FOSTERING INNOVATION THROUGH SYSTEMIC DIVERSITY · Framework. This article will outline why...
Transcript of FOSTERING INNOVATION THROUGH SYSTEMIC DIVERSITY · Framework. This article will outline why...
David J. SilvaSalesforce.com Release [email protected]
Matthew WilsonSalesforce.com Sr. Business Systems [email protected]
Archana Kamath Salesforce.com Application [email protected]
Manasa UdupiAssociate IT [email protected]
FOSTERING INNOVATION THROUGH SYSTEMIC DIVERSITY
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Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3
Why Innovate? ............................................................................................................................................ 4
Why do we need Diversity? ...................................................................................................................... 5
Why is Systemic Diversity required? ....................................................................................................... 8
Diversity Engine ........................................................................................................................................ 10
Registration ........................................................................................................................................... 10
Open Challenges and Domains of interest ...................................................................................... 10
Systemically Diverse Team Creation for Idea Submission ............................................................ 10
Submission ............................................................................................................................................ 11
Idea Approval ........................................................................................................................................ 11
Systemically Diverse Team Creation for Idea Implementation ..................................................... 12
Project Development ........................................................................................................................... 12
Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 13
Appendix .................................................................................................................................................... 14
Barriers to Diversity .............................................................................................................................. 14
Process Flow Diagram ........................................................................................................................ 15
Flow Chart ............................................................................................................................................. 15
Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................. 16
Author Biographies................................................................................................................................... 17
Disclaimer: The views, processes or methodologies published in this article are those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect EMC Corporation’s views, processes, or methodologies.
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Introduction Companies exist to make a profit for their investors. Those that succeed, thrive by
understanding their customers and building products that fulfill a specific need and with the
hopes that they can repeat this process perpetually. The question is how companies continue to
stay relevant, how they continue to tap into the explicit and implicit needs of their customers.
Customers are a diverse crowd, however. They require a variety of solutions to support their
diverse needs across various markets for the long term. Companies have a very tough job and
routine adaptation to changing customer tastes is an insufficient strategy. Breakthrough
innovation is a factor in success, but it is not enough.
Diversity within a workforce allows the innovation cycle to repeat, to prevent breakthroughs from
being mere flashes in the pan. The typical cycle is simple in that solution providers gather
customer input, derive customer needs, define the scope of a product, and then pull together a
team to execute on that product plan. Many companies hire for diversity with the hopes that
these teams encapsulate the diversity that the company believes it possesses at a macro level
so that they can put out the best product to support their diverse customer needs.
How does a company ensure that its project teams are, in fact, diverse so that the innovation
process is at its most optimal? If there is a presiding belief that the most innovative thinking is
drawn from a diverse workforce, then how does diversity at the macro level get preserved—or
even better—assured at the project level?
Innovation is a global, multidisciplinary endeavor and bringing together different minds,
perspectives and skillsets is essential for the discovery of flexible solutions to problems. Yet
many companies limit their potential because they do not foster innovation through a more
intentional process. Innovators often seek out specific individuals to help drive their ideas which
can result in a more homogeneous idea and execution model. This organically derived
approach is good as it is immediately accessible and it fosters more familiar levels of team trust
and enthusiasm. But such a model often results in products that fail to scale quickly enough in
rapidly changing business landscapes.
This article aims to make diversity in innovative initiatives more accessible by theorizing a
means to drive systemic infusion of diversity into any organization’s innovation process. By
introducing a system that institutes diversity by leveraging crowd sourcing methodologies, an
organization can promote an innovation framework that results in a greater breadth and depth of
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ideas that taps into a broader array of skillsets, experience and perspectives across the teams.
By bringing diversity and internal crowd sourcing together during both the idea generation
portion of the corporate innovation framework and the execution phase, the strength of a
company’s knowledge and creativity can be harnessed through stronger collaboration and
employee engagement, unbound by hierarchy or position. Participation would increase as
employees seek personal fulfillment through reputational growth rather than monetary
incentives while underutilized resources will get engaged outside of their direct focus.
