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>> (Narrator) From around the globe, it's theCUBE.
With digital coverage of IBM Think 2021.
Brought to you by IBM.
>> Hello, welcome back to theCUBE's coverage
of IBM Think 2021 virtual.
Soon we'll be back in person in real life,
but this year again it's a virtual conference.
I'm John Furrier, your host of the cube
for more cube coverage.
We've got a great guest here,
Debbie Vavangas, Global Garage Lead for IBM Services.
Global Garage, great program.
Debbie, great to see you.
Thanks for coming on theCUBE.
>> Thanks for having me.
>> So, we've covered the Garage a lot on theCUBE in the past,
and a success, everyone loves the Garage.
Things are born in the Garage, entrepreneurship, innovation,
has been kind of categorically known for, kind of,
the Garage startup.
>> Absolutely.
>> But also, it's become known for, really, agility,
which has been a cloud phenomenon, DevOps.
Now we're seeing dev SecOps as a big trend this year
with hybrid cloud.
So, I've got to ask you,
how is Garage doing with the pandemic?
Obviously, I can almost imagine people at home
kind of disrupted from the office,
but maybe more creativity, maybe more energy online?
What's going on with the Garage?
How has your transformation journey been with COVID?
>> Well, John, COVID has been the leveler for us all, right?
There isn't a person who hasn't had some challenge
or some complexity to
And that includes our clients.
And I'm incredibly proud to be able to say
that IBM Garage, because it is so digitally native,
when the COVID pandemic has struck around the world
every single one of our Garages
was able to switch to being virtual without fail,
without a single days lost productivity.
And that's hugely beneficial to clients
who are on an incredibly time-sensitive journey.
And so, we've seen as a result of COVID
actually there are a huge acceleration in Garages,
for two reasons.
So, number one, from a virtualization perspective,
actually it's much easier when everybodies together
in the same space.
So everybody's together virtually in the same space,
and we've seen, you know, acceleration in our velocity,
in our collaboration, because everybody is really learning
how to work in that same space.
But two, because of the pandemic, because of the pressure
on our client's needs to make decisions fast,
know not guess, really be focused on their outcomes,
not just doing stuff, the Garage really plays
to that objective for them.
And so we've seen a huge rise, you know,
we've gone from in 2019 to just a few hundred garages,
to finishing 2020 with over two and a half thousand garages.
And it being embedded across services
and with the goal of being the primary way
our clients experience it.
So COVID has been a big accelerator.
>> Sorry, Debbie, can you repeat the numbers again?
I just want to capture that, I missed that.
>> Sure, sure.
>> I did a double take on the numbers.
(Debbie laughs)
>> So then, we finished 2019 with just under 300 garages,
and we finished 2020 with just over two and a half thousand.
So, we've had a huge growth, and it isn't just
the number of garages, it's the range of garages
and what we're serving with our clients,
and how we're collaborating with our clients,
and the topics we're unpacking that has really broadened.
>> Yeah, I mean I covered, and we've reported on the Garage
on theCUBE and also on www.siliconangle.com
in the past things and through your news coverage,
but that's amazing growth.
I got to believe the tailwind from COVID
and just the energy around it has energized you.
I want to get your thoughts on that because, you know,
what we've reported on in the past
has been about design thinking, human-centered design,
all of those beautiful things
that come with cloud-scale, right?
You know, you're moving faster, you're innovating,
and so that's been kind of there.
But what you're getting at with this growth is,
and with COVID has proven,
and again, we've been pointing this out,
you're seeing the pattern, it's clear.
Companies are either retrenching, okay,
which is refactoring, redesigning,
doing those things to kind of get ready to come out of COVID
with a growth strategy, and you're seeing other companies
build net new innovations.
So, they're building new capabilities,
because COVID's shown them,
kind of pulled back the curtain if you will
on where the action is.
So, this means there's two threads going on.
You've got, "Okay, I've got to transform my business,
and I got to refactor',
or 'Hey, we got net new business models'.
These are kind of two different things
and not mutually exclusive.
What's your comment on that?
>> And I think that my comment on it is that is
the sweet spot that Garage comes into its own, right?
