Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 2- Panel Discussion- 2

The second and the last of the Panel Discussions was themed around 'Role of Innovation in an Economic Downturn'. The panelists were:

• C E Veni Madhavan, IISc Bangalore
• Raj Kumar Khatri, Commissioner for Industrial Development & Director of Comm and Ind,
  Government of Karnataka
• Bharat Kumar, IT Editor, Hindu
• I Vijaya Kumar, Chief Technology Officer, Wipro Ltd

Veni started by describing the Medici Effect: Which helped start the Renaissance movement in Venice. In Downturn and challenging times creating a confluence of people will help innovation. His key message was that there is also a need for corporate scientific responsibility to come fore and help and nurture research. The benefit will in turn be accelerated innovation that can be leveraged for business benefits.

I Vijayakumar provided the industry/practitioner perspective. He said -Innovation is about inclusiveness. There are typically two kinds we can look at- in-the-box and out-of-the-box innovations. In the box are innovations within the existing environment and systems: innovations around productivity, services and people. Outside the box would be more on customers focused. The greatest challenge for innovation would be to define the problem statement – finding technologies to solve is the next step.
IVK provided an example of an interesting and innovative step in the organization – primarily from a Green perspective and which also resulted in cost takeouts. It was -working out lower power consumption in the labs over the weekends (when consumption is @ 95% but attendance in less than 3%). He described the initial resistance from the lab administrators and the eventual gains.

Bharat Kumar opined that Indians innovate all the time. He gave an example of everyday innovative/ inventive sense in Indians. A vegetable vendor who makes his sales by roaming with his push cart on the streets of Chennai on hot afternoons – takes a different trick of shouting out his wares. While the rest of them shout out the vegetables they have for sale, this vendor shouts out the possible dishes you can make with them. He would scream “Sambar!” and then proceed to narrate all the vegetables you would need to make it!
In effect, he helps the lady of the house visualize all the options she has for the night’s dinner and help her make a choice and come by and make a purchase.

Three key points from the session were:

• One must be cautious about terming some innovations as mere cost cutting and not recognize them.
• Tolerance to failure should increase.
• Leadership is needed. Ability to place people who excel and are passionate will engender innovation.

And that was the end of two eventful days.

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 2- Panel Discussion- 1

Now's the time for Panel Discussion and the topic for the first panel was- Targeted IT Investments for Business Innovation. Here the panelists were:

• S Sadagopan, Director, IIIT Bangalore
• Diwakar Nigam, CEO, New Gen Software Technologies
• Subu Goparaju, Vice President & Head - SETLabs, Infosys

Prof. Sadgopan quipped that constraints help in aiding innovation. Gave an example of Bank of India. Who were one of the first to do a total outsourcing job. Technical and execution constraints helped them take that decision. That helped them go the path of significantly lesser expenses, and complete automation within 2 years or so as opposed to what would 7 years. Along the line, they crafted SLA norms that pretty much became the template for others to follow when crafting their own outsourcing engagements.
Another example was that of Tirupati Tirumala Temple. The temple authorities have large queues to deal with and came up with a specification that this problem has to be done away with and the technique applied should be executable in less that one minute and cost not more that one rupee per person. And he went on to describe the famous bar coded wrist band – how they cam about the technique. And the other challenges along the way – ensuring that it was water proof ( even if people bathed in the temple ponds ), could not be removed easily and passed on to others and was proven to be safe.
So constraints help. In the case of downturns too, it can be taken advantage for creating winning innovations. The other message was about how IT can be leveraged for solving this problem.

Diwakar Nigam opined that in downturn, the first response is to go on the cost cutting path, and IT can help in this. In Downturn, Business Intelligence and Mining can help – to increase models and increase market shares. Another cost takeout can be by using low cost BPM processes and streamlining business functions. Basically business agility is important in a downturn and IT can be leveraged for the same.

Subu mentioned that during downturn, more focus is on open innovation and open source in his organization. Focus in general in IT innovation will be on improved analytics, collaboration, and efficiency. He said, the current IT adoption in India can be improved. The IT is taken to rural through mobile phones and there is a lot of scope for innovation there.