Through the deployment of a software-based Diversity Engine, members across the talent pool
in an organization can be selected for projects or initiatives based on diversity factors such as
geography, business unit, skillset, gender, years of experience, age, hierarchy, and ethnicity—
amongst others. The new innovation team will get invited to virtual collaboration spaces and
begin brainstorming and submitting ideas. A similar approach is taken during the execution
phase but where a diverse group is matched against the technology and resource requirements
of the approved idea.
The article will focus on improving the Idea Generation and Execution Phases of the Innovation
Framework. This article will outline why diversity is important in innovation, how diversity can
speed innovation, and how a software-based Diversity Engine and Team Building Algorithm can
be used as a method of crowdsourcing innovation within a company. These factors will help
concepts become reality and thus lead to marketable products, process improvements, and
customer satisfaction.
Why Innovate? Companies innovate to better serve their customers. Not only do they attempt to fulfill a
consumer’s current wants, but also to endeavor an anticipation of the needs customers were
unaware they had. Having innovative thinking as part of a company’s mission not only ensures
more trusted relationships with customers but it also helps reinforce the company’s bottom line.
But innovation is not simply adaptation to changing variables in the marketplace or within the
company. Rather, innovation is about finding new ways to solve customer or organizational
challenges to ensure relevance in an ever changing landscape.
The typical successful organization can be viewed as productively efficient but lacking
innovative capacity. However, there is no synonymous relationship between adaptive and
innovative organizations; a firm can adapt to new and varied pressures but fail to come up with
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new ideas. The distinction made between adaptive and innovative firms does not mean there is
a void in terms of innovative practices, but that there is deliberate focus on new and unexplored
territory. Adaptive firms focus on the short term while innovative firms focus on the long term at
least in terms of product development that is important to their consumers. However, in order for
any organization to function effectively, a "production ideology" needs to exist to allow the
running of the business through goals, objectives, and methods that "legitimizes the coercion of
the individual” by the firm. In a vertical organization, goals set by management are carried out
through the efforts of employees who have been hired to do specific, discrete, and non-
overlapping functions (p. 2). (Friedman, Roberts, & Linton, 2010) These incremental changes
are a fact of life in business and get companies through a few months or a few years.
Innovation can act within this space, but it is typically an additional focus on top of the daily life
of the firm. Innovation is what ensures a company can pivot on changes in consumer tastes.
Organizations feel good when they talk about Innovation. The word’s very meaning exudes the
hope of success—that whatever idea an organization has on the table will be fresh, new,
differentiating. It is no surprise, then, that “innovation” and “innovative thinking” are phrases that
have found a permanent home in the vision statements that many organizations have
established for the work that they do and the product they produce. This is important on a few
levels. The desire to be innovative is a rallying point for all members of an organization. When
given the means, employees are often much more excited to produce when there is a
promising, accessible innovation process that is in place. Also, a company that can innovate is
better prepared to be more intentional with their strategies for establishing their position in their
marketplace. This, however, is only a step toward success. What differentiates the myriad of
companies who are all trying to be innovative?
Why do we need Diversity? Companies have begun to rally around diversity in much the same way as innovation. It has
been shown that “Companies with diverse leadership are 45% more likely to report market
share grew over the previous year and 70% more likely to report entry into new markets.”
(Hewlett, Marshall, & Sherbin, December 2013) Another study found that “female
representation in top management leads to an increase of $42 million in firm value.” (Phillips,
October 1, 2014) These numbers are not mere coincidence and why companies, at least many
of them, are beginning to hire more diverse employees, at least at a macro level. The problem
lay in the fact that diversity is still superficial in many organizations. Many still praise the fact that
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their teams can arrive at unanimous decisions quickly but ignore the fact that like-minded
thinkers act quickly only because there is a lack of diversity in perspective and background and
thus they fail to achieve the best results. “While there's a sense of satisfaction when everyone
agrees, there's a great deal to be said for diversity of thought and a dash of constructive conflict,
and the results prove it: according to a McKinsey & Co report, US public companies with
diversity on their executive board have a 95% higher return on equity than those without.”
