Power of Innovation | Dean Sivara

Power of Innovation

About Dean Sivara

Dean is the Vice President of Innovation & New Businesses, in the Products & Innovation Group.

The Innovation and New Businesses practice is one of SAP’s global incubation and commercialization engines, looking to capitalize on industry disruptions and building new businesses in adjacent markets. The Innovation group evaluates new ideas that will provide future competitive advantages for SAP, leveraging assets in five strategic areas: enterprise applications, analytics, mobility, cloud, and database & technology. The goal is to seed new businesses that will either be integrated into existing lines of business or form the core of new units.

Dean’s role within the Innovation group is to lead the Ideation and Startup activities, including gathering and evaluating ideas and leading the creation of compelling business cases for those ideas deemed most attractive. Once ideas are approved to become new business lines, Dean helps hire the new startup management team, and then works with the management team to develop their business and Go-to-Market strategies. Dean also helps the new startups leverage SAP assets and resources, by connecting startups with SAP executives and resources in the areas of marketing, development, legal, ecosystem and other key areas inside and outside SAP. He also works closely with the Silicon Valley ecosystem, collaborating with Venture Capitalists, research groups, incubators and universities.

Before joining SAP, Dean worked for Cisco Systems, where he had a number of roles. His last job at Cisco was as the Head of Product Management for a new internal business startup in the Smart & Connected Cities (SCC) area. Dean also had roles in the Emerging Technology Group, where he ran the New Startup Scaling Team, which was a group of resources dedicated to helping new businesses scale at Cisco. He also spent 6 years as an Industry Principal, working with Cisco’s largest accounts, helping customer executives transform their businesses using technology.

Before Cisco, Dean was a management consultant with companies such as Deloitte Consulting, Ernst & Young, IBM Consulting and Kurt Salmon Associates.

Dean holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton Graduate School of Business.

 

Transcript:

Alan
Welcome back. I’m here today with Dean Sivara. He’s the VP of ideation at SAP right here in Silicon Valley. Dean, welcome to today’s show.

Dean
Thank you, Alan. Glad to be here.

Alan
Thank you. So Dean, how did you give us your background, how you got to where you are today?

Dean
Okay, great. I grew up in Seattle, and then came to Stanford to go to undergraduate, got my industrial engineering degree, then went to Wharton Business School, and got my MBA in Philadelphia. And then started a 16 year career in management consulting, worked for firms like Deloitte, Ernst and Young IBM consulting. And then kind of my final four years in consulting was with a smaller firm called Curt salmon associates, which really focused on the retail industry. After that, I then took a job with Cisco Systems. For 11 years, my first three were actually in Paris, which was a lot of fun with my family over there, and then eventually ended up at SAP for the last two years, you’ve had a remarkable career. And when that’s diverse, I’m sure that brings it unique skill set to the table. So at SAP, you’re with a division called ideation or heading up that division? Well, the group is actually called Global Business Incubator. And it is a true incubator of new ideas. So let me help you understand, you know, when a company looks at innovation, they look at maybe build buying or partnering. My group represents the build portion of that. So people often ask me, Oh, do you buy companies and bring them into the incubator. So we have another group, we have actually three groups at CES at SAP. One is the Venture Capital Group, which is, you’ve probably know very well, they invest money in small startups or growth companies. The second group would be called Corporate Development, which actually acquires companies. And over the last three years, we’ve acquired success factors, Sybase, and arriba. And then the third group is my group, which is called the Global incubator, where we incubate new businesses and new ideas. So we start with a kernel an idea, and that’s kind of where I am in the ideation piece of that. I actually work with folks that have good ideas, both internally and externally, they come to me, we build a business case around that idea. And then we present that to management and say, Hey, here’s a winner. We think this is something that SAP should do in adjacent markets. So again, we don’t focus on the big ship, if you will, the ERP, the finance, the HR, the supply chain, we really look at adjacencies things that SAP is not currently doing.

Alan
Innovation always has to do with thinking outside the box, can you give me a wacky case, an example of something that was totally out of the box that you you introduced?

Dean
Well, one of the areas that we looked hard at are getting into whether is around virtual currency. So people have heard of Bitcoin, have heard of other currencies and virtual currencies really range across the board, you have frequent flyer miles, which are virtual currency, because you can use those miles to trade for something of value to you. So we’re now looking at creating a, let’s say, an SAP coin, that would probably be used more in the loyalty space. So you as a customer of SAP could, will get coins as you buy certain solutions or do certain things with SAP, and then you can use those coins for benefits to you. So that’s an interesting, another interesting one was a connected car. We were looking at the first use case was around electric vehicles. And you know, vehicles will run out of energy. The car will ask you, Hey, you know, you’ve got 20 miles left, do you want to recharge you say yes, we have five charge stations near the near where your location is? Do you want me to reserve one of those for you? Yes. It’ll take you then drive you to that station. It’ll reserve it for you. It’ll pay for it. And then when you get there, it’ll say and you know, by the way, there’s a Starbucks around the corner, they’ll give you 20% off of a latte. So that’s kind of building a platform for drivers to get information that will help their journey.

