India Innovation Summit 2011

Year 2011 in Innovation

2012-01-11T10:04:00.002+05:30

Wish you and your families a very Happy New Year 2012.

In recent years I have been sending out this compendium to people who have interest in the field of Innovation, Creativity and Design. The intent remains to further the understanding of this vital topic and evangelize the spirit of innovation. Here are the 120 stories from 2011. I hope you find this useful.

I will be grateful to you if you could pass on this compilation to your friends and colleagues. That will be a true new year gift for me.

Sources: BBC, Booz & Co., Boston Consulting Group, Business Today, BusinessWeek, CNN World, Economic Times, Fast Company, Financial Post, Financial Times, Freakonomics, Harvard Business Review, HBR Blog, IBM, Inc. Magazine, Industry Week, Knowledge @ Wharton, McKinsey Global Institute, McKinsey Quarterly, MIT Sloan Management Review, Nature, NY Times, Scientific American, Technology Review, The Atlantic, The Economist, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Wired.

Also do check out the archived compilations here.

Best of 2010

Best of 2009

Dec’ 11 $35 Tablet from India Lots of India's Innovation is Invisible Test Your Innovation IQ The Next 5 in 5: IBM Predicts Future Innovation Tournament @ P&G A World of Jugaad Surviving 2012: An Action Plan for Year Head Sustainability Nears a Tipping Point Creativity Linked to Rule Bending 2011 in Reflection: The Nature	Nov' 11 India's Innovation Stimulus Why Social Innovation needs Design Thinking How Pursuit of Profit Kills Innovation A One-Two Punch to Foster Creativity When Good Companies have Bad Ideas 8 Best Innovation Ideas from Around the World Inventing the Collaborative Workspace Social Innovation: A Matter of Scale Rise in Intellectual Property is Changing the Face of Innovation 3 Biggest Barriers to Innovation and How to Smash Them
Oct' 11 Global Innovation 1000: Why Culture is the Key Steve Jobs 1955- 2011: All about Steve Do Patents Kill Innovation 3M Bets of India- Style Innovation 10 Innovation Myths Crowdsourcing a Cure to Breast Cancer 10 Steps for Creating an Open Innovation Culture What Google's VP Marissa Mayer Does as an 'Idea Connector' WSJ 2011 Innovation Awards Innovating to Zero CO2	Sep' 11 A Three- Box Approach to Managing Business Model Reinvention China in Transition The Age of Customer- Innovator Lessons from Asian Innovators: AsiaNBC From Social Network to Collaboration Network Netflix's Bold Disruptive Innovation Innovating with Services Why we Desire but Reject Creative Ideas China as Innovation Nation Should you Reward Bad Ideas?
Aug' 11 7 Immutable Laws of Innovation How to Prepare for a Black Swan After the Tsunami The Future of Innovation Management: The Next 10 Years How to be like Apple The Elusive Big Idea Innovative Ways of Storytelling 5 Ways Standardization can Lead to Innovation Why Playing Games Could be Next Big Thing for Business What Innovations Would Make Cities More Livable	Jul' 11 How will you Measure your Life: Clayton Christensen Innovation's Nine Critical Success Factor The Paradox of Samsung's Rise Leaders find Creativity in Chaos We Share Too Much and It's Stifling Innovation The Best Strategy for Big Innovation: Know Your Limits Montessori Build Innovators Can Innovation be Reduced to a Process? Think Like a Designer Women Enhances Team Intelligence
Jun' 11 IBM @ 100: Ideas that Shaped a Century TR 35 Winners: Innovators under 35 Forbes World's Most Innovative Companies Global Innovation Interest Index The Global Innovation Index 2011: Most Innovative Countries Nokia's Epic Fall Resource Efficiency: The Sixth Wave of Innovation Innovating in Uncertain Markets: 10 Lessons in Green Tech The Business Models Investors Prefer Y Combinator is Boot Camp for Startups	May' 11 3M's Open Innovation Salman Khan: The Messiah of Maths How to Fire Up the Innovation Engine Stanford's Fresh Entrepreneurship Factory Lessons from Zuckerberg's Personal Innovation Lifestyle How Facebook Hacks its Way to Innovation 5 Common Mistakes Business Leaders Make About Innovation Bamboo Innovation (Chinese Lessons) Future Cities of Innovation Unthinking Machines: Future of AI
Apr' 11 Sparking Creativity in Teams: An Executive Guide Why Most Product Launches Fail The Paradox of Open Innovation: Intellectual Property How the Ivy League is Killing Innovation 8 Ways to Democratize Experimentation How to Institutionalize Inspiration in Your Company Larry Page on Innovation Innovation Lessons from NY City Design Fundamentals from MIT The Evolution of Web Design	Mar' 11 EmTech India 2011: Top Indian Innovators Seven Steps to Better Brainstorming Global Cities of the Future 9 Ways to Test an Entrepreneurial Idea How eBay Developed a Culture of Experimentation 7 Deadly Sins that Choke Out Innovation Can Innovation be Disciplined Without Killing it? Teaching Kids Thinking Executing an Innovation Strategy The China 2.0 Innovation Dilemma
Feb' 11 2011 Most Innovative Companies: FastCompany 50 Most Innovative Companies in 2011: Technology Review Cisco's Virtual Management Lab Why Creative People can Loose Out on Leadership Position A Quirky Way of Innovating Open Innovation @ GE Embedding Innovation in Leadership Four Principles of Crafting Innovation Strategy All Innovation is Personal Chris Anderson: Crowd Accelerated Innovation	Jan' 11 The HBR Agenda 2011 Unleashing Innovation in China The Next Big Thing in Managing Innovation Hotbeds of Innovation Larry Page's Google 3.0 Richard Branson on Intrapreneurship Innovation @ Microsoft How to Transform Good Ideas into Great Research? New Business Models in Emerging Markets Innovation: Made in China

