Come with a problem,
leave with a solution
Welcome to
AWS INNOVATE X ACTION
A multi-day solution accelerator that allows you to enter with a real business problem and leave with a well-defined solution.
On day one, you will learn about Amazon’s unique innovation methodologies, the key role of the Working Backwards process, and the specific tools we use to ensure we are always building the right solution for our customers.
On day two and three, you and your team will apply the “Working Backwards” mechanism to your own business challenge or opportunity, and gain hands-on experience in drafting your first Press Release & Frequently Asked Questions (PR-FAQ) document, one of the most important components of the Working Backwards process.
By the end of day three, each team will submit their PR-FAQ to the AWS INNOVATE X ACTION Committee who will evaluate and select 5 overall winners and 10 runners up.
On day one, you will learn about Amazon’s unique innovation methodologies, the key role of the Working Backwards process, and the specific tools we use to ensure we are always building the right solution for our customers.
On day two and three, you and your team will apply the “Working Backwards” mechanism to your own business challenge or opportunity, and gain hands-on experience in drafting your first Press Release & Frequently Asked Questions (PR-FAQ) document, one of the most important components of the Working Backwards process.
By the end of day three, each team will submit their PR-FAQ to the AWS INNOVATE X ACTION Committee who will evaluate and select 5 overall winners and 10 runners up.
What could you win?
AWS will build a complimentary prototype of the ideated solution for 5 winning teams, and award both winners and 10 runners up with a premium selection of prizes, including technical and non-technical workshops and deep dives delivered by AWS Innovation, Solution Architects, Developers and Training & Certification teams, and a variety of other exclusive rewards that will help turn your idea into a real product or service.
By leveraging these unique strategies and mechanisms, every participant will walk away from this event with a stronger understanding of their customer, a clearly articulated business problem or opportunity, and a defined idea to solve it.
Program Overview
Wednesday, June 8th
Welcome and Kick-Off
Introduction and behind the scenes around Amazon’s Culture of Innovation.
Closed-doors fireside chat with David Naggar, VP of Amazon Books & Kindle
Thursday, June 9th
Working Backwards sprint – Part 1
“Listen and Define” – Hands on workshop where we will help you and your team define the specific problem or opportunity and develop a deeper understanding of your customer and the problem you are trying to solve
Friday, June 10th
Working Backwards sprint – Part 2
“Invent and Refine”- Following up from the day before, we will help you generate ideas for potential solutions, converge on one solution concept, and begin aligning on the specifics through the PR-FAQ drafting process
Winners Announcement
Thursday, June 16th
What's involved
Meet the speakers
Ben Cabanas is the Head of Solutions Architecture for Asia-Pacific and Japan, Amazon Web Services. Prior to joining AWS, he was responsible for leading GE’s software engineering teams to develop and deploy solutions that maximized productivity for all GE businesses. Ben has 25 years of professional IT experience as a developer, systems administrator, DBA, solutions architect, enterprise architect and CTO and recently led large-scale cloud transformation efforts in GE Oil & Gas, GE Transportation and GE Digital.
Chiara Longhi is the Growth Segment Lead for the AWS Digital Innovation team, working specifically with enterprises across Asia, Pacific, and Japan. Chiara’s role is focused on helping business leaders develop and bring to market new and better ideas, by introducing customers to Amazon’s peculiar customer-centric approach to innovation.
Prior to AWS, Chiara was part of the launching teams for both Amazon Australia and Amazon Singapore between 2017 and 2019.
Before joining Amazon, Chiara worked for Linkedin, based out of Hong Kong, where she supported the expansion of the Marketing Solution business across Japan and Korea. Chiara began her career in tech at AOL, after graduating from Bocconi University. She also has a Master degree from New York University, was selected as part of the Rare by Google 2021 Leadership cohort, and is currently enrolled in the InnerMBA program at NYU.
David Naggar leads the Global Book business, managing the teams around the world working with publishers, independent authors, Amazon Publishing, Kindle demand and pricing, reading experience and marketing. He joined Amazon in Spring 2009 as Vice President, Global Content Acquisition for Kindle, overseeing the teams working with publishers worldwide.
