Scaling Innovation: A Global Disruption Portfolio

15 months after being acquired, Cisco AppDynamics was struggling with attrition. One of the co-founders left to start a new company. Despite being a $500M segment leader, the organization lacked strategic focus and foundational skills within the product organization. Executive leadership challenged my team to drive alignment, energize the business, and spur a high volume of new product innovation. 

Role | Head of Innovation

Program Duration | 3 years

Challenges

  • Low morale & attrition: Post-acquisition re-org, co-founder departure, and loss of talent destabilized the business.

  • Weak product development culture: No scalable model for innovation; fractured alignment across product org.

  • Need for IP & roadmap acceleration: Cisco leadership challenged the team to spur invention, align strategy, and deliver defensible innovations.

Actions

  • Reimagined Hackathon → Innovation Engine: Expanded from engineering-only event into a cross-functional, annual, week to month-long product innovation spikes.

  • Introduced Strategic Guardrails: Aligned projects to business priorities, required problem/user framing, and cross-functional participation.

  • Created Incubation Path: Biweekly idea reviews, quarterly viability panels, and lanes for patent submission or roadmap inclusion.

  • Scaled Participation: Built rituals and dedicated project spaces to make the event the most meaningful and energizing week of the year.

Results

  • 700+ participants (40% of org) across 12 countries over three years.

  • 300+ innovation projects generated, 100+ roadmap candidates incubated.

  • 6 patent submissions through Cisco’s IP program.

  • 33% reduction in attrition among participants, despite no comp/benefit changes.

  • 84% of participants learned a new skill, accelerating org-wide product maturity.

An Annual Catalyst to Spark an Innovation Engine

We needed a strategic catalyst to inspire participation in an org-wide innovation program. Our opportunity came when we co-opted the company’s annual engineering hackathon.

Previously a small, engineering-only one-off, we turned it into the kickoff of a cross-functional, company-wide product innovation spike. Our goals:

  • Get all 1400 people in our business unit to participate

  • Run it at a bi-annual or annual cadence

  • Make it the most creative and inspiring week of the year.

  • Build a feeder pipeline from the spike into roadmaps and backlogs

We started with the outcomes first—a more innovative roadmap—and worked backwards. We partnered with senior product leaders to introduce a biweekly idea review session and a quarterly evaluation panel to assess the long-term viability of ideas that came out of the program.

For the kickoff, called Hacky New Year, we implemented 6 tactics:

  1. Extended timelines – We lobbied senior leadership to give participants a full week head down to focus.

  2. Strategic focus areas – We incentivized several themes aligned with business priorities.

  3. Lightweight methodology – Borrowing from Google Sprints, we gave participants defined problems, users, hypotheses, and solutions.

  4. Cross-functional teams – We required participants to have at least one non-engineer per team.

  5. Dedicated project spaces – We completely took over the office during these innovation spikes. This fostered creative energy.

  6. Product-centric framing – We structured the program around conventional product development motions, using the program to teach improved product tactics.

The 2019 kickoff drew 300 participants from 12 countries and every major org in the company. We produced 100 ideas, 30+ of which were viable roadmap candidates, and submitted 6 for patent consideration. These successes seeded our formal program, the Organic Innovation Portfolio.

Over the course of the year we acted as an incubation team, testing more ambitious projects while supporting others with research and design. We helped launch new features, rewrite sales business practices, and helped to reconfigure our talent acquisition pipeline.

In 2020, we repeated the model with a 20% increase in participation and a 12% rise in ideas generated. Efforts aligned with our “Central Nervous System” vision for unified observability. Again, 6 patent submissions followed. HR data showed reduced attrition against trend, without changes to comp or benefits—a result the business associated with the innovation program.

We named the annual innovation kickoff, Hacky New Year. This site documented all projects and encouraged the company to upvote their preferences.

The Pandemic and New Leadership Shift Focus

As the pandemic wore on, organizational priorities shifted. The product org needed to focus singularly on re-platforming. Innovation would have to wait.

Our success in solving cross-functional problems led to our reassignment: we were positioned as a business optimization team, detached from product discovery. We would be tasked with developing go-to-market strategies for Cisco’s new acquisitions.

The Organic Innovation Portfolio transformed a fractured org into an energized community of inventors. By fusing structure, culture, and creativity, we accelerated product innovation, strengthened Cisco’s IP position, and restored morale—proving that innovation is as much about energy as it is about ideas.

Artifacts