Alan
You know, it’s amazing years ago, we talked about artificial intelligence. And it was a novel concept of computer thinking. But now we’re in a stage where it’s happening. I mean, this suggested marking just like you said, Yeah, you know, the battery’s low. Do you want to charge it now, and let me show you what you need to do?

Dean
You know, the whole area of machine to machine or internet of things is, I think, going to continue to grow as machines get smarter. I mean, another area we looked at was actually smart vending. So if you think about a Coca Cola machine, you know it today is a fairly dumb machine, you go up to it, you put a coin and you get a soda. In the future, it will be able to talk to the inventory system and say, Hey, I’m running low on Diet Coke, send me some more Diet Coke. It’ll be able to talk to the maintenance system and say, Hey, one of my light bulbs is out, please fix it. And then the third area when it gets very sophisticated, will say hey, here comes Alan. I’m going to sell Alan not only Coke, but their sandwiches and chips here as well.

Alan
You have visiting here today with Dean Sivara he is the vice president of ideation, SAP, a company all about innovating and creating solutions for the future, Dean we need to take a quick break, we’ll be right back after these messages. And I want to get more into the entrepreneurial role that you play with companies. We’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
Welcome back, I’m here today with Dean Sivara. He is the VP of ideation working at SAP to create new solutions for the problems of today. Dean, we talked a little bit about what ideas you’re coming up with anything from the vending machine at Coke, you know, saying I need some more Diet Coke coming back and machine to fixing maintenance and, and light bulbs. And we talked about the electric car of you know, low on battery. Tell me where the charging stations are, you know, when you’re when you’re in your position. It’s very entrepreneurial. Yes. Yeah. How do you know when you have a good idea? What What process do you go through to kind of vet out? This is a good idea or not?

Dean
Yeah, it’s, it’s a little bit of quantitative and qualitative. I mean, there’s a little bit of gut feeling it understanding kind of where the market is going, where people are heading. Again, we look primarily at business issues. So we’re not as much focused on consumer issues, although, as we mentioned, in the electric car example, that you stated, we solve a business issue for a big company like a BMW, we’re also solving an issue for a consumer. But on the flip side, we also do quite a bit of quantitative analysis, we really try to understand the marketplace, understand the competitors in that marketplace today. You know, when we looked at the connected car example, you know, Audi is already doing something Nissan was already doing something, Chevrolet, GM, they’re already all down the road, they’re working with Microsoft that were so you have to look at the marketplace, you can’t just say, Oh, geez, that’s a great solution. It’ll solve a problem. And let’s dive in, you have to look at not only the economics of it, but you have to look at, you know, what the competitors are doing? And then probably the, maybe the biggest issue or challenge we have is where does the idea come from? And as the entrepreneur passionate, and will he drive it because we find if somebody really has an idea and wants to make it happen, and we give them the right resources, they can be successful.

Alan
Do large companies always look for large ideas?

Dean
You know, there’s some truth to that. I mean, we can’t probably invest, you know, having this big machine, you’ve got to feed it with with a lot of revenue, if you will. So we look at ideas that are in the 100 million dollar range. So we’re not looking at businesses that will make us $5 million, or $10 million, if they’ve got to over a three to five year period hit that 100 million dollar mark. So that also kind of narrows the spicket on the types of things we look at.

Alan
And when you put these ideas up, and you feel that you’re going to move towards implementing that how do they find resources for making it happen?

Dean
So that’s, that’s a good question. Because many large companies Cisco, SAP, Oracle, etc. They struggle with innovation, they struggle because the main business takes up all the resources and you know, there’s always customers saying, Hey, I’d like this feature I’d like that to in green, or I’d like it In Chinese, etc. So the resources are all diverted towards the main products that make the money. They are taken away from the innovative new ideas that kind of get squashed. So we had to allocate a bucket of money for us to do these new ideas and not and protect it, so that others wouldn’t come and say, Hey, by the way, we’ve got to do this new solution, or this money making solution, we’ve got to take that money away from you. So it’s, it’s the corporation deciding that, hey, we need to be innovative.

Alan
I’m visiting here today with Dean Sivara. He is the vice president of Ideation at SAP. Dean, we need to take a quick break. And when we get back I like to talk to you about the direction that SAP is going together with looking at the cloud and the you know what we should expect for the future. We’ll be right back after these messages.