Prior to joining Amazon, David spent sixteen years at Random House/Bertelsmann, most recently as President of the Random House Audio, Diversified, Information, & Fodor’s Travel Publishing Group, (a division of Random House, Inc). Prior to that, he was head of Random House’s US sales division, and prior to that, held senior positions in direct marketing and finance within Random House and Bertelsmann in the US and France.
David began his career as an acquiring editor at Warner Books after graduating from Cornell University. He also has an MBA from NYU Stern.
Kirsten currently leads a Field Effectiveness program at AWS as an Instructor and Coach for customers across Asia-Pacific and Japan . She is focused on interpersonal and customer sales skills development, and finding simple ways to apply these skills that drive positive impact on individuals, teams, and customer experience. Her role allows her to consult, collaborate, and share learnings, innovating on delivering relevant learning topics that drive long term benefits for field teams and customers. Previous to AWS, Kirsten has over 15 year experience in global roles across APAC and Japan.
Richard currently leads the Digital Innovation team for AWS across APJ based out of Singapore. As organisations seek creative ways to delight their customers and find new paths to growth, Richard works closely with these business’ leadership teams, exploring Amazons approach to innovation.
His role sees him shaping new products, services and experiences for the region’s largest organisations, taking a customer-centric, future back approach to innovation and enabling leaders to innovate like Amazon.
Prior to joining AWS Richard worked for EY across Oceania based out of Sydney. He has almost 20 years of experience working across multiple sectors across Europe, Australasia and APAC.
Agenda
Wednesday 8th June – Welcome and Kick-Off
Time: 1pm AEST / 11am SGT / 12pm KST / 12pm JST / 8.30am IST
Duration: 2 hours
Format: Discussion and Fireside Chat
- Welcome to AWS INNOVATE X ACTION
- Behind the scenes discussion around Amazon’s Culture of Innovation
- Fireside chat with David Naggar; Vice President, Books & Kindle Content, Amazon
- Closing comments and overview of day two and three
- *For selected areas, networking drinks & canapés
Thursday 9th June – Working Backwards Part 1 “Listen and Define”
Time: 8:30am AEST / 8:30am SGT / 8:30am KST / 9:00am JST / 9.00am IST
Duration: 4 hours
Format: Collaborative Workshop
- Deep dive on Customer
- Definition and alignment on prevailing problem or opportunity
- Think big, idea generation, alignment on Big Idea
- Identification of most important customer benefit
- *For selected areas, networking lunch
Friday 10th June – Working Backwards Part 2 “Invent and Refine”
Time: 8:30am AEST / 8:30am SGT / 8:30am KST / 9:00am JST / 9.00am IST
Duration: 4 hours
Format: Collaborative Workshop
- Deep dive on Customer Experience (CX)
- Testing your solutions with customers, and measuring success
- Activity: PR-FAQ Writing
- Closing comments and overview on next steps
- *For selected areas, networking lunch
FAQ
Who is AWS INNOVATE X ACTION designed for?
AWS INNOVATE X ACTION is the first AWS-led accelerator specifically designed for enterprises in Asia-Pacific (APAC) and Japan. The event was created for Executive leaders who have an ambition to use technology to innovate, solve real customer problems, and drive business results. Participating companies will need a customer executive sponsor ( C-suite business leader or Line of Business head) to support the initiative internally. Executive sponsors are expected to identify a customer problem or opportunity ahead of the event, and are encouraged to nominate at least 2 additional participants from the business to partake in this journey.
How does AWS INNOVATE X ACTION work?
Over the course of three half days, you will join a small cohort of organisations to compete in AWS INNOVATE X ACTION. You and your team should join the program with an understanding of the end-customer, and the specific problem or opportunity you want to focus on. Leveraging on the Amazon’s Working Backwards process, you will be able to define a new solution that meets that customer’s most pressing need. Together, we will then work to bring the idea to life as a future Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions document (PR-FAQ). At the event’s conclusion, we will help you determine the right next steps for testing your solution with customers and taking it to scale.
