The Hindu Business Line : Get the growth engine start

Strategy, culture, and processes/ competencies: These are `the three gears' of innovation, say Parmit and Radhika Chadha in Innovative India (www.penguinbooksindia.com) .

Innovation, defined as `the achievement of goals through the successful execution of creative ideas,' is not possible by focussing only on processes and competencies, which are not the main drivers, but merely enablers. You need to crank up strategy and culture to get the growth engine start, urge the Chadhas.

To them, innovation is not a functional activity, but `a system affecting the entire organisation.' The CEO is the creator of the vision, as also its guardian and evangelist. An example of positive morale is L'Oreal, where every business manager is guided by a `cow-and-calves' policy. "You are responsible not only for managing profitably today's business, but also for preparing what will be profitable many years after you have left that particular country or assignment."

The authors develop a grid that matches innovation strategy choice (disruptive/ sustaining), and market entry (pioneer/ follower). Examples of disruptive pioneers, the ones who visualise a totally new concept, are FairGlow of Godrej, and mosquito repellents from Good Knight.

SPs or sustaining pioneers focus on maintenance, and "bring to market a stream of new products, but none which can really change the competitive landscape."

Disruptive followers (DFs) explode the markets by finding "a business blind spot in the dominant incumbent in an existing market." A successful DF in banking is ICICI; and, in the balms and ointments space, Paras could bring in "a slight improvement in formulation and huge improvement in the perceived value, and advertised itself into success."

SFs or the sustaining followers are the me-too ones, who `piggyback on their rival's success', as Cadbury did with Chocky, `to tackle Nestle's Chocostick'.

In the concluding chapter, the Chadhas rue that organisational innovation is still a rare commodity. The `jugaad' thinking (Hindi for `making do', or innovation through improvisation) may well be a national trait, they postulate.

For instance, the R&D labs in India, for the global players, solve predetermined problems, rather than conceptualise and define problems, the authors fret. Is Indian innovation in an emergent mode, even as it experiments with the US and the Japanese models of innovation, they wonder?

Rightly, the Chadhas lay stress on `internal consistency,' an alignment with the country's ecosystem. For, "It is tempting to transplant the techniques used successfully in another culture, but these will work well only if the supporting processes and underlying philosophies are also transplanted."

A book that can break the inertia to innovate.

http://BookPeek.blogspot.com

D. Murali

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