You mentioned lots of things in there.
You talked about design thinking, and agility,
and, you know, these other buzzwords
that are used all the time,
and Garage of course is synonymous with those.
Of course, Garage uses the best design thinking,
and AGILE practices, and all of those things
that absolutely call to what we do.
DevOps, even through down to DesignOps.
You know, we have the whole range depending
on what the client objective is.
But, I think what is really happening now
is that innovation being something separate
is no longer how to accelerate your outcomes,
and your business outcomes.
Regardless of whether that is in refactoring
and modernizing your existing estate,
or diversifying, creating new ecosystems,
new platforms, new offerings.
Regardless of what that is,
you can't do it separate to your core business.
I mean, it's a well known fact, John, right?
Like 75% of transformation programs fail to deliver
an impact to the business performance, right?
And in the same period of time there's been huge cuts
in innovation funding,
and that's because for the same reason,
because they don't deliver the impact
to the business performance.
And that's why Garage is unique,
because it is entirely focused on the outcome, right?
We're using user research,
through design thinking of course,
using agile to deliver it at speed,
and all of those other things.
But, it's focused on value, on benefits realization
and driving to your outcome.
And we do that by putting that innovation
at the heart of your enterprise
in order to drive that transformation,
rather than it being something separate.
>> Debbie, I saw you gave a talk called 'Innovation is Dead'.
Obviously, that's a provocative title,
that's an attention-getter.
Tell me what you mean by that.
Because it seems to be a setup.
>> I mean, if the innovation is dead,
>> Of course.
was it with a question mark?
Were you, kind of, trying to highlight
that innovation is transformation?
>> So, the full title was
'Innovation is dead and transformation is pointless'.
And, of course, it's meant to be an eye-catching title
so people show up and listen to my pitch
rather than somebody else's.
But, the reality is I mean it most sincerely,
it's back to that stat.
75% of these transformation programs
fail to deliver the impact,
and I speculate that that is for a few reasons.
Because, the idea itself wasn't a good one,
or wasn't at the right time.
Because, you were unable to understand
what the measure of good looked like,
and therefore just being able to create that path.
And, in order to transform a company,
you must transform the individuals within a company.
And so that way of working becomes incredibly holistic.
And it's those three things, that I think amongst
the whole myriad of others,
that are the primary reasons why those programs fail.
And what Garage does, is it breaks that.
By putting innovation at the heart of your enterprise,
and by using data-driven value orchestration,
that means that we don't guess where
the value to be gained is, we know.
It's no longer chucking ideas at the wall
to see what sticks, it's meaningful research.
This is my favorite quote from my dear friend,
Courtney Noll, who says,
"It's not about searching for the innovation needle
in the proverbial haystack, it's using your research
in order to de-risk your investment,
and drive your innovation to enable your outcomes."
And so, if you do innovation without a view
to how it's going to yield your business outcomes,
I agree, I fundamentally agree that it's pointless.
>> Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, of course we're on the writing side,
we love titles like,
'Innovation is dead, long live innovation'.
So, it's classic, you know, to get your attention.
>> Exactly, exactly.
And of course, what I really mean is that innovation
is a separate entity.
>> Totally.
>> There's no longer relevance for a company
to make sure they achieve their business outcomes.
>> Well, this is what I wanted to just double-click on that
with you on is that you look at transformation.
You guys are essentially saying transformation meets
innovation with the Garage philosophy, if I get that right.
>> Yep
>> And it's interesting, and we've experienced this here
with theCUBE, we're theCUBE virtual,
we're not at IBM Think, there is no physical game day
like some of us normally do.
>> Well, as you can see, I'm at my house.
(Debbie laughs)
And so, I was talking to a CEO and I said,
"Hey, you guys are doing really, really good.
We had to pivot with the cube",
and he goes, "You guys did a good pivot yourself".
He goes, "No, John, we did not pivot.
We actually put our business on hold
because of the pandemic.
We actually created a line extension,
so, technically, we're going to bring that business back
when COVID has gone and come back to real life,
so it's technically not a pivot,
we're not pivoting our business,
we've created new functionality."
Through the innovations that they were doing.