What prizes can I/my team win?
Prizes will be awarded to main winners and runners up. Winners will be rewarded with:
- One working Prototype build by AWS Prototyping team for the specific customer use case, leveraging their existing data, devices, and systems. The Prototyping engagement will consist of: 1) Problem Workshop with customer stakeholders, a deep dive on customer business priorities and challenges, and technology concerns/risks. 2) Prototyping Build: the AWS team will build a working prototype of a honed-in innovation use case in 6 weeks from kick off, leveraging customer’s existing data, devices and systems.
- Three months free AWS platform usage (capped at US$25,000).
- One AWS Skills Guild Introductory Workshop for Executives, a 4-hour workshop designed to take up to 10 executive participants through an overview of cloud skilling to drive organizational-wide transformation and a follow up workshop to design an approach, key milestones, requirements and resources to get their cloud transformation skilling started.
- One private Monoliths to Microservices session with a Developer Specialist Solutions Architect for up to 15 attendees. This is a developer-focused enablement from the AWS Developer Acceleration (DevAx) team, that covers the fundamental patterns and practices of designing distributed systems, such as microservices architectures. It helps developers think about how to modernise their application architecture, breaking down traditional, monolithic structures into modern, loosely-coupled components, and with the assistance of hands-on labs, demonstrates how to implement the Strangler pattern for application modernisation, on AWS.
- One Solution Workshop delivered by AWS Professional Services, to help Customer create a build plan by deconstructing ideation work into actionable build tasks and validation experiments. Workshop 1: Storyboard Mapping, Map experiences to features, assumptions, & risks. Workshop 2: Prioritization: Prioritize features & risks against business objectives. Workshop 3: Experiment Planning: Deconstruct risks into hypothesis and test plans.
Runners up will receive:
- Three months free AWS platform usage (capped at US$10,000).
- One AWS Skills Guild Introductory Workshop for Executives, a 4-hour workshop designed to take up to 10 executive participants through an overview of cloud skilling to drive organizational-wide transformation and a follow up workshop to design an approach, key milestones, requirements and resources to get their cloud transformation skilling started.
- One group Monoliths to Microservices session, with up to 5 attendees per organization. This is a developer-focused enablement from the AWS Developer Acceleration (DevAx) team, that covers the fundamental patterns and practices of designing distributed systems, such as microservices architectures. It helps developers think about how to modernise their application architecture, breaking down traditional, monolithic structures into modern, loosely-coupled components, and with the assistance of hands-on labs, demonstrates how to implement the Strangler pattern for application modernisation, on AWS.
- One Pulse Check engagement, delivered by AWS Professional Services which will provide a lightweight innovation assessment based on Amazon’s Culture, Mechanisms, Organisation, and Architecture. It identifies customers’ blockers to innovation, and provides a roadmap of improvements to kickstart the change in days, not months.
Detailed information on what is included in each prize can be found in the program Terms and Conditions (see last FAQ)
How much time do I need to commit?
The time commitment over the three half day sessions is approximately 10 hours. Prior to the event, we ask participants to complete some pre-work to help define the business/customer problem or opportunity ahead of the event.
Where will the event be held?
AWS INNOVATE X ACTION is an hybrid event. While content will be delivered virtually, we are working to organise a selection of in person sessions that will be hosted at our AWS offices in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, India, and Korea across the 3 days. We will confirm specific details with participants closer to the event, and adjust our plans in adherence to the most up to date COVID19 local regulations. Links to the sessions will be emailed to you directly prior to the event.
What is the event format?
Over the course of the three days, session formats will vary. On day one, presentations from AWS will be delivered to all participants. On day two and three, there will be a mix of private group working sessions with AWS, internal breakouts with your colleagues, and open forum discussions.
I would like to speak to my Account Manager / AWS representative before I register
Please do, drop us an email at aws-apj-innovation@amazon.com
Where can I find Terms and Conditions?
By registering for INNOVATE X ACTION, you agree to AWS INNOVATE X ACTION Terms & Conditions
