Innovation is the lifeblood of any technology organization, and it is clear that organizations today must innovate faster to remain competitive, and to ultimately deliver greater efficiency and differentiation to their customers. The other reality is that this rapid innovation must also be delivered as cost effectively as possible. In this world of finite resources and constricted timelines, innovation no longer takes place solely within companies, but occurs in tandem with a fully enabled technology partner ecosystem.
Polycom has long embraced technology partners within the context of the larger Polycom Partner Network, but in a move to accelerate innovation among its technology partner community, and to establish greater collaboration between Polycom product teams and its partner community, Polycom hosted its first Technology Partner Innovation Summit in San Jose in May. This event successfully brought Polycom’s lead product managers together with key Polycom technology partners, to exchange ideas and to accelerate the innovation that takes place around Polycom products – both from within and outside of Polycom. The Tech Partner Innovation Summit set out to:
Establish bilateral sharing of roadmap information
- Allow innovation to accelerate, and integrations to be completed in coordination with future Polycom product releases
- Allow partners to understand Polycom development priorities, and thus what gaps exist that they can quickly fill and drive to market
Exchange thoughts around market and industry trends, and competitive issues
- Better understand market and specific industry requirements, i.e. medical, education, financial service markets
- Better understand competitive offers in the market – both strengths and shortfalls
Provide valuable feedback
- Exchange customer and market feedback around valued features and workflows – related to both in existing and roadmap solutions
- Exchange feedback on API hooks that are necessary to enable and accelerate innovation – at the tech partner level
Ten Polycom technology partners attended this Summit in Q2, in the first of an ongoing event that Polycom will be hosting twice annually. The next event, to be held in Q4, will include an expanded list of partners, interested in working closely with Polycom to innovate around the Polycom product suite, and look for these products to launch over the next several quarters, and to be showcased at TEAM Polycom 2016.
Polycom’s innovation requires conceiving of the ‘Art of the Possible’, but it also comes from recognizing that the most important technical breakthroughs may not be developed by Polycom. Call it an innovation hedge, but close collaboration with the Polycom technology partner ecosystem is a central strategy for both accelerating innovation and reducing the cost around delivering efficient and differentiated solutions.