So, this is kind of like, this is the real deal here.
Share your thoughts on that.
>> To me, it's about people get so focused on the output
that they lose track of the outcome, right?
And so, be really clear on what you're doing, and why.
And the outcomes can be really broad,
so instead of saying, "We're all going to implement
a new ERP, or build a new mobile app".
That's not an outcome, right?
What we should be saying is,
"What we're trying to achieve is a 10 percent growth
in net promoter score in China, right?
In this group."
Or whatever it is we were trying to achieve, right?
Or, "We want to make a 25% reduction
in our operating cost base by simplifying our estate".
Whatever those outcomes are, that's the starting point,
and then driving that to use as the vehicle
for what is the right innovation,
what is going to deliver that value, and fast, right?
Garage delivers three to five times faster than other models
and at a reduced delivery cost,
and so it's all about that speed.
Speed of decision, speed of insight,
speed of culture and training, speed of new skills,
and speed to outcomes.
>> Well, Debbie, you did a great job, love what you're doing,
and Garage has got a great model.
Congratulations on the growth,
love this intersection, or transformation meets innovation
because innovation is transformation, and vice versa,
this interplay going on there.
>> Exactly.
>> I think COVID has proven that.
Let me dig into a little bit more about the garage,
what's going on.
How many practitioners do you guys have there now at IBM?
You've got growth, are you adding more people in?
Obviously, Virtual First, COVID,
is there still centers of design?
Take us through what's going on at Garage.
>> Certainly, so like, I think I mentioned it right up front.
Our goal is to make IBM Garage
the primary way our clients experience us.
We've proven in that it delivers higher value
to our clients and they get
a really rich and broad set of outcomes.
And so, in order for us to deliver on that promise
we have to be enabled across IBM to deliver to it, right?
So, over the last 18 months or so we've had a whole range
of training programs in Enable, we've had
a whole badging and certification program,
we have all the skills, and the pathways,
and the career pathways to find.
But Garage is for everybody, right?
And so, it isn't about creating a select group
that can do this across IBM.
This is about making all of services capable.
So, in 2020 we trained over 28,000 people,
in all the different skills that are needed,
from selling, to execution, to QA, to user research,
whatever it is.
And this year we're launching our Garage Skills Academy,
which will take that across all of services
and make it easily available.
So, you know, we've got hundreds of thousands.
>> And talk about the footprint on the global side,
because, again, not to bring up global,
but global is what is in your title.
>> Yep.
>> Companies need to be global,
because now with virtual workforces you're seeing
much more tapped creativity and ability to execute
from global teams.
How does that impact you?
>> Well, so it's global in two perspectives, right?
So, number one, we have Garages all around the world, right?
It isn't just the market of, you know,
our most developed nations in Americas and Europe,
it is everywhere, we see it in all emerging markets.
From Latin America, through to all parts of eastern Europe,
which are really beginning to come into their own.
So, we see all these different Garages
at different scales and opportunities.
So, definitely global from that image.
But, what virtualization has also enabled
is truly global teams.
Because, it's really easy to go, "Oh, I need one of those.
Okay, I need a supply chain expert, and I need an AI expert,
and I need somebody who's got industry experience
in whatever it is."
And you can quickly gather them around the virtual table,
you know, faster than you can in a physical table.
But, we still leverage the global communities
with those physical.
>> It's an expert network.
You have an expert network there at IBM.
>> We have a huge network, yeah.
And both within IBM, and of course a growing network
of ecosystem partners that we continue to work with.
>> Well, Debbie, I'm really excited.
Congratulations on the growth.
I'm looking forward to partnering with you
on your ecosystem as that develops.
I can almost imagine you must be getting
a lot of outside IBM practitioners and experts
coming in to collaborate in a social construct.
>> Absolutely.
>> It's a great program, thanks for sharing.
>> My pleasure, it's been great to be here, thank you.
>> Okay, IBM's Global Garage Lead, Debbie Vavangas,
who's here on theCUBE with IBM Services.
A phenomenon, it's a social construct
that's helping companies with digital transformation.
Intersecting, with innovation.
I'm John Furrier, your host.
Thanks for watching.
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