Innovating by “doing both”: Cisco manages contradictions that drive growth and profit

Abstract

Purpose

This interview aims to discuss Ciso's approach to innovation with Inder Sidhu, Senior Vice President Strategy and Planning for Worldwide Operations and a member of the company's Operating Committee. His new book about managing seemingly contradictory alternatives is Doing Both: How Cisco Captures Today's Profit and Drives Tomorrow's Growth.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper presents an interview with Sidhu whose thesis: “Our experience at Cisco” suggests that the concept of “Doing Both” is relevant to a wide range of management decisions and people must learneto look at every opportunity not as a choice between apparently conflicting goals, but rather a way of obtaining a multiplier effect by seeking and meeting two apparently conflicting goals.

Findings

Sidhu advocates that organizations actively manage three sources of change in their organization – sustaining change that improves the existing business, disruptive change that needs to be developed outside the core business and externally sourced change that can be spun into the business.

Practical implications

Sidhu believes that doing both means asking your organization to elevate its game. But asking is, by itself, not enough. Leaders need to change their organization – its approval processes, its reward systems, its innovation language and its expectations about the rate of change.

Originality/value

According to Sidhu, based on Cisco's experience, doing both seems to work best in market transitions, when the nature of the market is changing or there is potential for new business models and disruptive approaches.

Citation

Davidson, A. (2011), "Innovating by “doing both”: Cisco manages contradictions that drive growth and profit", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 11-15. https://doi.org/10.1108/10878571111095376