Daniel Sabbah On 5 Tips for Accelerating Product Ideation & Innovation

In a world where the pace of change is faster than ever, the power of great ideas has never been more crucial. And yet, developing these ideas into impactful, market-ready products can be an immense challenge. The best products are not born overnight, they’re the result of dedicated ideation and innovation processes. These processes aren’t always easy, but they’re necessary and can be catalyzed with the right strategies and approaches. How do you foster a culture of creativity within a team? How can one rapidly translate ideas into prototypes and eventually finished products? How can roadblocks be anticipated and managed effectively to avoid unnecessary delays. In this series, we’re eager to explore insights, stories, and actionable tips from those at the forefront of ideation and innovation. As part of this series, we had the distinct pleasure of interviewing Daniel Sabbah, Ph.D., Former CTO and General Manager, Next Generation Platform at IBM.

Danny Sabbah, Ph.D., has more than 40 years of experience as a software professional with experience in software research and software development. He has managed organizations ranging from 5 to 25,000 to deliver products or set research directions. He currently consults with IBM Research, Private Equity and Venture firms. He is a Senior Advisor for Bridge Growth LLC and previously sat on the board of directors for Finalsite LLC. Sabbah is a member of the Arts, Sciences, and Engineering National Council and the Hajim Dean’s Advisory Committee at the University of Rochester.

Previously, Sabbah was the CTO and General Manager, Next Generation Platform, at IBM until his retirement at the end of 2015. His career at IBM spanned 40 years as a researcher, software developer, and eventually as a CTO and GM of various divisions in IBM’s software group. He was responsible for creating IBM’s cloud platform. His innovative leadership helped pioneer IBM into open source in the late 90s and early 2000s, well before it was commercially popular. He was also instrumental in IBM’s successful drive into internet software (WebSphere).

Sabbah received his MA and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Rochester in 1981, where he specialized in artificial intelligence and computer vision. He was named a Distinguished Alumnus of the University in 2019. He also received an Executive Education Business Degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before diving in, our readers would love to learn more about you. Can you tell us a little about yourself?

Certainly. I’ve had 3 phases in my career. I started as a researcher in AI in the mid-80s (yes, AI had a resurgence and hype then also). I spent 11 years researching AI and Computer Science at IBM’s Yorktown Research labs. I eventually became the Director of Software Technology. At that point in the early 90s, there were forces in IBM trying to create a presence in software independent of hardware. That was novel at the time, and I felt I would be more useful in pursuit of creating a new independent software presence with an IBM label. That’s where I spent the following 25+ years of my career. My colleagues and I were quite successful in establishing IBM Software, and it grew to encompass 25% of IBM’s annual revenue and 50% of its profit. I was able to retire in 2016 (too much running around the world began to wear on me), and I began to go back into ‘reflection’ mode and started trying to help others. I consulted for a while and did selective gigs with organizations I felt comfortable with. I also started working with a colleague of some 40+ years, Mark Wegman, and met my other co-authors through him. That’s when we started down this path of writing a book about our different perspectives on innovation. Our differing experiences lent much to thinking through the ideas we weave into the book.

What led you to this specific career path?

I became enamored of what today would be called cognitive science in undergraduate school. That led me to try to understand human reasoning through AI and computing in grad school and my research career (11 years). However, I made it a practice to review my thoughts and feelings about my work at the end of each and every year. Looking back, I am happy to have established the habit early on in my career. I was much happier as a result. Whenever I felt unsatisfied with my progress for whatever reason, I was able to shift and make a change. I suppose I was very lucky since my core skills in computing were in demand throughout. I was also lucky that I got the right support in my shift from a researcher to a software developer to a software exec. Anyone who believes that some degree of luck isn’t involved and thinks it’s all in their ‘brilliance and hard work’ is spewing nonsense.

Can you share the most exciting story that has happened to you since you began at your company?

Given the length of my career and the experiences with the .com boom of the late 90s and early 2000s, there were quite a few exciting episodes. We were in the midst of creating a software business during the explosion of the commercial internet. As you can imagine, an ‘old line’ business like IBM competing with the likes of the newly emerging internet software startups made for some interesting episodes. We had to compete and cooperate with companies like Microsoft, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems (now largely absorbed into Oracle). We were instrumental in the emergence of Java and Enterprise Java especially. We had furious competition in that space from startups and established players. We were very early in the adoption of open source, believe it or not, and helped establish the Apache Foundation and then Eclipse.org. We saw it as an effective way to compete for developer mindshare, which was crucial to winning hearts and minds in the software developer community. Being heavily involved in establishing open source in the evolution of commercial software was a defining moment in my career.

What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?