Alan
I’m visiting here today with Dean Sivara. Have we been talking about his role at SAP as the head of ideation, which focuses on innovation, new technology, ideas for the future? And can you share with us some of the success that you’ve seen at ASAP that was interesting or rewarding to you?

Dean
Yeah, absolutely. One of the projects and in fact, there were two different projects that led to the same type of result, we’re actually in the third world. In India, you know, there are over 8 million stores that have no connectivity to the cloud, or to any connectivity of the internet, etc. So we, one of our new businesses was to focus on those 8 million small stores, you know, owned by one person, where we provided them mobility into their store so that they could do ordering, they could do pricing, etc, etc, which allowed them to drive information back to the consumer product companies, the the Nestle’s the Unilever’s so that they could do more planning and more efficiently get the goods to these retail stores. So you now have a retail owner, that has some connectivity through mobility, not through the internet. And funny enough, that is able to run his business more efficiently make more money for himself, but also serve his consumers at a greater higher level. So that was that was incredible. That’s the second one along a similar vein, as we did some work in South Africa. South Africa has a disparity of incomes, most of the people are poor. But it’s interesting when I went over there, they all have cell phones, it’s, it’s really incredible. No matter how poor they are, they have a cell phone. And so we were able to work with local banks, local retailers, local consumer product companies, to put everything again on the mobile phone, so that the retailers could do their retailing through the mobile phone ordering, receiving etc. And then the consumer could actually do their banking through the phone. So I think 75 to 80% of the people in South Africa don’t have a bank account, they keep it under the mattress. So banking, the unbanked was one of the big strategies for the banks in Africa. And we were able to help them through the phone. And so I was actually there watching young people work with older folks that have had a phone to help them understand how they could do banking through the phone. So those were two really rewarding projects that we worked on.

Alan
You know, it’s amazing, I guess we’re always stuck in the mindset that we need a building and an infrastructure, you know, to execute on ideas, and with the virtual zation of this world. So what direction do you see SAP and the cloud moving towards?

Dean
You know, with the acquisitions of arriba and SuccessFactors. We are a cloud company now. You know, our heritage is in on premise. You know, the big software, put on premise that kept kept keeps companies running and that will probably remain pieces of that. But we’re now putting that together complementing that with cloud offerings. You have salesforce.com You have work workday there was like that, that service our customers so we’re now trying to battle them on those four fronts, around sales around CRM around HR, etc. So I think what you’re going to see is more and more enterprise level applications going into the cloud, we have a new database, if you will, called Hana, it’s an in memory database that really has changed the dynamics around many use cases. For example, in healthcare, we’re looking at using Hana to help us in the digital genomics area. And genomics is, you know, obviously a new science, where they can look at your genes and help you understand, hey, you know, you you are at risk in these areas, you should be doing these things. But it used to it takes today, a month or two to get your genomics read and understood. And we’re looking to drive that to from two months to two weeks to two days to two hours, we want it to happen. Our dream is to have it happen while you’re visiting the doctor.

Alan
When we look at the world today. And and obviously it’s a it’s a force that we’re connecting a lot of people together. People are people coming to you say, Dean, we got it, we got a need. And we got an idea to go with how to fill this need. Yeah. How do you how do you operate in your space?

Dean
Yeah, that’s, you know, where do the ideas come from? They it’s interesting, they come from the outside, they come internally they come from a customer’s is interesting one, a group of actually bankers and in the United Kingdom, sent me a note and said, Hey, I’ve got an idea for SAP. And this is an idea actually, that we’re actually evaluating right now. His idea was, is that when you go to a website for llbean, or the gap, or furniture, when you go shopping for furniture, you can only order through one website, the items that that actual owner of the website provides. Let’s say I want a lamp from Home Depot, I want a couch from Ikea, I want, you know, a chair from Sears, you have to go to three websites to be able to do that. And his idea was to build a platform that allow you to order all have those items on one website. So you would still order from Sears, you would still order from from IKEA and Home Depot. But all the order transactions, the back end, and they’re all probably SAP systems would work so that your billing and the supply chain etc, would work seamlessly. So I thought, you know, again, that solves a real problem that people have novel concept, a one stop shop. Exactly, exactly. And it’s harder than it sounds right.

Alan
So Dean, if a person has an idea says, you know, I have a real need and a solution to go with how to fill that need. How do they contact you?

Dean
Yeah, you know, we’re out there, you just go to SAP, you can go to the global business incubator, you can go to the development side. I mean, you can find us, you can find me on a Google me. And, you know, it’s dean.sivara@sap.com Send me the idea. We work together with all of the ideas submitters on a business case. So, we look at everything that comes out. And it has to be a big idea, though. That’s the only thing.

Alan
I’ve been visiting here today with Dean Sivara. He is the vice president Ideation at SAP. Dean, thank you for being on today’s show.

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This transcript was generated by software and may not accurately reflect exactly what was said.

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