Rethink & Redefine Innovation !

When Mahatama Gandhi used non-violence as a means to drive the Independence movement in India, not only was it a philosophy but also an innovative way to take on the then world power, considering the resources he and the country had. When Ratan Tata imagined Nano, he wanted to provide safety and security to families riding two-wheelers but he also wanted to create market for cars where it did not exist. Same is true for low cost hospitals like Arvind eye hospital were launched with an idea to provide the standard health care at a lower cost, where the cost was driven by the affordability of the customer segment, who in this case were patients.
Innovation means different things to different organizations. It is also different at different times for the same organization. There is a motivation or need for innovation that defines the purpose and roadmap of Innovation. In a commercial organization the ultimate purpose is always to improve top line and or bottom line while servicing a segment of customers. There are various components that contribute to this purpose and the new ones can always be added. As a business leader you need to figure out what does innovation mean to you and your organization. How should it impact its various stakeholders like employees and customers. What are the risks that you can afford to take and what are the resources that you are willing to commit? You need to access what stage your business is in and is it ready for the kind of innovation you are looking at. Businesses follow a lifecycle, in the beginning every business is based on some innovation, and as it takes maturity over a period of time the initial innovation becomes mainstream. This is when you probably need to begin working on your next big innovation to maintain your competitive edge.



Let us take the example of Indian IT industry. It’s core service offering is software development, implementation and maintenance. Now as a core service innovation, they keep on inventing and adopting new technologies and improving their processes. But what has been Indian IT industry’s biggest innovation is their alchemic ability to turn students and professionals from varied backgrounds into software engineers. More than a decade back there were hardly any computer engineers passing out of the technology institutes. Even today their numbers remain a small percentage of the total manpower requirement of the industry. IT companies managed this challenge by setting up internal academies or training centers to take on the supply side challenge of the business. Can you think of the IT boom in India without this big innovation in a non-core area?
You constantly need to figure out what and where your business’s next Innovation should be? One of the ways to know what areas of your business need innovation the most at a given point in time is by using audit tools. A typical audit tool will help you look at the various functions of your business and its ecosystem. It would give you pointers by way of specific questions, answers to which will highlight the need for innovation in that area. Based on the comparative analysis of these areas, you would know what areas need innovation the most. You can use the results of an audit as an input to your innovation roadmap.
According to Doblin’s ten types of Innovation, core product innovation is just one type of Innovation. So look at your business model, your processes, your value chain and your offerings and see where you can innovate. Deciding when, where and what to innovate is as important as brainstorming on how to innovate.

Contributed by : Anuradha Goyal