I recently finished a stint on the board of an educational software company. I was responsible for helping them through a technical transition to cloud-based SaaS (software as a service) and business guidance along those lines. Currently, as a result of the book we just published called The Heart of Innovation: A Field Guide for Navigating to Authentic Demand, we are creating a venture fund focused on the intersection of computing and healthcare. My colleagues and I are looking to put principles of Deliberate Innovation into practice to help advance healthcare and innovation. We are attempting, in pursuit of improving healthcare, to focus and shorten startup seed rounds and prove out a deeper understanding of market demand free of most initial founder biases. Enthusiasm and drive are great characteristics in founders, but unfortunately, they also come with biases that often lead to misunderstanding actual demand. I think of it as ‘imagined’ demand as opposed to authentic demand. We are using a studio model to help transition to authentic rather than imagined demand. Much more on that in the book.

You’re a successful business leader. What are three traits about yourself that you feel helped fuel your success? Can you share a story or example for each?

For me, clearly, number one must be listening. Number two would have to be leading instead of simply ‘managing,’ and number three is focusing on the reality of execution, however ugly and unpleasant.

1. Listening — I spent many days/weeks traveling the world when I was leading businesses. In all cases, when meeting with clients and potential clients, I tried to listen to my salespeople in briefings before meetings but not be overly swayed by what was being said. The reason was to purge biases. So often, when I was LISTENING to clients, they were relaying a very different situation than I was led to believe. It gave me a much better sense of the likelihood of success. I am not a big fan of being a CEO who ‘cheerleads.’ I know many do, but I find it gets in the way of listening to the realities in market situations. It artificially reinforces cognitive biases that often lead to failure. I was always more interested in building businesses that were sustainable rather than one-hit wonders.
2. Leading Instead of Managing — Leading involves more than being a caretaker manager. Yes, you need to do all the things to build teams, morale, and focus. However, leading also means inspiring and creating motivation to innovate. I always shied away from taking over a business that was doing well and opted for businesses that needed leadership in new directions. Nothing ever stays static. You can always be disrupted; if you stand still, you will be. I loved competition in shifting markets. The open source and Java initiatives during the late 90s into the 2000s were a perfect example. We could not afford to stand still, and we had to take significant risks. Once I had been through something that dynamic and challenging, I could never go back.
3. Focus on the Reality of Execution — I was also never a big fan of ‘yes’ people. Listening to bad news or contradictory evidence/viewpoints is crucial to successful execution. For example, helping sales make quota can be a painful lesson in how to understand the realities of market demand. The nature of demand can vary in differing geographies and cultures. Not being aware and not listening but dictating quotas will lead to failure — especially in software products. What, where, when, and how in the U.S. is very different than the same in France and Germany, much less in South America or parts of Asia. Trying to dictate a single view of demand and product is a prescription for failure in running a global business. How decisions to buy software are made in France or Germany are radically different. In the U.S., it’s usually the developers who can sway. In France, it’s the architects who come from the right ‘schools’ and never actually implement any applications, and so they look at very different factors. In South America, it’s the availability of consultants with the right training. In Africa, it tends to be the availability of pre-canned solutions. While these are software product examples, the hurdles you face when not being aware can be applied to anything.

It has been said that our mistakes can sometimes be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Oh, SO MANY! And few were funny — at the time. Two stick out in my mind for different reasons. The first was applying agility in the wrong way to produce a product whose audience reflected our own internal view of demand. We completely missed the needs of a large part of the market. Hence, a classic story of imagined demand vs. authentic demand. This was an exceedingly innovative technology idea at the time. It was a precursor to what people today call dev/ops (which was extremely successful). We iterated and applied human-centric software design in exactly the right way and limited our appeal to a reflection of our own internal needs. Oh, we did all the testing in the ‘market’ on each iteration but then listened to what we wanted to hear and ignored what we didn’t. It taught me a hard lesson: Agile and Lean do not replace a deep understanding of market situational demand. Hence, it is part of my motivation for collaborating on The Heart of Innovation book. The second massive mistake was our initial foray into cloud computing. I looked at it through the same eyes as the transformation of our product set in addressing the needs of developers in the commercial internet of the early 2000s. The issue, it turns out, was not one of Transformation but actually one of Formation, i.e., we needed to spin out (form) a new entity because EVERYTHING was different from creation of product to marketing to sale to delivery. We thought we could do it by transforming our organization, but we failed at every step. Once again, the book highlights the actual differences in types of innovation. Had we had that insight, we would never have attempted anything but an actual spinout like what IBM did with the PC business many years ago. That was, as we all know, much more successful.

Do you have any mentors or experiences that have particularly influenced your approach to product ideation and innovation?

Of course. In my experience, no successful career proceeds without some form of mentorship. Mine was no exception. I had mentors in my career in IBM Research and a very strong mentor in my longer career as a software exec. Steve Mills was my long-time boss and mentor. He had a superb understanding of how a large organization like IBM worked and an uncanny insight into our clients. He had an innate sense of enterprise computing needs that he developed over many years of experience. That alone was crucial to being successful in innovating. He also taught me how to behave, what was acceptable and what wasn’t, and how to be effective in managing my crazy notions and ideas. Indeed, he taught me the difference between being right and being effective. The two are NOT the same, and it’s something I try to teach my mentees.