It too was a well recieved discussion.

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 2- Session-4

The post-tea session was on the theme of 'New-Think Innovations'. Here the focus was on Energy and Sustainability, calling for a whole new breed of Social Entrepreneurs. The speakers were:

• Gopichand Katragadda, General Manager, Energy & Infra, GE India Technology Centre
• Anshu Bharadwaj, Director, CSTEP
• Paul Basil, CEO, Rural Innovations Network

Gopi listed out the various innovations done in the space of energy, fuel, transmission and distribution, and consumptions. These are:

• Energy- Use of better materials; Better cooling techniques; and increased combustion temperatures techniques
• Fuel Flexibility and Renewable- Need to do impact analysis (when say 5% of the wind is used, land is covered with solar panels and prevent sunlight); and Need ability to predict better
• Transmission and Distribution Losses- India – 30% loss; US – 9%; India should explore options such as Smart Grid to explore this.
• Consumption- We need a cultural shift.

Anshu's organization is a private, non corporate research organization focusing on emerging technologies. His talk was primarily on the supply side of the energy equation. He depicted that today bulk of energy supply comes from coal and oil. The contribution from Solar, Hydel, Wind, Hydrogen Fuel, and Nuclear Power, needs to go up.

• The Green Rural Bio Mass contributes to one-third of Energy Source Import.
• Hydel is a key source now but massive increase will still not meet demand. Further, it might create social issues.
• Wind though not suitable weather wise but progress is been made whereever possible, in parts of Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.
• Coal is a significant source as of now. It can meet India's demands but we will run out of reserves in 5 decades. Plus there's a concern over Carbon Footprint. It will become expensive and has import dependencies.
• Oil is another major source of energy supply in India. BioFuel can generate 10% of the India’s future demand. But it has its own related issues. Innovation is needed to research next generation Bio Fuels.
• Hydrogen Fuels is not a primary source fuel. Hence some other fuel is needed to generate Hydrogen, say Electrolysis. The fuel requirements is high with Electrolysis. Hence in the overall cost/energy perspective this is not a great option.
• Nuclear Power Sector has a 3% contribution and is a very significant source. After last year’s agreement, this is something that can be leveraged extensively, if we play it right. But huge investment needed. Another challenge is lack of skilled labor.
• Solar Energy is a phenomenal source of energy for which we will need to use just 1% of our land space and meet all our power requirements. Innovations needed in Photo Voltaic Cost and Efficiency, Cells, etc.
• Solar Thermal is about producing steam with Solar Thermal Power and use that steam to generate energy.

Overall Nuclear and Solar was felt to be very promising.

Paul Basil opined that business opportunities by selling to the poor is possible and has a distinct market share. But innovations are required to approach this market. An approach to solve their problems at a price point reachable to them is important. This calls for Support, Money, Legal Support, Labs, Government Support, Mentoring and Education.

The biggest challenge is in building an accessible distribution network that goes into villages. NGOs and other organizations are attempting to help with this, but this is an area that needs innovative models depending upon the product being developed. Things that make the rural business model really work in her view are:

• Ruthless affordability -payment models (example pay back over one cropping season)
• Unconventional partnerships, eg – new stove developed and sold by British Petroleum + IISc+ NGO - marketing done by village women.
• Local value creation - wealth created should rotate inside the village.
• Para-skilling - Aravind Eye Clinic could not provide cataract operations at an affordable cost because of their nursing staff expenses. They trained local women and broke the task to really small manageable tasks and brought the cost down.
• Focus on the poor - treat them as customers
• Enabling Access
• Pay-per-Use models.

A very well addressed issue.

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 2- Session-3

The next session was on 'Funding Innovation in the Downturn'. The opening remark came from Ravi Narayan, MD Mentor- Partners who threw light on the various VC funding activities across India. In his view, some of the most active funding partners here are: Sequioa; DFJ; NEA; Helilopn; Venture East; Intel Capital; Nexus; IDG; and Acumen.

