A recent study by Boston Consulting Group and Businessweek has ranked the top 100 most innovative companies in the world. The study outlines a very interesting trend.
“The way you will thrive in this environment is by innovating - innovating in technologies, innovating in strategies, innovating in business models.” - IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano
Apple tops the list followed by Google. The major innovation plays for these companies can be seen from the likes of iPod and Google Earth - the products spearheading a revolution in the industry. It is also nice to see that some of the companies, which are a part of the list, do not operate in the hi-tech domains. So the innovation process seems to be catching on in lots of different domains in myriad ways. The whole article on BusinessWeek makes for a very insightful reading.
Here is what BusinessWeek writes about Apple and iPod -
The iPod launch involved no fewer than seven types of innovation, including networking (a novel agreement among music companies to sell their songs online), business model (songs sold for a buck each online), and branding (how cool are those white ear buds and wires?). Consumers love the ease and feel of the iPod, but it is the simplicity of the iTunes software platform that turned a great MP3 player into a revenue-gushing phenomenon.
Also check out out this interesting slide show. The most innovative products in the last year can be found here.
Here are some of my favorite quotes by Steve Jobs, the famous Apple CEO:
- I want to put a ding in the universe.
- Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.
- Pretty much, Apple and Dell are the only ones in this industry making money. They make it by being Wal-Mart. We make it by innovation.
- Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
- To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, it requires a lot of disciplines.
And here is the best one of them all - “Stay hungry, Stay Foolish”. This is the quote from Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford.
Changing dynamics in the international business arena are forcing all organizations to take a relook at their business models and redefine their strategy. With the competition becoming global in nature, a lead in local markets does not essentially mean a niche in the ‘changed’ rules of business operations. A careful evaluation of future strategy, operational competencies and target markets has now become the key to survival. And finally the full emphasis is also on people - people productivity, training, lowering attrition - in short, keeping employees happy in every manner. A successful company would have outlined its future plans based on realistic goals, placed the right people in the right processes, and laid out a time frame for the things to move and results to start showing up.
Wipro is one such company that is making heads turn. After the exit of Vivek Paul, there were many people who thought that the exit meant a doom for the company. But a recent Businessweek interview with Azim Premji shows that things are actually brighter than before. Its revenues jumped by 9% with profits growing by 11% over the previous quarter. Here are some snippets from the interview:
“We’re investing more for the future, in people, in innovation, marketing, in the brand.”
“The most important thing is innovation — productivity innovation, innovation in training, in business models, in intellectual-property investment, in non-linear delivery models like managed services, in compensation programs. We’re also looking to innovate in our strategic acquisitions.”
“We’re pulling up people from within the organization and retraining them.”
It is nice to see the C.E.O. making the right kind of noise, and for once the focus on innovation seems to be the right path ahead. Existing software, competencies et al would soon be passe. The whole game is changing with newer innovations happening all across the world - WIMAX, Web 2.0, Microsoft Live .. to name a few. The need of any organization is not to develop its services around these innovations, but for survival, an active participation in the innovation process has become paramount.
Madhukar Shukla has a very interesting post on his blog. He writes that a significant section of Indian populace works without a secure contract, with no or minimal employee benefits, and no legal or economic security. This should have been obvious, but what makes the post so shocking is that we see these people all around us. Contract labourers, roadside vendors, cart pullers, roadside mechanics - the list could be endless. These people have become invisible in our daily lives, even though there presence is obvious and taken for granted. Imagine Mumbai streets without roadside vendors. I know it is hard to even think of it, since we are so used to seeing all these people around us. And never once did this thought cross my mind that these “invisible” form a significant part of the social strata - the “working poor”.
Their presence seems to be a disturbing factor for many, especially when they line up outside railways stations blocking your way during peak hours. But what Madhukar points out is something very interesting:
They perform one other very “useful” function in the society, which is least acknowledged: They subsidise life-styles of their “more organised” fellow citizens!!!
Good fodder for thought !!!
One of the key differentiators for a company amongst its competitors has been the unique proprietary knowledge it possesses. But with the advent of the current Information Age, where information is freely available on the Internet, the word ‘proprietary’ is slowly losing its importance and meaning. This does not mean that the firms operating in specialized or niche verticals should shut shop. Availability of information is one thing and the ability to make sense out of it (knowledge) and use it to your advantage is the key paradigm that I want to talk about in this post.