(Grillo, 2014) While one might think that camaraderie can be a driving force in the innovative
process, it is more that the innovative process can drive camaraderie within teams. When those
that organize project teams or start up new organizations are left to more natural, organic
approaches to exploring ideas and executing on them, diversity will very often take a back seat
to the innate desire for likeminded thinking. After all, the more people you have supporting your
ideas and willing to execute on them, the better chances that your ideas get approved or
funded.
“People gravitate toward people like them. We’ve long known that similarity makes people like
and identify with each other. In organizations, leaders often hire and promote those who share
their own attitudes, behaviors, and traits. Thus, many organizations unknowingly have
“prototypes for success” that perpetuate a similarity bias and limit the pool of potential
candidates for positions, important assignments, and promotions.” (Riordan, June 05, 2014)
When a company talks about diversity, however, what does that mean? It is important to have
some guiding criteria for what constitutes diversity. There are two types: inherent and acquired.
Traits an individual was born with, like gender or ethnicity, are inherent, while acquired diversity
is comprised of traits gained through experience. (Hewlett, Marshall, & Sherbin, December
2013) As this article ultimately explores a means for systemic infusion of diversity into the
innovative process, it is important to consider that the combination of inherent and acquired
diversities is critical to successful idea generation and execution. While companies once thought
that they were simply being inclusive by focusing on inherent diversity, it has been evidenced
that the ability for an organization to remain competitive is dependent on their ability to leverage
the inherent and acquired diversity offered by their workforce to generate ideas, collaborate and
execute.
Ideas that are generated amongst a team comprised of different races and genders will certainly
yield more innovative ideas than a team of all one gender or race, but greater depth of
innovation is achieved when various voices are heard from those with different life and job
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experiences are brought to the table. Since customers and clients are diverse, it stands to
reason that the ideas generated by an organization that embraces these two planes of diversity
will differentiate themselves in the marketplace and help to gain market share. (Egan, July
2011)
All of this sounds like common sense, but there is scientific research to prove that diversity is
required for diversity of thought. A group of innovators who all look the same, speak the same,
and from the same socio-economic backgrounds will come up with inferior ideas compared with
those generated from a diverse group even if the first group is intellectually superior because
“diversity of perspective and problem-solving approach trumps individual ability.” (Fan, 2011) A
contributing factor to this is that people change their behavior when social diversity is added to a
group. Diversity promotes hard work and thinking out of the box by “encouraging the
consideration of alternatives even before any interpersonal interaction takes place.” For
example, in a 2006 study of juries, Samuel Sommers of Tufts University found that “diverse
juries were better at considering case facts, made fewer errors recalling relevant information
and displayed a greater openness to discussing the role of race in the case. These
improvements did not necessarily happen because the black jurors brought new information to
the group—they happened because white jurors changed their behavior in the presence of the
black jurors. In the presence of diversity, they were more diligent and open-minded.” (Phillips,
October 1, 2014) Stanford Professor Anthony Antonio, in a study of 350 students, identified that
when individuals hear a dissenting opinion from someone different, it provokes more thought
than if the same idea is presented by someone who is similar. (Antonio, Chang, Hakuta, Kenny,
Levin, & Milem, August 2004) “Simply interacting with individuals who are different forces group
members to prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and to expect that reaching
consensus will take effort.” (Phillips, October 1, 2014)
Companies have made progress in becoming more diverse across their organizations but a
majority of organizations admit that they experience barriers to implementing their diversity
programs. As seen in figure 1, while 7% of respondents felt there were no barriers, barriers such
as a failure of execution by middle management, budgetary issues, or an overt focus on just
surviving are big factors in preventing successful diversity programs. (Egan, July 2011)
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Why is Systemic Diversity required? Without innovation, company products become stagnant and eventually irrelevant. With
innovation, companies create new products, enter new industries, and re-invent themselves to
become relevant for as many years as their purpose is important to consumers of their good or
service. The paper has put forth that innovation is essentially the lifeblood of the company and
that without it, the company will eventually die. Diversity within a workforce is what makes the
cycle of innovation more consistent and more rapid. “When at least one member of a team has
traits in common with the end user, the entire team better understands that user. A team with a
member who shares a client’s ethnicity is 152% likelier than another team to understand that
client” (Hewlett, Marshall, & Sherbin, December 2013). Different perspectives allow engineers
and marketers to get inside the heads of their customers. The plurality of the word customers is
important for it is not just one type of customer, but rather any possible combination of customer
profiles that make use of company products and resources. Companies have begun to hire for
diversity and this will lead to better innovation, but this is akin to putting gas in a car. A little
diversity is like a little gas. The car will move a little and the company will innovate a
little. Adding more diversity creates more innovation, and adding more gas means the car can
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go a little faster up to the capacity of the engine. Without gas, the car would not run and a
company’s innovation turnover would be lackluster. A diverse workforce runs the company. It
allows it to move, but to go faster and to be more efficient, one does not need more gas, but
rather a faster car, or more specifically, a better and more efficient engine. This is where
systemic insertion of diversity into every aspect of innovation comes into play. A diversity engine
will take the same resources already being hired for in the company, and use them more
efficiently. At a minimum, every enthusiastic employee will be part of transient innovative teams
to catalogue the myriad of ideas that occur simply due to the synergies of individual differences.