In this current economic downturn, there are opportunities both for the Entrepreneur as well the Investors. Opportunities for the former are:

• Best companies built in downturn
• India continues to grow. Opportunities abound
• Opportunities in India needs to scale and to be price sensitive.
• Therefore, adopting Western models won't work here
• In India – there are delivery challenges. Reach out here means millions of users

For the investors, opportunities are:

• Prices are more reasonable now
• Tends to gravitate to less risky propositions
• Get more time to make investments
• Time available to scrutinize the governance of the start up
• M&A opportunities for the start up evaluated to decide on funding.

This was indeed a very good context setting.

The speakers for the session were:

• P Anandan, Managing Director, Microsoft Research India
• Alok Kejriwal, Founder and CEO, Games2win

Anandan spoke about the areas of research done at Microsoft Research. These are:

• Via Products (most research happens here)
• Microsoft Research
• Ecosystem support for partner innovation.

There are 1000 full time researchers working on 60 different research areas. The mission is: Expand State of the Art; Translate to MS products; and Ensure MS has a look ahead on what's coming in.

He opined that in India, typically the industry does more of D of the R & D. Applied Technology is an equally important investment, as it helps social development, economic growth and quality of life.

One of the most scintillating presentations of the day came from Alok Kejriwal who is a gaming entrepreneur. Alok showed some Google Analytics to show the players accessing these games from world over.
As the games gets popular, the games is stolen. While the theft is a reflection of the game's popularity, it does take traffic away. The team then cames up with the concept of “INVIZIADS”. The idea being – as long as the game was played at the correct URL, the ads remain invisible. When the game is stolen and hosted at a different URL, ads start appearing. This disturbs the players and they invariably come to the original location to play without disturbance.
So the message is – in the face of copy cats – its best to invent invent invent.

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 2- Session-2

Bangalore as an Innovation Cluster was the theme for talks on the second session of the day. Here the speakers were:

• Marcel Hungerbuehler, CEO, Bangalore International Airport Ltd
• Arundathi Nag, Creative Director, Ranga Shankara

The Bangalore International Airport leaves people with mixed feelings. But by no means that innovation was at backseat here. Marcel started with description of the Bangalore aerospace journey. Began with Bangalore’s aviation history: that began in 1941 with Valchand Harichand setting up HAL. Then the follow through of Space Research and other organizations into Bangalore ( DRDO, etc ). Another critical component being the founding of the Indian Institute of Sciences (IISc) by the Tatas.
Moved on to the aerospace industry. India is just entering it. The work needs to move to design. This is essential because all the companies who sell aerospace related items to India are obliged to offset the 7 Billion USD earned by executing this work in India. There is about 1.3 Billion USD till 2020 in manufacturing related outsourcing.
The work that can be done is in testing, manufacturing and repair of aircrafts. The requirements from companies are that they need land, regulation framework, tax related aspects and predictability in the environment.
Moved on to BIAL itself. Currently, the company employees 6000 people – directly, via operators and via partners.. And indirectly: Via advertisers, food and utilities. Some of the innovations from here are:

• Common User Terminal Equipment (no need to have dedicated check-in counters for optimal utilization)
• 2D Bar Code Compliant (that become the passenger boarding pass sent to a mobile phone or hand held)
• Fully Wi-Fi (first in country to provide free Wi-Fi)
• Common Use Self Service (self service check-in kiosks)
• Baggage Reconciliation System (helps ground personnel to track, monitor and match passenger baggage)
• E- Konfer (a web based emergency alert and group communication system)

So that's a lot of good money earned and spent within the city.

Arundathi begun with the history of Bangalore. How it was intended to be a market city. That the “boiled beans” tale around the city is a legend. Bangalore has a culture that has absorbed all this and made it into its own. And has a many faceted personality. Look at the phrases such as “adjust madi” and “one by two” to reflect the accommodate and sharing culture of Bangalore and not something to look down upon.
The core of her message was that Culture is not defined by language, religion etc – but by human connect. How we interface with each other. How we interact with each other. We should learn to greet and be with each, know how to interact in public spaces.
Innovations and improvements in a city should retain the identity of the city, the unique appearance and feel. How sensible is it to erect anonymous glass buildings that could be anywhere. For example – why is green suddenly such a hype? And even then – we should look at our own backyard and pick up good green practices.

