Are you an innovator or a follower? There is no right or wrong answer. Just know which you are. Otherwise, you are getting in the way. Image via Unsplash

Everyone likes to consider themselves innovators, or at least believe that innovation is happening in their domain. But innovation management is a process that requires leaders to commit deeply and believe that the risk is worth the reward.

For many business leaders, regardless of the industry, it can be a struggle to embrace creativity and innovation and to commit the needed resources of time, funding, and staff to develop new methods of doing business. For many, it is a conflict to invest when there is not a clear, immediate, or guaranteed financial return on investment. When it comes to innovation, the biggest return on investment can be the learnings and the mindset shift, not just the financial gains.

Leaders need to ask themselves a couple of questions:

“Do I want to be an innovator or a follower?” There is no right answer as both leaders and followers are needed. But one thing to keep in mind is that innovation without failure is impossible.

Thus, the next question emerges: “Which do I value more, taking reasonable risks and learning or being a mainstream adopter?” And again, there is no right answer.

Seth Godin, author and former dot com executive, once said, “No organization ever created an innovation. People innovate, not companies.”

With that in mind, for those who genuinely want to be leaders of innovation, there are certain “must-haves” for any process. The most important “must-haves” are remembering that internal culture impacts success and support from the top down is absolutely integral.

Real innovation moves the organization forward strategically. 

Designate ownership and accountability to measure progress. These measurements will often look quite different from other success metrics, are often more opaque and are even not immediately financial. These non-financial metrics sometimes make team members feel uncomfortable, and that is okay. Ultimately everyone involved in this process needs to be willing to hear truth and be committed to creating a culture that drives creativity.

Innovation has a clear alignment with organizational business strategy. 

Leadership and designated team members need defined problems to solve that align with the stated business strategies. There is no point innovating a widget or process that does not move the organization forward.

Innovation requires a defined process and funding. 

Leadership should begin by carving out one full year of budget solely dedicated to innovation and trying new things. These dedicated resources include funding, full-time employees, and support from a consultant, such as EPIcenter, to challenge leaders and drive the process. There must be buy-in by the team members with leaders committed to ongoing sightlines of the process.

The right team members need to be at the table.

The right people need to be the ones to make decisions, evaluate innovations and de-risk both the technology and the business models to make things happen. The team should include individuals who are adaptive and tenured, new and nimble, and a mix of subject matter expertise and enthusiasm.

Innovation success requires the right mindset.

Both the leadership and innovation team must have a mantra of “how can we” rather than “we can’t” or “we’ve never done it that way before” or “it failed before.” There must be a will and desire to work, innovate, fail, resolve, and execute -- or at least learn.

Sometimes innovative solutions emerge by happenstance during the process without a known or stated problem. With proper training and a curious mindset anything is possible.

With these requirements in mind, let’s go back to the initial questions asked of business leaders, but in reverse order this time:

“What do you value more, taking reasonable risks and learning while meeting strategic goals or pure financial gain?”

“Are you okay with failure, adjustments and trying again?”

“Are you an innovator or a follower?”

Again, there is no right or wrong answer. Just know which you are. Otherwise, you are getting in the way.

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Liz Thompson serves as the chief of advisory services at EPIcenter, a Texas-based nonprofit organization with a think tank, incubator, and accelerator focused on energy innovation and thought for the global future.

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Houston ecommerce scale-up company acquires Amazon advertising partner

all aboard

A Houston tech company has tapped an Amazon partner in a strategic acquisition and is bringing the company's full team on board.

Cart.com acquired Ohio-based Amify, a company that provides optimization and advertising solutions. The terms of the deal were not disclosed but Cart.com will on board Amify’s entire employee base, including its founder Ethan McAfee, CEO Chris Mehrabi, and COO Christine McCambridge.

As chief delivery officer, Mehrabi will take the helm of Cart.com’s professional services business and McCambridge will lead Cart.com’s marketplace services team as vice president of marketplace services operations.

“I’m happy to welcome the entire Amify team to Cart.com and have industry veterans Chris Mehrabi and Christine McCambridge join our leadership team,” Cart.com Founder and CEO Omair Tariq says in a news release. “Amify has been widely recognized for their expertise and technology and we’re excited to leverage their experience to help our customers maximize their potential across channels.”

Cart.com's membership will have access to Amify's proprietary technology platform, including advertising, creative content, supply chain strategy, and analytics. The company, which was founded in 2011, currently supports over 50 global brands and manages approximately $1 billion in gross merchandise value. According to LinkedIn, Amify has over 50 employees.