As discussed earlier, being among a heterogeneous group has proven that humans work harder
to prove their case, think of better ideas, and avoid group think because they simply cannot
assume the other party will share their opinion.
A company’s catalogue of potential ideas will now exist, but telling the feasible idea from the
infeasible one, or the lucrative idea from the chrome squirrel that only an engineer could love--
this will be handled by the wisdom of the crowd. The full force of the company, or at least those
interested in the innovation process, will approve the “good” ideas for execution, leaving the
“bad” ideas to stay in the catalogue until they either become relevant with new technology
advances or new customer needs, or they remain unapproved in perpetuity. There is no need to
archive bad ideas or to appoint an expert panel who “knows better”. The corporation graveyard
is full of companies whose brightest employees and leaders failed to see the future. The same
future that college drop-outs saw coming, leading to the likes of Apple and Microsoft overtaking
giants like Digital and Polaroid. The crowd knows a “good” idea when they see it, even if they
never knew they wanted it until they saw the potential of the idea. Allowing the idea to be voted
for in perpetuity until it meets a dynamic threshold gives individuals time to grasp the importance
of the idea. An individual can be wrong, but the wisdom of the crowd will always be right.
How should ideas that move past the approval stage get executed? Through the Diversity
Engine, of course! Assembling the most diverse team with the skills needed to make the idea a
reality. At any given time, different individuals across the company will be the best team to solve
a given problem based on their skills, their capacity, and of course their diversity. The next
minute, the same problem will possibly have a different team assigned as the inputs in terms of
time constraints or skills availability may have changed thus dynamically changing the results
for the same selection criteria. The following sections add more color to how this would all work
in practice.
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Diversity Engine We are proposing a Diversity Engine that acts like a team building algorithm. It enables diverse
communities to engage and generate novel ideas to help solve problems that companies and
their customers are either currently facing or will be facing in the near future. The platform
promotes dynamic collaboration among a balanced set of individuals allowing diverse
communities and networks to innovate faster and be more cost effective. Our Engine has the
following features:
1. Registration of Innovators and their interests and skills
2. Open Challenges and Domains of Interest
3. Systemically Diverse Team creation for Idea Generation
4. Idea Submission
5. Idea approval via Wisdom of the Crowd
6. Systemically Diverse Team creation for Idea implementation
7. Project Development and Submission
Registration
The Diversity Engine captures information that enables recruitment of a diverse team for both
idea generation and implementation. Essential data such as company name, industry work
experience, age, domains of interest, skills, location and gender is collected. These diversity
factors form the basis of a registrant’s user profiles for both inherent and acquired types of
diversity. Integrating with a capacity management tool ensure employees with sufficient
bandwidth will be selected over those who are already overcommitted and also allow for
individuals to be selected for more than one team so work can be done in parallel depending on
time constraints.
Open Challenges and Domains of interest
The Challenge Dashboard and Database provides an integrated view of all the open challenges
proposed by individuals or sponsored by business units as well as a means to post new
challenges or domains of interest. Domains of interest that have no explicit challenges will be
listed as their own prompt for teams to form around.