In her view:

• The industry must not progress such a way that people are divorced from being humans
• Its important to keep the human being going. Everything is not just about money.
• We must preserve our culture and for our children to inherit it sometime.

The session followed by quick round of Q&A and then over to lunch.

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 2- Session-1

The first session of the next day morning was on - Open Innovation and Co-Innovation. The speakers for this session were:

• S Bhaskaran, Sr Director - Philips Healthcare, Philips Electronics India Ltd.
• Ajay Vasudeva, Head R&D India, Nokia India Pvt. Ltd.

Bhaskar provided an overview of the cycle of innovation and how the trends are moving to open innovation through a series of graphs that reflected the increasing number of patent activities. In his view the reason why Open Innovation is an imperative is owing to:

• No one can have the best know how
• Open innovation increases exponential knowledge
• The information in increases at such a pace that it's impossible to keep up, let along single handedly harness
• Best to collaborate and leverage
• Technology is racing.
• There are mechanisms now available to leverage.

He depicted the innovations to be of various types, including: Closed; Co-Creation: Customers; Open - Anybody; Grassroot – Bottom Up; Democratizing - Masses; Crowd Sourcing; Web to Solicit; Crowd Casting; and Solicit from specific, paid people via the www. Some of the examples being: Innocentive; MiPlaza (Philips); and iPhone Dev Center; among others.

He summed up the talk highlighting on how firms can make Open Innovation work:

• Company policy – state it clearly
• Need top management buy in
• Break the not-invented-here syndrome
• Good to have a grand failure to accelerate acceptance of open innovation
• Dont be too far ahead of time. Open innovation works best when the its current and at the edge and everyone can contribute and take it forward
• Information ubiquity becomes important
• IP Infrastructure -> Should be robust
• There should be sufficient regulatory protection/enablement
• Company infrastructure to protect IP

A very well made presentation.

Ajay started with an overview of R&D activities at Nokia followed by some of the driving principles. These are:

• Consumers are in control. They collect 12 billion data points, analyse and brain storm and figure out solutions. This breaks the market into 13 segments for who devices have to be designed.
• Strong partners and vibrant Ecosystem – containing research fellows. Leverage all this.
• Culture and Values.
• Focus on sustainability (green, eco friendly), and
• Also there is opportunity to take up.

Some of the examples of Open Innovation are Nokia are: forum.nokia.com and store.ovi.com where they get developers and mobile enthusiasts from across the globe to help them develop the next breakthrough. One such innovation is Nokia Life Tools. It is a range of Agriculture, Education and Entertainment services designed especially for the consumers in small towns and rural areas. Another one is MeraNokia which is pre-installed in certain cell phones and offers services around Agriculture, Education, Ringtones and Astrology.

These two talks followed a good round of Q&As

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 1- Banquet Session

The Banquet Session for the Day- 1 was themed around 'Beyond Business : Innovations in Art & Culture'. The intent was to explore the various influencing factors, be it education, culture, political influences, theatre, art, fashion that give India its distinct flavour.
Harish Bijoor, the Brand-specialist and CEO of Harish Bijoor Consults moderated the session. He quotes a 6 year old survey and what influence innovation and people said – “Culture, environment, politics, people and religion. He impressed upon the value of INSIGHT to any innovation.
The panelist were:

• Surupa Sen, Creative Director, Nrityagram
• Sharukh Mistry, Director, Mistry Architects
• Krishna Byre Gowda, President, Karnataka Pradesh Youth Congress
• Prasad Bidappa, Image & Fashion Consultant

Surupa provided an overview on the Innovative Gurukul system for all dances in NrityaGram. It has one of the best dance ensembles in the world. In her view, the innovation needed is to preserve the arts. The younger generation is not so much in the mode for ”Eat, drink, sleep, dream, breathe” a dance form. Also need corporate blessing for the arts. Need alternate methods to focus on excellence and preserving the arts.

