Driving Innovation

Innovation is believed to be the only competitive advantage to any business organization today.

Lets us see how,

A company launches a new product, sooner or later its competitor too comes up with same equally good product. Tata Docomo launched itself with 1paise per second calling rates and rest of the telecom operators followed suit. Thus, although novel ideas and schemes attract considerable market share and sales, they don’t remain as your company’s “differentiating factor” for a very long time.

So, here we come to the point that not all novel ideas can really be counted as ‘innovation’, especially those which can be easily copied by your competitor. An innovation is such a business model that is path-breaking, disruptive and sustainable.

The Wikipedia defines innovation as a change in the thought process for doing something. Or let us simply call it as “Out-of-Box Thinking”. Therefore innovation to an organization could mean not only new path-breaking products and advanced technology, but could also mean new processes, channels of distribution or entirely a new business model. Thus, innovation may be applied not only to any of the 4Ps or 7Ps of marketing, but also at any point of your entire customer experience with your product or service.

When we talk of innovation, first thing that clicks is Apple’s innovative range of products like first the ipod, then the iphone and now the ipad. Another common image of innovation is Mr. Ratan Tata’s Dream car “The Tata Nano”. This common man’s Rs.1 lakh wonder car was a result of new patented technology and use of new materials.

Just like the car made available to masses, it is actually possible to bring about economic and social development of the country through innovative solutions.

State Bank Of India was the first bank to reach the rural section of the poor people through innovative banking solutions provided by Tata Consultancy Services. Banking was not extended to the villages earlier because of poor infrastructure and networking problems. It could not afford netwrking costs due to low value transactions in the villages. TCS then came up with branchless banking solution with with the help of cloud computing. Instead of being connected to Core Banking software, it allowed the bankers to use a handheld electronic device to read smart cards carrying biometric information that were issued to their customers. The transaction details would be updated through web server.
It is a win-win situation for all the parties.

ITC’s E-Choupal that allows procurement of agri-products directly from farmers and online access to farmers of far-away markets, Fab India that developed communities of artisans into its supplier companies and made mass production of handicrafts possible are also examples of such innovative business models.

Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai has become a legend for its surgical productivity. The statistics regarding number of surgeries its doctors performs and the costs associated with it are simple mind-boggling. It is mix of –efficiency, quality, compassion, philosophy and family which cannot be transposed elsewhere.

Many organizations have value engineering and value analysis processes in place to increase value. After all, innovation is all about creating value through non-traditional approaches.

Innovation is receiving importance in business world today, so much so that countries have Global Innovation Index which is a measure of the level of innovation of a country, (concept produced jointly by The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) with some other associations).

Innovation is the main emphasis of executive managers today for they they know
“To Innovate is To Survive”