If you’ve been following my tweets you may have heard about “Project Sputnik.” While I’m 
not quite ready to talk about it, I wanted to give some insight into the program that’s helped get it off the ground.
Innovation Incubation
At the beginning of the year Dell launched an internal incubation fund with the idea of rooting out innovation throughout the company. The thought was that there are probably a bunch of cool ideas tucked away in the heads of employees at all different levels of the company, ideas that would ultimately benefit our customers if given a little protection and help to get off the ground.
The three Dell employees behind it, Nnamdi Orakwue, Michale Cote and Matt Baker act like a mini internal VC firm hearing pitches from employees. Those projects they approve get a small amount of cash to build out their idea for six months. At the end of six months the projects will either get their training wheels taken off and folded into business units, apply for more funding or disbanded.
Enter Sputnik
The program is just getting started and the first project green lighted was Project Sputnik. I’m very excited about it and am looking forward to be able to talk all about it in the near distant future. Stay tuned…
Extra-credit reading
Pau for now…
Posted by Barton George 
Barton's Blog 