A survivor of Asian Tsunami, Sharukh's call in life came when he was approached to resettle the villages devastated by the episode. The approach was to go without any plans, listen to the needs of the clients, and build sustainable alternatives involving the locals. His insight has been:

• Use local material
• Start a participatory process
• Think about innovative materials and processes in a ”cradle to cradle” method. We must worry and understand about how it is born and where it goes and how it finally dies. Else its not innovation.

Krishna Byre Gowda discussed about the problems of Indian Youth Congress and how they turned around the processes internally and that helped them in a big way in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Pondicherry and affected the current UPA results. The innovation was that a already prevalent idea was simply unlocked and implemented efficiently. The problem being IYC was stagnating. The election processes within for leaders at all levels was opaque. It was not dynamic and full of favoritism. Centrally decided by high command and hence lot of grassroots level disconnects.
The change was to make the election process more democratic. Challenges in breaking down current resistance. Focus now on broadbasing this to all states and making it an ongoing sustainable process.

Prasad opined that India has a lot of designer talent – but there is no single brand that’s famous world wide from India. Italy has many – Gucci, Armani etc. None from India. We were very happy being the ‘tailors of the world’ – but now that place is quickly being taken over by Bangladesh, and other Asian countries. So cost effective outsourcing is not there for India. We need to move to design and create our own brands. Fashion industry is badly in need of this innovation. India needs to go global!

It followed an interactive session with the audience culminating into networking and the corporate dinner.

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 1- Session-3

The final session of the day was around the theme of- 'Indian Innovations & Global Footprints'. Opening address was by Jatin Desai, the Co-Founder and CEO of The DeSai Group. He spoke about the imperative of innovation for a sustainable future. The six skills identified for the future are: Discovery; Creativity; Purposeful Implementation; Influence; Mindful Play Action; and Spiritual Integrity. Drawing insight from this long career, he suggested that typically these are four sources of ideas, viz.

• Internal, planned – 20% ( strategy, mkt research)
• External, planned - 5% ( industry studies, consultants)
• Internal, unplanned– 30% ( adhoc, incremental )
• External, unplanned – 45% ( customers, suppliers, competition )

A brilliant context setting!

The speakers for this leg of the event were:

• K Venkataramanan, Member of the Board & President- E&C Projects, L&T
• Ashwini Kakkar, Executive Vice Chairman, Mercury Travels
• M K Shankarlinge Gowda, Secretary - Transport Department, Government of Karnataka

K Venkataramanan provided an overview of how innovation is managed in the short-term and long term in L&T. How the practices were driven down from senior leadership - a tracking mechanism was put in place. How it was important to rope-in the good performers into the innovation life cycle. Top management consultants (external) were used to articulate needs and innovation plans. One key aspect that came up was that for L&T - where it wants to be in next 5 years, one key dearth will be leadership. So one of the innovations was to define a process, find top performers and give them a road map that would ready them for leadership. L&T took this exercise to have leaders ready in the next 5 years and then next 7/8 years time frames (2 sets of leaders).
One other challenge in engendering innovation is to create a culture shift where all recognize that the young and performing people will quickly become leaders and hence there is a need to move from traditional seniority based leadership. At the same time, one must explore ways to retain the experience and loyalty of the senior employees. So L&T has worked hard to strike a balance between these two aspects.

Ashwini opined that the economic downturn has brought the following behaviour to the forefront – Cheaper, Closer, Shorter and Later in tourism/travel industry. They want to travel cheaper, to closer destinations, for shorter durations and decide at the last minute (later/delayed decision making). He talked about the various innovative trends adopted by the industry to reach out and service customers – Online, Buzz, high touch/low touch services, iPhone apps, buzz marketing, etc.