In your experience, what is the anatomy of a strong product idea?

First and foremost is a clear understanding of your target market. Too often, people focus on what’s ‘hot’ and not how to translate an idea into a clear understanding of that idea in the hands of a market segment. There’s a wonderful story in The Heart of Innovation that almost anyone can grasp. It’s about the wants and needs of recreational fishermen. It clearly illustrates what can go wrong in understanding wants and needs. The product seemingly satisfies the needs of a fisherman to find fish using technology. Unfortunately, it turns out that for recreational fishermen, the need has more to do with enjoying calm and fishing and not actually about finding fish. An accidental insight finally turns that story around from lots of time and money being lost to success. Clearly, a product needs to be able to be built in a way that satisfies needs. For example, people may remember the precursor to the iPhone called the Newton (also from Apple). It was a revolutionary idea that manifested too early without the proper infrastructure in place to support it. The iPhone surfaced again much later with the proper infrastructure and advancements to take that idea and actually make it work as an innovation. Finally, clearly, strong execution and vision are key. But as I always say, vision and execution are not the same, and a strong vision without execution is hallucination.

What approach does your team use for coming up with new ideas for products and features?

Our initiatives in the venture fund we are launching will be very different from what I have experienced in my career. It’s clear that a deep understanding of technology and business experience will not be enough. It will be necessary but not sufficient. Innovating accidentally is too costly and prone to too much failure. One doesn’t have to go much further than looking at the failure rate in startups and, in my experience, at innovation in enterprises as well. We will start with a systemic approach to searching for authentic demand. We will still use subject matter experts and technology experts, but any idea/proposal must go through the gauntlet of identifying all the factors in demand. There is a method, a set of tools to use, and a process that can take three to six months to explore a match between idea, domain, and potential market need. Once again, it’s outlined in the book The Heart of Innovation and would take too long to outline and explain here. We have seen and expect the output to help innovators refine their ideas before ever wasting money on pointless and likely incorrect views of the target audience. There is an expression in the venture world called a ‘pivot.’ We are attempting to either shortcut or eliminate pivots in product design. Clearly, on the execution front, we are not proposing magic; hence, all the standard issues are clear and not new.

What is the story behind the most successful product or feature idea your team has ever had — what was the need, how did the idea come about, and what was the outcome?

Features don’t come without a clear understanding of the answers above. Product ideas also don’t mature without a clear understanding of authentic demand, as I have mentioned. The most successful product I have ever been a part of creating was a software tool solution to creating internet-facing transactions for enterprises based on the programming language called Java. It was based on what became internet standards and open source. It appealed to developers and their skill sets and desires. It grew to be a product innovation that delivered billions in annual revenue and profit to IBM and still exists two decades after its initial entry into the market. Having a view of authentic demand at the time would have reduced our time to market, quiesced many internal fights, and ensured resources were not wasted on directions that eventually led nowhere.

How does your product team manage new product and feature ideas?

Reference above and the book.

What, in your view, is the biggest challenge with respect to innovation?

Copious books on innovation address proper design, iteration to delivery, an understanding of ‘jobs to be done,’ and disruption. What has not been adequately addressed is understanding demand. What makes it ok not to buy? How do I overcome indifference, and what allows a potential customer to react with indifference once I put the paper to close a deal in front of them? Why will they initially tell me that they will absolutely buy and then ignore the requests when the actual product is ready? If you’ve ever dabbled in innovating new directions and products, you understand this story very well. That’s why we’ve spent nearly three years, and my Heart of Innovation coauthors Merrick Furst and Matt Chanoff had spent almost ten years before that coming up with a way to surface and study authentic demand. It is a story that complements the ideas already brought forward in other successful initiatives in tackling innovation. As I mentioned to someone the other day, it attempts to take the alchemy of understanding demand and turn it into the chemistry of demand.

Based on your experience, what are your “5 Tips for Accelerating Product Ideation & Innovation”?

Clearly, establishing a deep understanding of potential market demand is number one. It is key to the other four complements I include here:

1. Make sure you can satisfy all aspects of product creation (i.e., the technology exists)
2. Make sure you listen beyond your biases and take clear feedback. Don’t fear being wrong. Build your team to speak the truth with respect for all.
3. Understand the potential impact of your innovation on the structure of existing organizations. Resistance and pushback to new ways of doing things are inevitable. Having to develop new skills strikes fear in many. There will be ‘destructive’ compliance.
4. Communication and candor are key. Clarity in communication is hard, and different audiences have differing perspectives on what clarity means. Repeat, repeat, and repeat again. Chances are it will take at least seven times to sink in. “Why are we changing or innovating?” is a question that comes up surprisingly often. Don’t ignore it.

Thank you so much for this. This was very inspirational, and we wish you only continued success!