Innovation Strategies: Part One
Out-of-the-box thinking converges a wide variety of aspects and leads to novel ideas and creative solutions.
In today’s competitive world, success cannot come from merely aping successful policies; instead, it calls for innovative way of doing things and involves making revolutionary changes in thoughts and processes. Innovation is what sets an organization apart from the competition. It is the ability to perceive the world in new ways, to find hidden patterns and make connections between seemingly unrelated phenomena, and use these to generate new ideas, products, processes and services, or vastly improve their quality.
Innovation involves exploiting new technology and employing out-of-the-box thinking to generate new ideas. Innovation comes from a blend of minds and the collaboration of multi-discipline teams with different backgrounds. Innovation in an organization requires networking of individuals and departments; and even at an individual level, it requires the networking of right and the left brain: right-brain for imagination, artistry and intuition, and left-brain for logic and planning. To create an ideal environment for innovation in organizations, we need open communication between people, mutual respect and a mindset that makes allowances for risk taking and failure.
What often looks like breakthrough innovation is actually a small advance or twist on an established idea or a remix of existing ideas. A recent example of innovation that is often quoted in the media is Tata Motor’s Nano car. The Tatas realized that there were large numbers of people who currently used two-wheelers and even the lowest priced cars were out of their reach. Ratan Tata decided to go with thin profit margins in favor of gaining a large customer base and offered Nano for half the price of the closest competitor, Maruti Udyog, at about $2,500 retail, making it the most inexpensive car in the world. To make this inexpensive car, Tata Motors challenged existing design conventions and omitted several luxuries like air conditioning to make it cost-effective and functional.
Tata Nano; Source
The car currently meets all Indian emission, pollution, and safety standards, though it only attains a maximum speed of about 65 mph. The fuel efficiency is attractive—50 miles to the gallon.The low price point has left other auto companies scrambling to catch up.
Can new ideas alone make innovation possible?
New ideas, even when backed by powerful vision, are worthless by themselves. You need to move from idea to execution, and that is where the majority of companies stumble. Execution needs networking of planning, R&D, and production and involves several iteration to ensure they meet the stated visions and goals.
Can organizations make innovation a regular, repeatable feature? Part 2 of the Innovation Strategies examines how it has been done in several start-up organizations.
Great article! It’s good to see someone writing on inovatios and sound strategies. I have always enjoyed reading your articles as I find them to be very informative and educational.
Clever article – it’s amazing what we can do when we put our heads together. As for the car strategy – it is perhaps good business acumen. After people have bought the car they’ll need to go to the garage for repairs and servicing… thus forth making the company more money. Great read!
So true… Innovation is becoming more and more important for success in any field… and of course, implementation of ideas has always been…Thanks for sharing ^_^
Real good article Uma.
As usual your thoughts are clear and words simple and powerful.
Keep writing!
While you raise very pertinent issues, innovation brings with it the possibility of increasing the risks involved hence favoring conservatism.
good share
very very innovative. I liked it.
Great stuff. Going back to the basics really does shake foundations. I guess less is more.:)
That was a wonderful article. I’m not sure whether it is Tata or Google that has a separate team of innovators whose main job is to innovate things and if they are really good, the company would implement them.