Building a Culture of Innovation by Anantharaman Balakrishnan, Head of Enterprise Business, India, AISPL at AWS Partner Summit Mumbai 2018

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Head Enterprise Business, AISPL
Building a Culture of Innovation
Balakrishnan Anantharaman

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Great products and services come from
deeply understanding the customer.

6. 1994 m Founded
1995 m Amazon.com
1998 m Added CDs & DVDs
2006 m Amazon Web Services
2007 m Kindle
2011 m Video
2012 m Groceries
2014 m Alexa/Echo
2015 m Bookstores
2017 m Go
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-corporatetimeline

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WHERE INNOVATION BEGINS
we start with the customer
and work backwards
7

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Our tenets of innovation
»Customer Obsession
“Start every process with the customer and work backwards.”
»Long Term Thinking
“Be stubborn on the vision but flexible on the details.”
»If you want to be inventive, you have to be willing to fail.
“We are willing to go down on a bunch of dark alleys and occasionally we find
something that really works.”
»You have to be willing to be misunderstood for a long time.
“We are very comfortable being misunderstood.”

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Our Innovation formula…
(which works for us, but might not for you)

11. Our Innovation formula…
(which works for us, but might not for you)
f (innovation) = (org * arch)
(mechanisms * culture)

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PEOPLE
CULTURE

13. Anchoring all decisions on leadership principles
 Authentic representation, not
merely aspirational
 Practical reference to guide all
decision-making
 Shared vocabulary to getting
things done
Mechanisms | Architecture | Culture | Organization

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ORGANISATION

15. Fostering ownership and autonomy to drive agility
Two Pizza
Teams
Mechanisms | Architecture | Culture | Organization
Optimizing for speed by
building teams that are tightly
aligned but loosely coupled

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Building new customer-focused businesses
many teams
all iterating at once
towards specific metrics & performance
using lean principles & agile development
Mechanisms | Architecture | Culture | Organization

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ARCHITECTURE

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‘Loosely Coupled Systems’
The looser they are coupled,
the bigger they scale,
the less dependencies,
the faster you innovate.
Mechanisms | Architecture | Culture | Organization

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Deploying More Frequently Lowers Risk
Rare Release Events
“Waterfall Methodology”
Smaller Effort
“Minimized Risk”
Frequent Release Events
“Lean Methodology”
Larger Effort
“Increased Risk”
Time
Change
Time
Change
Mechanisms | Architecture | Culture | Organization

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“Our success at Amazon is a function of
how many experiments we do per year, per
month, per week, per day…”
Jeff
Bezos

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Measure, Improve, and Iterate
- Identify your assumptions
- Look beyond your frame of references
- Data Driven
- Improve and iterate quickly
Mechanisms | Architecture | Culture | Organization
“Our theories determine what we measure.”
– Albert Einstein

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Start with the customer and
work backwards

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GET TO KNOW YOUR CUSTOMERS

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PROTOTYPE THE EXPERIENCE

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/havoc315/
SIMULATE THE EXPERIENCE

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Working Backwards documents
Press Release FAQ Visuals
( o p t i o n a l )

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Press Release
• Focus on the customer need
• The customer quote is key
• Leap into the future: Think BIG
• Avoid jargon
• Say it simply and clearly

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The FAQ
• Include both customer FAQs
and stakeholder FAQs
• Include the hard questions
• Share your Press Release early
to gather questions

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It’s a conversation starter
to achieve clarity and
customer focus.

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We read, discuss, debate
and ask questions.

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We revise, and
make the idea better
with each iteration.

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We push ourselves to invent
on behalf of the customer.

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Learn from failures…

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It’s about the Culture
 Culture is the “software of the mind.” It is the
core logic that organizes people’s behavior.
 The culture reflects the lessons learned that are
important enough to pass on to the next
generation.
 Values, beliefs, and practices that have been
developed and reinforced over time.
Culture is “the way we do things around here.”

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Cultural Trends We Are Seeing
Moving from
 Failure is not an option
 Command-and-control
 Silos “throw it over the wall”
 Long due diligence
 Talent outsourcing
Moving toward
 Learning (start small, experiment, and iterate)
 Decentralized ownership (guardrails via cloud CoE)
 DevOps and cross-functional teams
 Adopt early and often
 Talent insourcing/niche partnering

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Customer delight is our ultimate goal

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Let’s partner to
invent something
your customers will
love
Mechanisms | Architecture | Culture | Organization

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Thank You!