Red Hat Open Innovation Labs

The inner workings of a global open innovation team

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What is Red Hat Open Innovation Labs, and why?

What is Red Hat Open Innovation Labs?

Red Hat Open Innovation Labs is a global team at Red Hat who work with customers, partners, and communities, helping them build innovative software and high-performing teams, in order to solve critical business challenges. And we have a good deal of fun doing it, too.

Red Hat Open Innovation Labs has come to mean many things:

  • Labs employees
  • Labs facilities
  • Labs ways of working
  • Labs offering portfolio
  • Labs push-button infrastructure and codebases
  • Labs residencies

But the easiest way to get to understand Labs is by learning more about our flagship offering: the Labs Residency.

A brief history of Labs

Red Hat Open Innovation Labs was founded in 2016. At that time, Red Hat had established a compelling platform for hybrid cloud computing, topped off with the recent release of a kubernetes-based OpenShift container platform. To be successful in the marketplace, it was clear that Red Hat needed to help their clients, partners, and communities put that cloud computing platform to use. And that meant getting applications on the platform that provided significant additional business value. That value might equate to designing and deploying a new revenue-generating product to pursue a new market. Or it might mean developing greater business agility, or improved operational efficiencies, by leveraging the cloud. We wanted (and still want) to use open source technologies to change the world for the better and become the defining technology company of the 21st century.

This was not something that Red Hat could do on their own – we’re just not big enough! Our clients, partners, and communities needed to be empowered to leverage hybrid cloud computing to great effect, themselves.

We had seen how open source communities have empowered people, teams, and organizations to do great things. By sharing problems, we can solve them faster. So, we knew we needed to tap into community-powered innovation to help fuel our efforts.

We had also seen how Red Hat had established zealous advocates for linux. These sysadmins, operators, and developers became CIOs and business leaders – and took their advocacy for Red Hat and for open source along with them. So, we knew we needed to tap into this same kind of infectious enthusiasm for linux, and build it for open hybrid cloud computing.

So, we established a mission. That mission had to be customer-centric. It had to generate outcomes that matter to the customer. Those outcomes are needed to create digital solutions that help their business. And they also needed to focus on people, teams, and how they work together to get value from our open hybrid cloud technology. Finally, we knew we also needed to create an amazing experience – something that people would cherish and keep with them for years to come, creating advocacy that yields an impact many multiples greater than anything we could do on our own.

These factors contributed to our mission and vision statements:

Our mission: To accelerate the delivery of our customers’ innovative ideas, and create infectious enthusiasm for building applications the Red Hat Way, by leveraging community-powered innovation to deliver an outstanding experience.

Our vision: To empower our customers to deliver the most innovative success stories of the 21st century.

That mission and vision remain unchanged today.