Systemically Diverse Team Creation for Idea Submission
Communities of five to seven individuals sharing similar domains of interest are selected
automatically to maximize the diversity per group based on the diversity factors described
earlier. The entire pool of innovators will be divided into teams coalescing around business
sponsored challenges or domains of interest if no other prompts exist.
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Companies can be as open or as closed with their innovation program as is appropriate for
them. By opening up the innovator pool to an audience of employees, customers, partners, and
suppliers, a company can gain keen insights into areas outside their typical organizational
knowledge. With the right contractual agreements, a wide range of innovators can participate
via virtual collaboration spaces designed to house discussion, track progress, and measure
effectiveness of the team selection algorithm. The algorithm would be self-learning by tweaking
team selection parameters to attempt a repeat of previous success along the best mix of
diversity and skill. While virtual collaboration may not always be ideal, the diversity gains of
geographically dispersed groups outweigh the efficiency lags of not being co-located.
Submission
After collaborative discussions, each group submits their idea or sets of ideas to the database.
The process is the same regardless of whether there was a challenge or whether the team was
formed along a domain of interest. Time limits for the Idea submission phase can be stated by
companies at the very beginning to allow for teams to be dissolved periodically and reformed
with new members. If there are hard deadlines on challenges, this would also be a factor in
determining when a submission is required and thus signal the dissolution of the current idea
generation team. The ideas submitted over this course of time are then evaluated. Note that
each company can select a threshold for the target number of ideas the team can generate
between periodic dissolution. The more data the team building algorithm has, the more accurate
it can be with future team selection, it is suggested that companies have as little as one idea
generated between dissolution up to ten ideas generated by a given specific team.
Idea Approval
Submissions are available for voting by the pool of innovators. We base approval on two
factors, both of which revolve around the wisdom of the crowd.
a) A threshold where the total number of members who have liked the idea over the
total number of members who have viewed the idea equals 40 to 60%
b) A set threshold of 10 to 30% of the total audience associated to that domain of
interest likes the idea.
Each company can tweak the thresholds based on what is right for them to throttle the number
of ideas getting to the execution phase. If the value of an idea meets the minimum threshold set
by the organization for both factors, it qualifies to be implemented. Similar ideas will be identified
through analytics and proposed for merging at the execution team level. Ideas will remain in the
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pool until they reach the thresholds. If the idea never makes it to execution, makes it after 10
years, or makes it within 1 month, any of these situations are acceptable. Innovators will all be
notified when an idea is submitted. Companies may choose to set reminders for idea voting of
perhaps 3 times if there is a concern of hitting the threshold. Reminders or tweaking the
thresholds up or down will both accomplish the same objective. As in earlier phases, the team
building algorithm within the diversity engine will learn the appropriate mix of diversity to attain
the most successful results and the self-learning will improve as it gathers more input.
Systemically Diverse Team Creation for Idea Implementation
A heterogeneous team is formed consisting of people with diverse backgrounds based on the
diversity factors mentioned earlier but with specific requirements on team skills where the
highest diversity is achieved among a set of required skills including project management,
engineering, business sponsorship, business analysis, and sales and marketing.
The engine includes one member from the idea submission team to preserve the originality of
the idea. These teams of 5-7 members are then assigned to the respective ideas to be
implemented. Each member of the team can accept or reject the proposal based on their
interest and availability. On rejection by a member, the engine computes and invites a new
eligible individual.
The diversity engine also provides privileges to request for additional resources based on the
implementation complexity. Resources that are not utilized can be released by the team, those
released resources are assigned new projects by the engine; hence it promotes efficient
resource utilization.
Project Development
Members of teams may recuse themselves at any time and be replaced by the next best diverse
contributor with the needed skill. If all the team members recuse themselves within a threshold
of 3 months, and the new team does the same within another 3 months, the idea will be moved
back to the voting phase minus 10% of its approval thresholds. This will prevent an unfair drop
back to zero, but also prevents a fluke approval from hampering an execution team.
