Salesforce.com once again ranks first on this year's Forbes list of Most Innovative Companies. To understand the metrics at work here, take a look at the full list. We aim to capture the premium investors are willing to pay for future innovation. I recently caught up with Salesforce's evangelistic CEO and co-founder, Marc Benioff, to talk about what drives disruptive ideas inside his company.
His answer reveals a lot about the nature of real innovators: They adapt how they do it.
As Benioff explained, for years Salesforce has looked within to push big ideas ahead. Those ideas often came from the outside -- customers and partners, the marketplace. But the drive to turn those ideas into products was an internal one.
No longer. This year Benioff spent $1 billion, the most ever, acquiring two firms: Radian6 and Buddy Media. His rationale: "We couldn't afford to wait." The initial spark was a video Benioff watched on YouTube showing Dell's "social media command center" where the computer maker used Radian6 to watch its torrent of social mentions. Dell is a big Salesforce customer and Benioff is close with CEO Michael Dell. "Game over, I thought. This company is doing exactly what we should do," says Benioff.
These two deals will form the backbone of a new division within Salesforce, the Marketing Cloud, which will help brands know what is being said about them on social networks and then tailor messages to those audiences. Buddy Media places 10% of all ads on Facebook.
Benioff has acquired 24 firms in all, and admits not all have succeeded. He is okay with failure, because that’s part of risk-taking. Everyone learns something along the way: “Innovation is a continuum. You have to think about how the world is evolving and transforming. Are you part of the continuum?”
