Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Paolo Juvara, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Lab (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: This happens quite often that an idea that comes through the program is well fleshed out but doesn’t always find an implementation path. But that’s okay as far as we are concerned because the learning that people go through in fleshing out and being ready to present is the primary goal of the program.

In terms of setting expectations, we try very hard not to set expectations that every project is going to find a path of implementation. With a company the size of Oracle, not every project is going to find an implementation path.

Paolo Juvara: That is correct. That is a topic that we debate very frequently. People that grow through the program are very satisfied with the learning experience. At times, they get a bit frustrated that their idea doesn’t find a home within the company. From my perspective, that is okay. Oracle is a very large company and has a huge amount of resources but doesn’t have enough resources to follow up on every good idea. There has to be a selection.

In many cases, the ideas that come up are aligned with certain products that we already have in the market. They could be new features for those products. I think that’s okay. Quite frankly if you’re pitching, you also need to learn to accept the rejection. It’s part of the learning as well.

Sramana Mitra: There is a leadership identification that’s happening through the program. There are people who are self-identifying that they’re capable of doing something really intense and fleshing out an idea. This is probably a very good pool of people that have come together that can be good product managers and can move from development to product leaders. There’s a career path shift that’s happening.

Paolo Juvara: Absolutely. That was my primary objective when I started this program.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk a bit about TAM. Total available market size is a concept that is of immense interest if you are in entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. We have been very particular about trying to teach TAM analysis very rigorously through the program. We focus on bottom-up TAM methodology. Why is the level of TAM so interesting? Can you comment on that?

Paolo Juvara: Let’s keep in mind that Oracle is a company that does nearly $40 billion in revenue on an annual basis. If you come up with an idea and you eventually want to go and pitch it to an Oracle executive, you’re asking them to change their product roadmap and shift their investment resources from what they’re currently investing into your idea.

You need to make sure that your idea is able to move the needle. An idea that has the potential to be profitable is not enough. Being an idea that has good revenue but revenue in the tens of millions is probably not good enough to make a difference. What we are mostly interested in is ideas that can make a difference and can generate significant amount of revenue for the company. Those ideas clearly are very rare to come by.

Although TAM is an important topic, we look at products within Oracle, especially with products that are not that large. For example, corporate social responsibility. Corporate social responsibility perhaps has a very large TAM on its own. When you look at corporate social responsibility within the Oracle context, that is more perhaps about thought leadership than anything else.

Corporate social responsibility is likely to be sold as an add-on in the context of a larger deal either heavily discounted or offered at no additional cost. It still helps in positioning Oracle as a though leader in the industry. That is another aspect of it.

Sramana Mitra: The venture capital industry is always looking for billion dollar ideas. One thing we observe is, if you’re doing a product inside of a company like Oracle, it is not necessary to have that level of TAM always for your product to be interesting or meaningful. Let’s say there is an existing product within human capital management or within warehouse management.

What you’re bringing through your idea is a new module that is going to be able to extend the revenue potential and the TAM of that particular product line by another $200 million. That is still of interest because there is a clear go-to market path. These kinds of ideas tend to come out of organizations where there is a lot of domain knowledge. Maybe an engineer or a pre-sales person has deep domain knowledge or has experienced situations within their work or are having a customers facing problem that the current product doesn’t address.

If we flesh this out and see if we can generate another couple of hundred million dollars worth of revenue from developing this module adjacent to what we already have, we could get another chunk of revenue. That kind of an idea is very welcome.

Paolo Juvara: Absolutely. Even a step forward could increase customer satisfaction or retention. It’s not just about generating revenue.

This segment is part 4 in the series : Thought Leaders in Corporate Innovation: Paolo Juvara, Group Vice President, Oracle Applications Lab
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