal accelerator program virtually.
According to Taj, the shift to virtual programming hasn’t changed his team’s KPIs, but it has required them to find new and inventive ways to reach their goals.
First, tell us a bit about what’s changed for your business in recent weeks. How has that impacted your KPIs?
As a small and unique part of a large organization, we focus on creating new, game-changing and innovative businesses spanning beyond our standard portfolio. By effectively engaging our employees and partners, we are able to grow a healthy pipeline of ideas and projects.
The global COVID-19 pandemic certainly impacts our ability to execute on both fronts. Our engagement with internal customers — our employees — is virtually virtual. The same applies to our interactions with external customers. The telecommunications industry has not been as impacted as other sectors. As a result, our KPIs have not significantly changed when it comes to the internal engagement level or the number of new businesses we will launch this year. However, the approach to achieve them is drastically different and will continue to evolve through the remainder of 2020.
This experience is an opportunity to... motivate our employees to submit more ideas on Ericsson’s next big bets.”
How have you adjusted your KPIs? How did you determine these were realistic goals for your team?
Slowed interactions motivated us to focus on improving our engagement strategies with internal customers, who are our employees. For example, we shifted face-to-face activities like workshops, hackathons and ideathons to their virtual equivalents. This experience is an opportunity to calibrate the engagement level within the company and motivate our employees to submit more ideas on Ericsson’s next big bets.
We believe technology within the telecommunications industry can be applied in new ways to contribute to easing some parts of today’s pandemic. Hence, we are also shifting the type of ideas we fund and are prioritizing these ideas so that they go to market quicker — ultimately to make a difference in the world.
What adjustments are you making to your business strategies in order to hit these new KPIs?
Hands-on coaching is a critical part of our innovation program. Naturally, we have transitioned to virtual coaching. Additionally, we are leveraging advisors and experts who are now available virtually to help project teams develop their initiatives. Some countries are more impacted than others from the pandemic. Therefore, we are prioritizing market trials in countries where the impact now is lower. To accomplish this, we remain nimble and agile to pivot accordingly and hit our KPIs.