A company armed with the right knowledge makes it more qualified in understanding a particular region and the operating dynamics can create strategies resulting in huge advantages over competitors who might lack the same familiarity. In the course of my work at Netscribes, I have come to appreciate the huge emphasis that companies place on the availability of ‘right information at the right time’. The advances in technology have opened up new possibilities in which information can be shared rapidly and efficiently. And along with it have come the various techniques, tools and methods to manage that information.
There are two ways in which a company can address its information needs. The first is by creating internal information repositories, which contain the “knowledge†aggregated through employee interactions internally and externally. Many organizations have started using tools and technologies like blogs, wikis, intranets or the more recent Microsoft Sharepoint in a conscious endeavor to make information sharing a habit. The basic premise being that a wealth of information about customers, competitors, products, research et al., can be collected and shared through daily transactions that an employee comes across. The second way is by creating special teams with the sole job of mining information available in the public domain. This is primarily seen as a competitive intelligence, opportunity scoping and market analytics activity.
Information management is not the crucial part. Creation and exchange of information are the more important activities in the knowledge space. It is interesting to note how such a methodology is perceived in the professional social environment, where people who do not know one another come together to work on a common goal of creation and exchange of information. What needs to be studied is how a company goes about creating internal knowledge markets when the product is something as intangible as valuable knowledge created from experience and individual thought process. Information is only the raw material – it is how that information is used to build the knowledge that forms the basis of strategic decision making.
Over the years, the Indian economy has undergone a huge metamorphosis and seen a lot of dynamics at play. The primary drivers of growth have shifted the focus from dominance of agriculture to a rapidly evolving IT and IT-services model. This change in paradigm shift has also altered the country’s locus-standi in the ‘globosphere’. However, India has been seen as an outsourcing destination of choice for sometime now, with progress and innovation in other spheres being neglected by the media pundits and political thinkers alike. The India of today is more flamboyant and ready to take risks and innovate. Indian companies are on the global acquisitions path, aggressively pursuing expansion and growth opportunities across borders. These are healthier times for Indian business environment both internally and externally, and I carry a strong belief that these times are here to stay.
However, I also have a bone to pick with the people who are fuelling this growth. Outsourcing services (both BPO, and the newly evolved KPO) have definitely fuelled the growth patterns and provided a lot of fillip and confidence for Indian businesses to try out new things. The private sector has focused on attracting new clients for its offshoring and outsourcing services, and endeavored to meet world quality standards. However, what they have failed to understand is that only the creation of world-class offices and state-of-the-art working environments is not going to help in the longer run. The need of the hour is an excellent infrastructure support by the Indian government as well. We still have delayed flights, stinking loos, poorly maintained airports, lack of accommodation, potholed roads et al. These are basic requirements necessary for attracting foreign talent and clientele so much so that they can live and work here, if needed. Surprisingly, both the Indian government and the private sector have not focused on this issue till now.
It is high time that the government and the private sector join hands and address this urgent and inevitable necessity. A strong infrastructure is the key that paves way for more business and greater client confidence.
Sustainable competitive advantages are back as the key paradigms of business growth and success. After exhausting the best practices guidelines preached by diverse groups of management thinkers, the tide is turning back to “smart-enable†the most talented workers in an organization for more productivity and efficiency.
For the last few decades, organizations have undertaken various approaches to boost their internal targets and productivity matrix parameters. From internal restructuring to process outsourcing, automation initiatives to reengineering, each process has been minutely studied and refined. All this amalgamation of ideas and best practices has brought about a level of saturation for an organization to further its process and business related initiatives. So the thought-process is shifting back to the old paradigms of empowering its employees with real-time information and introducing new knowledge-sharing platforms resulting in better informed employees.
I shall be writing on the various innovations and improvements that are being discussed and studied on this front in my next post. But cultural issues still remain one of the biggest enemies of transitioning to any new style of working. Even though corporations try to bring about a paradigm shift in the ways employees interact with one another and across the organization, there is a huge cultural gap that needs to be covered. The traditional ways of running processes and transactions have created a habitual mindset amongst employees, so much so that adherence to any new methodology usually results in a lot of negative feedback. Introduction of these new ideas undeniably faces a lot of resistance from the employees. What is desired is a leap to a new cultural mindset, which is ready to embrace new ideas and try out new ways of doing things. The culture shift, an inherent ingredient of such introductions, is rightly captured by Lou Gerstner’s statement in Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance – “I came to see in my time at IBM that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game—it is the game.â€
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