On accepting the proposal, the team can start implementing and work towards the delivery of
the project. After project assignment, if there is inactivity for more than two months, then the
engine assigns the project to a new team. The engine keeps the registrants up to date by
sending them notifications and reminders of the events/activities etc. Upon delivery, each team
is fairly rewarded; points, back patting, and gifts etc. The right reward system is planned by the
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organization and communicated clearly to the audience in the initial stages. The focus is on
personal fulfillment rather than monetary benefit, however. The ideas dashboard may be a place
to showcase the success rate for individuals in the forms of badges or other identifiers for the
purpose of gamification
Conclusion The evidence is clear that routine adaptive change is insufficient to maintain competitive
advantage in industry. Breakthrough innovation is the means by which companies seek to stay
relevant as customer needs change. The paper has established that diversity must be a critical
component of any company’s innovation strategy. While companies focus on becoming more
diverse at the macro level, there are still barriers that hinder them from taking full advantage of
the skills, experience, and varying viewpoints that are now available to them through their “hiring
for diversity” programs. As a result, the intent of the innovation process can still be thwarted
because sub-optimal combinations of resources occur at the micro level, and thus realization of
full potential is impossible. A company’s efforts to make its workforce more diverse are only ever
truly realized when that diversity can be applied at all levels. Every group in a company wants to
be innovative and demonstrate the best of what their company has to offer, but there are few
structures in place today that allow companies to fully utilize their growing pool of diverse talent.
The proposed Diversity Engine enables a company to tap into the perspectives and knowledge
of all its employees. It is fundamentally powered by the self-alignment of employees to
organizational initiatives and promotes successful outcomes by systemically infusing diversity
into every innovative initiative. This efficient utilization of the workforce gives companies an
edge over their competitors who are operating with the standard mindset of innovation. While
companies who innovate will be more successful than those who causally adapt, those who
systemically diversify their teams for optimized innovation will be in the best position to meet
customer demand. The Diversity Engine ensures that only relevant ideas are produced, that
only currently applicable ideas are approved through the wisdom of the crowd, and that the best
team possible brings these concepts into reality to create marketable products and services.
The proposal stimulates continuous innovation, thus allowing a firm to reinvent itself with a
pertinent ever-changing product line. As stated earlier, companies exist to make a profit for their
investors. The ability to produce solutions that consistently meet demand ensures that the firm
is a continued value and worth the investment.
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Appendix
Barriers to Diversity
(Egan, July 2011)
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Process Flow Diagram
Flow Chart
Step 1
Diverse data collection and User profile
generation
Step 2
Diverse team creation for idea generation
Step 3
Idea Creation & Evaluation
Step 4
Diverse team formation for Idea implementation
Step 5
Project development and submission
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Author Biographies David J Silva is the Release Manager for EMC’s instance of Salesforce.com. He has been
working in IT for over 20 years, the last 16 at EMC. An expert in process development,
facilitation, training, data manipulation, and reporting, Dave is a certified EMC Proven
Professional Cloud Infrastructure and Services Associate, a certified Scrum Master, ITIL Service
Management Practitioner, and a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt. He holds a Bachelor of Science in
Management Information Systems, a Master of Science in Innovation Leadership, and is also
pursuing his MBA at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He also authored “The Importance of
Opportunity Recognition within Innovation “in 2013.
Matthew Wilson is a Sr. Business Systems Analyst supporting EMC’s Partner Relationship
Management and Channel Sales initiatives on Salesforce.com. He has been at EMC for 4+
years and has a diverse background ranging from front-end web development, sales and
systems training, and business consulting.
Archana Kamath is an Application Manager for EMC’s instance of Salesforce.com. She has
over 13 years of IT experience. As a Mobile Development Manager, she built the mobile
development team from the ground up to a sizable team of over 25 high performers, and led the
delivery of several strategic mobile projects. She has also built EMC’s first SharePoint team
and delivered the “SharePoint As a Service” catalog offering. She holds an engineering degree
in Computer Science and has an MBA in Human Resource Management.
Manasa Udupi is an Associate IT Generalist in EMC’s IT Leadership Program. She has a
Bachelor’s degree in Information Science Engineering with just under 2 years of experience
within IT. She has worked with groups as varied as Cloud Operations Infrastructure, Mobility,
and Salesforce.com where she is currently working as a Business Analyst. Manasa is a
certified EMC Proven Professional Information Storage Associate V2, ITIL Foundation certified,
and Scrum Master certified.
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