 From Palo Alto, California, it's theCUBE, covering the conference board's sixth annual Innovation Masterclass. Hey, welcome back everybody. Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're at the Innovation Masterclass at Xerox Spark in Palo Alto. It's put on by the conference boards. It's a relatively small event, but a bunch of really high power people. Terrific presentations. If you ever get a chance to go, I suggest you check it out. We're happy to be here for our first time. And we're here, you know, one of the big themes on innovation is how do you innovate well as a big company? It's not easy to do. There's a lot of barriers in the way. And we're excited to have an expert in the field. He's Alex Goryachev, the Senior Director of Innovation Strategy and Programs at Cisco. Great to see you. Thank you, glad to be here. So you just gave a presentation on this topic. So you, first off, give us a little overview about what your role is at Cisco and how it plays with innovation. So at Cisco, you know, I'm lucky to really lead two things. One is how do we work with the ecosystem that are a network of global innovation centers? And the second one is how do we capture best ideas from our employees? And most importantly, support them in making those ideas happen, turning them into products, or process improvements. Right. So Cisco's an interesting company. It's like Intel and a lot of, you know, really kind of dominant players in their field. Terrific market share dominance for a long time, right? So it's really, it's really hard that innovators dilemma is really written for companies like Cisco. So the innovation centers, how did those come about? How many of them are there? And what is the mission of the innovation centers? So the mission, if you think about innovation, right, it doesn't happen in San Jose, right? Or it doesn't happen only in San Jose. It happens around the world. So when we think about the innovation centers, we've got around 12 of them around the globe with a core mission of working with ecosystem players whenever that's startups, customers, partners, academia, governments, and coming up with solutions that then we can deploy in a local market and potentially scale around the globe. So it's interesting. You led with really working with the ecosystem partners. So their mission is more, you know, leverage that greater ecosystem versus, you know, we need to come up with the great ideas inside of our four walls. Absolutely. Because if you think about it, we have a lot of great ideas inside the four walls. But when we look at the specific problems that are, you know, problems for Japan may not be necessarily the same that there are for Australia, right? And what we really want to do is be able to work on an issue of national relevancy and focus on the economic strengths and problems that are in that particular area so that we can make a meaningful impact. Right. So one of the topics in one of the earlier presentations here was how do big companies manage innovation centers? And we're here at Xerox Park, right? This is probably one of the most historic innovation centers ever in computers industry. So how do you manage this kind of dichotomy between having them kind of set aside the people at the innovation center in their own separate little location and still be innovative and kind of unbridled from some of the corporate tailwinds, I guess, would be headwinds, I should say, but also still make them part of the bigger Cisco environment and still make them feel that they're included and that these things are important, not just to what they're working on and even their ecosystem, but are important to the whole Cisco. It's a great question, right? And that's, I think, where the corporate governance comes in really well, because at the end of the day with the innovation centers, we don't want to boil the ocean, right? We want to make sure that everybody wins. So when we think at creating products and solutions, we want to work with customers that have real problems and with startups that can potentially close that gap and help us co-develop a solution with them. So we're very focused on AR engineering priorities and BR specific country priorities and particular opportunities that exist in the country. For example, we have a center in Australia, right? And if you look at the Australian economy, a lot of it is with agriculture, right? So what we have in Australia is a consortia with other industry players in the region to focus on solving some problems for the agriculture, which utilizes the internet of things technology. So that's one of the ways where we're connected to companies mission, which is IOT, one of the corporate missions. And at the same time, we're solving local problem, working with the ecosystem and creating something that then can be scaled around the world. Right. So the other part of your job that you mentioned is inside the four walls and trying to help foster the innovation that does come from your own internal people that are in line jobs, more regular jobs. So what are some of the initiatives that you have in place to identify and to surface and to ultimately support and maybe those grow into new products and divisions, new whatever. What are some of the secrets you can share there? Well, I think the secret is very simple. It's everyone, at the end of the day, everything in the company comes down to talent, right? People generally invest in talent, not necessarily in ideas, right? So one is recognizing that the innovation is a mindset. And then the second thing is really focusing on empowering every single employee to innovate. And in the practical terms, that means that we have to redefine innovation. It's not only about new product development. It's not only about, you know, top line growth, right? It could be about process improvements, right? It could be about other things that bring value to the company. It could be about corporate social responsibility. When you go in and you listen and engage with employees across the entire company, you actually have far better ideas that touch all aspects of your business and can produce a lasting impact, not only in products, but with some process improvement as well. And how do you support that? How do you give people the encouragement to say, listen, we're interested in your ideas, we're interested in your innovations across this broad swath of opportunities, like you said, from product all the way to maybe social responsibility or cleaning up the Guadalupe River. I'm sure there's all kinds of interesting things that you could point to. How do you make sure that that's communicated that this is a priority for us, the company that we want to support you, you know, our employee in some of these opportunities? Well, first of all, we're lucky to have the sponsorship of our CEO, Chuck Robbins, who really put it as one of his key priorities. The second one is we, because innovation is about talent first and product second, we're lucky to work with our chief people officer, right? Francine Kotsutis, and she is a sponsor for this as well. So we have an incredible opportunity to go and message this as a top corporate priority to our employees year after year. But the other thing, which is the key, is for every single function in the company, we worked with them to define innovation ambition so that when we go to employees saying, hey, help us, give us your best ideas, we can go and guide them towards, you know, some of the Cisco's key priorities, we connect them with strategy. Obviously at the end of the day, some of them will give us whatever ideas that they're passionate about, and there are a lot of great things there as well. Right, so Alex, to give you the last word, we'll be at Cisco Live in Barcelona, it's right around the corner in Cisco Live US and DevNet Create, et cetera. This is a really small event. So for you as an attendee and also as a presenter, what does this type of event here at the Innovation Masterclass mean to you? What are you hoping to get out of it? What do you get out of participating in these types of events? Well, if I think about the most important thing is, again, going back to Cisco, we believe that no single company can do this alone. The innovation program that I just talked about, the Innovate Everywhere, we put it for the entire world to use, right? And I think just connecting with other fellow practitioners is very important. At the end of the day, innovation teams, they typically go against the grain. So a lot of it is just, it's group therapy, right? It's support, it's a human connection, but then we learn so much from each other, right? Because at the end of the day, we face the same challenges, we face the same problems, and together, as in any industry consortia, we can make a meaningful difference for our companies and for our employees. And by the way, if you're at Cisco Live Barcelona, do stop by our booth. We have the Innovation Network booth, where we talk about the Cisco Innovation Centers and the innovation programs that we run. Great, we'll do that. Well, Alex, thanks for taking a few minutes, and I guess we'll see you in Barcelona. Pleasure. All right, he's Alex. I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE, we're at the Innovation Masterclass, but on by the conference board here, it's your ex, Parker Palo Alto. Thanks for watching.