CFO Studio Magazine - Curt Allen, CFO, Subaru

1ST QUARTER 2015 WWW.CFOSTUDIO.COM 39 Known as The Growth Strategist®, Aldonna Ambler built and grew a suite of companies to help midsized B2B companies achieve accelerated growth with sustained profitability. A Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), Ambler has addressed over 2,000 audiences and hosted a syndicated online talk show about growth strategies for nine years. As a growth financing intermediary, Ambler raised over $1 billion for midsized companies. The winner of over two dozen prestigious national and statewide “entrepreneur of the year” awards, Ambler will be inducted into the New Jersey Business Hall of Fame on April 9, 2015. An NACD Board Leadership Fellow, Ambler is available to serve on the board of a growth-oriented corporation or to speak about profitable, resilient growth during any economy. I s there a more important growth strategy than product innovation? Here’s a case in point: Apple went further than other smartphone brands and created Siri to respond to the user’s every question, which deepened the relationship between the owner and his or her iPhone. In this way Siri increased iPhone sales and boosted share value for Apple. Another example: Availability of “auto assist” for collision avoidance and parallel parking increased sales of Toyotas and then Fords. But innovation within a complex enterprise can be fleeting. Fortunately, an aware CFO can improve the likelihood of sustained innovation. You are undoubtedly part of an enterprise that is much larger than those represented by the hopeful inventors on ABC’s Shark Tank . But the visibility of that television show and the success of several of the show’s inexperienced “entrepreneurs” are relevant to your corporation. Like other “reality” shows that create distorted perceptions, Shark Tank inverts the usual circumstances. Each Friday night, famous wealthy people compete for a chance to invest in ideas after hearing very short, simple, in-person presentations from less sophisticated people. This false impression about how easy it is to obtain funding from strangers, combined with negative reactions to media coverage about layoffs and lost pensions, is a powerful deterrent to sharing creative ideas with one’s employer. How can a CFO contribute to sustained innovation in a complex enterprise? Strategies Increase your awareness of trends that impact perceptions (therefore behavior). Help quantify windows of opportunity, the return on investment for incentive programs, and/or the costs associated with replacing star employees. Be open to contests, games, and experimentation. Although the “intrapreneurial” experiments of the 1990s to retain creative employees achievedmixed results, it is time to revive and update the concept. Back in the dot-com era, it was very tempting for someone with an idea for a product or service to quit his or her job and take a chance starting a new business. In today’s uncertain economy, employees value security a bit more. Incentives for your creative employees to share ideas won’t need to be as elaborate or expensive as they were in the late 1990s. With rapidly changing technology and heightened customer expectations, the need to fuel innovation is greater now than ever. How many revenue-producing opportunities is your corporation losing because employees don’t have sufficient incentive to share their new product or improvement ideas? Perhaps the popularity of gamification could be used to encourage your employees to innovate. Wouldn’t the costs associated with an internal contest be less expensive than losing ground to a competitor? Make it easier for employees to present and propose product ideas. And update your company’s old “intrapreneur” programs. C ALDONNA R. AMBLER CMC, CSP The Growth Strategist ® Fostering New Ideas The CFO’s role in sustained product innovation