Every tech company tries to highlight their innovation, and there is no disputing the fact that it is the lifeblood of our industry. Sometimes, large companies buy their innovation by acquiring a startup that has created disruptive technology.
Yet many tech companies strive to foster organic innovation, which requires more than bold talk and hyperbole. In-house innovation requires effort and focus. Smart people need to brainstorm and collaborate, and when they have a promising idea, they need the time and resources to develop it into something they can share.
Once they have a prototype, or a functional demo, those inventors then need a way to share what they have developed with senior executives to help gain the resources and support needed to build their concept into a real product or service. It is also great to demonstrate their new concept or prototype to their peers, so they can gain valuable feedback and gain recognition and support for their hard work.
At Citrix, we hold a Tech Fair at each of our major campuses around the world each year where our product teams and engineers can demonstrate new product concepts and prototypes to solicit feedback showcase their great ideas. The most senior Citrix executives come to our Tech Fairs, where they view the demonstrations, question the teams and determine which ideas to support. Citrix employees at each campus also circulate among the demos, listen to the presentations and vote on their favorites.
Recently, the Citrix Tech Fair in Santa Clara, CA took place at the same time as our annual Citrix Customer Council. We used this opportunity to guide those customers who attended through the fair, where they talked to the product teams and provided direct feedback on those products and service concepts that they would want to use in their own organizations.
What kinds of demos and ideas show up at the Citrix Tech Fair? For obvious competitive reasons, we cannot share details on these breakthrough concepts. That said, this year’s teams explored new ways to use cutting-edge technologies that included predictive analytics, artificial intelligence, biometrics and IoT, automated workflows and cloud computing.
We are proud of our Citrix Tech Fairs as one way for our employees to share their brightest ideas and their most promising product and service concepts. However, they are just one of the ways we foster organic innovation here at Citrix. I will share more detail on some of the other initiatives we have in place in a future post. So stay tuned to learn more about the innovation programs at Citrix.