“We could not be more excited to join Cart.com and leverage the company’s resources and scale to deliver value to both our customers and employees,” Mehrabi says. “I’m honored to step into the role of Chief Delivery Officer and contribute to Cart.com’s incredible growth story and innovative reputation.”

Founded in Houston in 2020, Cart.com provides comprehensive physical and digital infrastructure for online merchants. The company raised a $60 million series C and grown its customer base to over 6,000 users. After making several acquisitions, the company also operates 14 fulfillment centers nationwide.

Earlier this year, Tariq sat down with the Houston Innovators Podcast to share a bit about how the company is currently in scale-up mode.

Houston health tech innovator collaborates on promising medical device funded by DOD

team work

The United States Department of Defense has awarded a grant that will allow the Texas Heart Institute and Rice University to continue to break ground on a novel left ventricular assist device (LVAD) that could be an alternative to current devices that prevent heart transplantation and are a long-term option in end-stage heart failure.

The grant is part of the DOD’s Congressionally Directed Medical Research Programs (CDMRP). It was awarded to Georgia Institute of Technology, one of four collaborators on the project that will be designed and evaluated by the co-investigator Yaxin Wang. Wang is part of O.H. “Bud” Frazier’s team at Texas Heart Institute, where she is director of Innovative Device & Engineering Applications Lab. The other institution working on the new LVAD is North Carolina State University.

The project is funded by a four-year, $7.8 million grant. THI will use about $2.94 million of that to fund its part of the research. As Wang explained to us last year, an LVAD is a minimally invasive device that mechanically pumps a person’s own heart. Frazier claims to have performed more than 900 LVAD implantations, but the devices are far from perfect.

The team working on this new research seeks to minimize near-eventualities like blood clot formation, blood damage, and driveline complications such as infection and limitations in mobility. The four institutions will try to innovate with a device featuring new engineering designs, antithrombotic slippery hydrophilic coatings (SLIC), wireless power transfer systems, and magnetically levitated driving systems.

Wang and her team believe that the non-contact-bearing technology will help to decrease the risk of blood clotting and damage when implanting an LVAD. The IDEA Lab will test the efficacy and safety of the SLIC LVAD developed by the multi-institutional team with a lab-bench-based blood flow loop, but also in preclinical models.

“The Texas Heart Institute continues to be a leading center for innovation in mechanical circulatory support systems,” said Joseph G. Rogers, MD, the president and CEO of THI, in a press release.

“This award will further the development and testing of the SLIC LVAD, a device intended to provide an option for a vulnerable patient population and another tool in the armamentarium of the heart failure teams worldwide.”

If it works as hypothesized, the SLIC LVAD will improve upon current LVAD technology, which will boost quality of life for countless heart patients. But the innovation won’t stop there. Technologies that IDEA Lab is testing include wireless power transfer for medical devices and coatings to reduce blood clotting could find applications in many other technologies that could help patients live longer, healthier lives.

Houston investor on SaaS investing and cracking product-market fit

Houston innovators podcast episode 230

Aziz Gilani's career in tech dates back to when he'd ride his bike from Clear Lake High School to a local tech organization that was digitizing manuals from mission control. After years working on every side of the equation of software technology, he's in the driver's seat at a local venture capital firm deploying funding into innovative software businesses.

As managing director at Mercury, the firm he's been at since 2008, Gilani looks for promising startups within the software-as-a-service space — everything from cloud computing and data science and beyond.

"Once a year at Mercury, we sit down with our partners and talk about the next investment cycle and the focuses we have for what makes companies stand out," Gilani says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "The current software investment cycle is very focused on companies that have truly achieved product-market fit and are showing large customer adoption."



An example of this type of company is Houston-based RepeatMD, which raised a $50 million series A round last November. Mercury's Fund V, which closed at an oversubscribed $160 million, contributed to RepeatMD's round.

"While looking at that investment, it really made me re-calibrate a lot of my thoughts in terms what product-market fit meant," Gilani says. "At RepeatMD, we had customers that were so eager for the service that they were literally buying into products while we were still making them."

Gilani says he's focused on finding more of these high-growth companies to add to Mercury's portfolio amidst what, admittedly, has been a tough time for venture capital. But 2024 has been looking better for those fundraising.

"We've some potential for improvement," Gilani says. "But overall, the environment is constrained, interest rates haven't budged, and we've seen some potential for IPO activity."

Gilani shares more insight into his investment thesis, what areas of tech he's been focused on recently, and how Houston has developed as an ecosystem on the podcast.