Think Flat

Infact I recently read an interesting book called Wise : How To Transform Your Ideas Into Tomorrows Innovations
Steve Rivkin,Fraser Seitel
It talks about how innovation is not just about "Eureka moments" but also creating newer eureka moments collating other and previosly done Eureka Moments.Innovation is turning on its head and is perhaps not just about inventing or discovering something "new" per say. It can also be bringing forther ideas, inventions from other diverse fields , areas into your domain. More like discovering the light bulb, but the same ligth bulb used inside an oven..eureka you have an oven !!

I agree that "Innovation" is the latest craze in the business vocabulary.

Innovation is about changing the perception/experience about the product/service in the consumers' mind. Today, new innovative business ideas are coming from the unexpected areas but saying "no one does R&D any longer" will be wrong.

R&D is a scientific and systematic process which needs to be done for innovation. For some industries like Pharma this process is very important playing a significant role for the survival.

I agree and disagree with Richa at the same time on this topic. The words R&D, product development/ development takes a whole new meaning when it comes to IT especially with regards to Software development and operations. There is a big difference in how R&D operates in a traditional engineering field like Aerospace, automobile, communications etc, for the most part it’s their innovation or their ability to innovate that differentiates themselves from their competitors. Having said that the PLC (Product life cycle) in these fields have no similarity what so ever to IT. These products have to stand the test of time and it’s usually around 15 years before they start talking about sunsetting the product line. Think about having to sell a product or a service that is delivered using a technology that is 15 yrs old in IT!!!!!!!! If some one has that uncanny sales ability to pull that off I want to hire him ASAP. R&D huge differentiator here and is a must.

Here’s where I agree with Richa, the churn rate of technology in IT is so high and with most of them being commoditized product innovation becomes a hard sell and the market place does want to pay a premium for it. Hence the focus shifts towards process improvement/workflow enhancements (you can add other industry buzz words in there) these for the most part do not require any innovation. It’s all about running an IT operation as lean and efficient as possible. Process improvement initiatives in larger organization can be very fruitful and provide a ton of cost savings which in turn will serve as a competitive advantage in the market place.

Richa, you may have a point, but just going by jargon usage is a bit simplistic, dont you think ? I have just come back from a visit to the Toyota factory in Nagoya and then read the book "The Elegant Soltion" by Matthew E.May. And I quote from it
"The best definition of innovation on the planet is theone given by David Neeleman, founder and CEO of Jet Blue : Innovation is trying to figure out a way to do something better than its ever been done before."
This really sums up beautifully the whole issue around R&D or innovation, don't you agree ?

Dear Richa:

You have rightly highlighted on innovation.

Innovation is the flavour of the present times; and that is because change is the fact of life and the marketplace.

In fact innovation management is making flat thinking imperative in organisations. Even as far back as 1992, Price Waterhouse had highlighted about need for organisations to manage innovation.

To respond successfully to the challenges of a competitive marketplace, Price Waterhouse (in 1992) has also suggested The Benchmarking Organisation (with Rank Xerox as examplar), The Innovative Organisation (3M), Business Process Redesign (Ford), The Networking Organisation (BP), The Learning Organisation (Rover) and The Hollow Organisation (Benetton) as successful models. These organisational structures will foster better innovation management and better R & D results.

I think I recently saw an announcement of a conference in Germany about innovating through customers. Though I wonder how much innovation gets dome this way?

The term 'innovation' has been used and abused widely. Without going into technical definitions / nuances of the word, here is my $0.02. Any innovation has to have a measurable (quantifiable) impact on the way things were before the innovation. Having said that, I have also seen several 'Six Sigma' projects that claimed to have either saved OR earned milliions of bucks. For God's sake, if that were the case why can't us mortals see the benefits? Has the bottomline increased due to those savings? No evidence. Have the companies distributed those earnings to employees (even if that were $1 per employee)? No evidence.

Innovation is to an extent going the six sigma way. In the process of letting employees 'innovate', companies have taken 'innovation' a bit far and have glorified it. Due to this, every day (perhaps every few hours in large companies) there are innovations, which in reality are not what they are supposed to be - innovations!

Innovation could be perceived as the process of reutilising the existing working methodology and various steps followed to achieve a particular business goal.Orientation of these activities for betterment of the following also could be termed as Innovation.
1.Aid in Faiulre analysis of a particular product by utilising the operational data related to the product over a period of time.
2.Utilising the information so derived out of the above to improve the product design.
3.Continuous monitoring of the product perforamnce installed at a customer's location by remote monotoring and giving valuable feedback to customer eventually leading to customer delight.

This post contradicts itself! And it is so clear in its contradiction that it helps define innovation even better. Heres how:
1. The post ties innovation to "improvement in underlying processes and technology". I believe the main outcome of innovation is to change the rules of the game and change the (0,0,0) coordinates of the business framework rather than improving something that you already do or going to (0.5,0.5,0.5) from (0,0,0).
2. Pardon me for this. But, "Innovate the process of innovation" is really funny notion. What example do you have?
3. Deciphering business innovation from the Webster dictionary is way too traditional (i.e. hardly innovative).
4. In second para, tying business functions to innovation is a very short view.

I hope you will innovate the next time.

And, the blog post is clearly cynical about innovation. It declares that innovation is a fad and latest craze! I am guessing the writer was either too tired or in a bad mood.