M K Shankarlinge Gowda depicted some of the innovations done in the government – specifically in the KSRTC. By connecting very well with the audience and addressing some of their queries, he was able to built a rapt audience. Some of the innovations introduced in the recent past are: Introduction of new buses; Electronic ticket issues; AWATAR system; Introduction of a single ticket concept in phases; Increasing use of IT; GPS already installed in buses – plans to extend it to users via SMS; Though the Airport buses occupancy is low, the buses effectively reduce 6000 cars from using that road; New types of bus stands being started – park at the bus stand and take the bus to work; and Green fuels being explored – ethanol etc .

A well poised session with contribution coming in from allied industries and audience.

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 1- Session-2

The second session was themed around- "Current Downturn and Innovative Solutions to the Dominant Concern". The opening remark came from Bhaskar Bhat, MD of Titan who quipped, " The economic downturn can be viewed as a economic Tsunami. Instead of having a carpet-bombing approach, its important to understand what’s our position in the economic tsunami and take appropriate measures." In his view, the key aspects are - assess your position, plan measures and execute to precision. Good companies do this well and tide over the bad times and are ready to take on the good times. Traditional economic analysis methods and approaches won't work. Need to deep dive, understand categories, their applicability to your business, cherry pick and then proceed.
The three speakers were:

• C Ganesh Narayan, Executive Director, C Krishnaiah Chetty & Sons
• Hameed Bhombal, Sr. President & CTO, Aditya Birla Group
• Jawahar Malhotra, CTO & VP, Yahoo India Research and Development

Ganesh started with providing an overview of the jewellery industry, a high end luxury retail business which is unorganized and is ruled by emotional purchases. It has moved from purchases for occasions to portfolio divestment. During recessionary times when spending is low, purchases are postpone, cash flow dries-up, there are specific areas of focus, these are: Leveraging CRM; eTailing is not enough as customer needs to touch, feel and wear; Paying more attention to customer desires and invest in employee training.

Offering an R&D view to Manufacturing Innovations, Hameed opined that with recession comes newer opportunities in having a fundamental look at the processes and practices. Further low carbon initiatives are an imperative and provide a lot of business opportunities. This calls for investment in R&D. The Group has built a new Science and Technology Centre to address the same.

Jawahar from the Yahoo Research spoke about the need to straighten the fundamentals. He pointed out that the long term general trend is the movement of revenues from traditional publishing to online publishing. But in the downturn, the revenues are reduced. This calls for online publishers, like Yahoo come up with innovative methods – business models, advertising etc. Some of these are: iPhone apps; Open Web; Open Social; and Cloud Computing (Applications/platforms as a service; Democratization of Grid; Hardware Optimization). Further there's ongoing research on newer pricing models, new methods to display; new ad formats and tapping into the Web 2.0.

Quite an enriching session just before the close of the day.

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 1- Session-1

The first talk session of the day was on 'Economic Cycles and Innovations'. The three speakers were:

• Sahana Sarma, Partner at McKinsey and Company
• Amit Kalyani, CMD of Bharat Forge
• Girish Wardadkar, President and Executive Director, KPIT Cummins

Sahana depicted the Innovation HeatMap that plots the various cities across the world on the basis of innovation momentum and diversity. Based on the number of patents filed in a given period of time and spread across industries, these cities were classified as Silent Lakes, Shrinking Pools, HotSprings, or Dynamic Oceans. India is now a Hot Sprint. The goal should be to move to become a Dynamic Ocean (Silicon Valley is a Dynamic Ocean). The five key needs for innovations in her view are: Infrastructure, Business Environment, Human Capital, Leveraging local innovations, and Govt Regulation. Though India has made a mark in the space of IT and has more than its share of young talent, but still in terms of research, India stands low. To sum up, with the current recession, when things improve and the cycle moves to an upturn, things will move to a New Normal. For India, there needs to be a focus on infrastructure improvements, increasing R&D spend, generating more PhDs, and innovating and leveraging locally.

