Well, innovation is the lifeblood of the company, right? So, when I became CEO, I put for myself three key priorities. Number one, customers and partners, right? That’s the key because that’s why we are here, and making sure we understood their needs and deliver the right solutions to those needs. Number two is innovation. If we don’t innovate, we can’t compete. And number three is the culture of the company, which at the core are our employees.
But I define innovation in three forms: number one, organic innovation, which is obviously a critical element, because from the shareholder’s perspective, every dollar you use in the balance sheet against that innovation is a better return for shareholders. However, we can’t invent everything. So as long as you have a clear vision and strategy for the company, where to play, how to win, then you need to drive the other two aspects of innovation, which is the inorganic side, then through partnerships.
And obviously, M&A is a key component of this because we think about M&A in the context of bringing the right IP, with the right talent that complements what we do to accelerate our vision and strategy. And then obviously, leverage our crown jewels, which are both services and the go-to market, which are unique for the company that we are because it’s a vast ecosystem.
And then the third one is through partnerships—key few strategic partnerships that allows you to actually curate what’s available out there in the market. We have a program called the Pathfinder program, where every month we bring four key innovative companies, very young in their journey, and they pitch to me what they’re doing, they pitch to me why they believe that idea is a great disruptive idea and what value they can bring to our joint customers. And as a part of that, if we believe they have a future and if we believe they can add value to our customers and partners, or even our shareholders, we actually make strategic investments with them.
And we left them alone –Go do what you’re doing. You have the backup of an investor like Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and we open the crown jewels of the companies. Let’s integrate your product in our solution so that we can go sell it as an integrated outcome for our customers.
That’s how we think about innovation, and keeping those three pipes going all the time is essential. But in the end, my philosophy is that you want your competitors to look at your tail lights all the time. And speed matters. Speed is everything today.
