Innovate the Innovation Awards

Written By Paul Modderman

I don't always catch them right away, but I try to go out and read the SAP Innovation Awards when they appear yearly. Cynically, you expect that a vendor's award process is going to deeply involve their own offerings. Otherwise, why bother creating the awards?

There are two overall types of winners that I'll call bakers and buyers. I notice the distinction this year more starkly than usual.

Bakers take the SAP offerings and really dive deeply into crafting their own flavors on top of them. I think my favorite example this year is The Hershey Company story. There are cool design screenshots, clear business challenges, and techie mambo-jumbo about "scalable mathematical optimization" frameworks. I come away definitely feeling like innovation happened.

Buyers' stories follow a different path:

  • We have $PROBLEM

  • We bought SAP's $SOLUTION for $PROBLEM

  • Innovation!

Good for the customer, and good for SAP - but this pattern doesn't leave me feeling like innovation happened. Maybe it's time to be more choosy of overall winners? Maybe it's time to ask for more details from some submissions? Customer stories are always powerful, but the innovation awards leave a little to be desired. PM

Paul Modderman https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulmodderman/
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