Amit Kalyani started with providing an overview of the Kalyani Steels. The priorities during the current times are: cash conservatism; operative efficiency; sending the message to grassroots level; cross-pollination of ideas; bringing the lowest common denominator into play; prevent lethargy from growing into the system; and work to maintain productivity. According to Amit, understanding that 50% is the New Normal, need is to work on retaining talent and leveraging existing relationships for newer opportunities. Some of the good practices around innovation at Kalyani Steel are co-creation with IITs, hiring PhDs, and building a process to reward and recognize innovation.

Speaking on Digital Manufacturing, Girish from KPIT Cummins shared his experiences on the agility and connectivity offered by the new techniques of manufacturing and expansion. The components being: Process Digitization; Process System Integration; Digital Prototyping; Layout Optimization; and Global Manufacturing. It has helped Cummins with an ability to automate design, and build a manufacturing model from scratch. Also to design and build a virtual plant before implementing the same. An Indian success story.

Some of the takeaways from the Q&A session that was followed were:

• Investments in R&D have not reduced, rather it has become focused on a narrower set of options. (2 or 3 instead of 10)
• Move towards leaner R&D. Thoughtful rationalizing of R&D
• Most companies do more of the D of the R&D. The R is done by institutions where the ideas are proven
• India needs to invest more in education, generate more PhDs, advance graduate degrees (tertiary education)
• What kind of innovation works in recession: Radial, breakthrough or incremental? All works. Incremental is easy or can be done organization wide. All work. Take what's best for your organization.

Fifth India Innovation Summit '09- Day 1- Opening Session

The theme for the Fifth India Innovation Summit hosted at Bangalore between 12-13 June was- Role of Innovation in an Economic Downturn - The India Advantage. Quite relevant and timely. With close to 360 attendees and over 35 speakers, the event was a delight to anyone keen on learning more on how innovation unfolds at India. Here's a quick summary of the Day- 1 of the event.

The event started with the Chairman of CII Karnataka- T Parabrahman setting the context of this fifth edition of the summit. Apart from sharing the good practices from the companies around innovation especially in the downturn, the event focused on facilitating breakthroughs in Small and Medium Enterprise (SME).

Then the Chairman of Infosys- Kris Gopalakrishnan gave the theme address impressing on how the times are ripe for India to play a leading role in the innovation space. He opined that one always sees the cycle of boom --> greed --> bust --> new normal. Case in point being the Internet Boom and Bust. India enjoys the demographic divide, huge talent base, untapped markets, and a good education system. Therefore India is a compelling / un avoidable investment to succeed. An illustration is the phenomenal growth of the India IT Industry, especially Bangalore. Today 40% exports of India are from Bangalore, it is the largest IT/ ITES ecosystem in the country and has taken India to the global landscape.

Then came Azim Premji, the Chairman of Wipro. Hinting on the number of companies that have fell off the Fortune 500 companies into oblivion, he observed that how firms (even large ones) often miss the revolutions. In his words, "It is very important for senior leadership to be sensitive to signals, especially negative signals. They need to do the job of shaking complacency, demanding stretch. For innovation to work, there should be a framework of accountability, measurement, time-frames of deliveries and ROI based (affect the bottomline). Innovation can be not only in products and services, it can also be in quality processes, productivity improvements, financial discipline and business models – the last being most important."
In his view imbibing a culture of innovation is vital. The necessary conditions being:

• Appreciate that success creates its own gravity. This gravity creates comfort zones. As a result ideas will get shot down at all levels. Leadership should generate sufficient escape velocity to break this gravity. Can be done by setting stretch goals.
• Look at innovation from everyone. Everywhere. Customer is the best source. Develop the art of listening
• Actively bring in people into the organization who are not clones of who are already in. This goal gets challenged by the current en-mass recruitment trends that happens at lateral levels. Because en-mass generates templates, and downward delegation. Important to find people who can make you uncomfortable.
• Days of isolated innovation are over. Innovation is multi-functional, multi-geographical. Teaming is an important skill to look for.
• Encourage people to fight and disagree on the idea after it's matured to a level. If done earlier, good ideas could get killed.
• Allow creative failures. This is fundamental to innovation process. Failures should be forgiven as long as the lessons are remembered.

A very well received talk and a good start to the event.