India Innovation Summit- CII- Day- 2

2011-09-14T13:25:00.003+05:30

Innovative Approach for Higher Education and Research

Rishikesha Krishnan, Professor of Corporate Strategy and Policy at IIM Bangalore, chaired the session and observed that Bangalore long had prestigious research institutions like the Indian Institute of Science and several Defense R&D laboratories. But it’s a new generation of relatively young institutions that have the potential to change the innovation landscape of Bangalore. In concluding the session, he observed the importance of integrity of purpose in building strong institutions - there can be no compromise on the core mission of the organization. The experts emphasized the importance of carrying people with them, and infusing a sense of purpose to overcome barriers. They felt that team work was imperative to achieve excellence, and to meet the high bar placed by international competition and societal expectations.
Warren Greving, Director of Srishti Labs, observed that Design Thinking underlies translation of R&D to products and services. He is creating a research school that is part of a design school to design services back to industry, with the considerations being: 1) Importance of creating or recreating new organization; 2) Value of divergent and convergent thinking. Most of what we do is convergent but you need to mix both; and 3) Diversity in India should be a driver of creativity and india has a tremendous asset of it. Often vision needs to accommodate what others have. This would lead to a bigger vision.
K VijayRaghavan, Director of National Centre for Biological Sciences (TIFR), made a call for non-linear research. He said that the British never intended the growth of science in India, and the early scientific leaders – Satyen Bose, JC Bose, Ramanujam, Raman and Meghnad Saha – were accidental geniuses, not the result of deliberate institutional outcomes. India climbed on the Science bandwagon after independence and set up a whole range of new institutions. But these institutions tended to stagnate unless propelled by visionary leadership. Again, success was inspite of, rather than because of, the system. Today, we are entering a new phase of institution building. The people attracted to these institutions have been trained at the best institutions in the world, and now its up to the new Indian institutions to help them achieve non-linear results. On creating a culture of innovation, he said that once you choose, explore the boundary. Leadership should be a lack of repression! Much of what it is now is repression. Another quality- Don't compromise. This should be institutional.
Anurag Behar, CEO of Azim Premji Foundation, gave background about Wipro's initiatives on education and the need to create organizational structures that are aligned with reality. In his view, while we have thousands of schools and teachers, we have not created the education support infrastructure – experts in content, pedagogy, and delivery – that can help the school system deliver effectively. This is the gap that the two Azim Premji institutions seeks to close. Since we have a lag in this area, we often don’t have the resources readily available, and the challenge is to scale up through internal capacity development. A critical element of the APF philosophy is that the concepts and practice have to work closely together – all ideas have to be tried out in the field, not just restricted to academic writing.On people's working style, Anurag opined that Indians work differently. Here focusing on teams is very critical as firms can't afford to have distracting dynamics arising from personalities or credentials. It's the integrity of purpose that bind teams.

Innovations in Healthcare – Technology and Affordability

Ashwin Naik, CEO and Co-founder of Vaatsalya Healthcare, talked about his efforts in creating healthcare facilities in tier-2 and tier- 3 cities and how one needs to rethink of business models when doing business there. With mounting cost pressure, need is to think of services and not just new technology. Rural healthcare emerges as one of the greatest applications of technology, eg: Rural Kiosk.
Arjun Kalyanpur, CEO of Teleradiology Solutions, spotted a huge shortage of radiologists in India, especially in rural parts and devised the teleradiology solution. Sighting instances of current installations and expansion plan, Arjun said that there is process innovation, but also needed is tech innovation, for eg mobility.
Harish Lalchandani. Marketing Director - South Asia of Wipro GE Healthcare, warned that our problematic lifestyle is fast making India the cardiac, cancer and diabetic capital of the world. So stressing is the country's infrastructure. Availability, quality, and cost are the major challenges, so GE mandates that all of these challenges are met in their innovations.

Nurturing Innovation - Country / Region Approach

Peeyush Ranjan, Managing Director, Google India R&D, defined innovation at Google to be "introduction of something new". The 10 rules of innovation from Google are: 1) Hire the best; 2) Empower them - speak up; 3) Put users first; 4) Have a well understood vision; 5) Value teamwork; 6) Share information; 7) Iterate; 8) Be data driven; 9) Provide an escape valve (20% time anyone can do what they need to do); and 10) Persevere (hard work).
Neil Pollock, Head of Integrated Managed Services Business at Bharti, said that nurturing innovation depends upon the way we educate our children. It's about how much you value innovation? It must not be platitudes. If you don't recognize, reward or prize it you will stifle innovation. The earnest thing for creating a culture of collaboration is trust and it's important to focus on retaining talent.
Paul Marchal, Director R&D of IMEC, said that India is in a great need of innovation, especially human-centric, top down, big multi-disciplinary initiatives. Caution- Don't think you are the smartest kid on the block, if you want to nurture innovation!
Deepu Chandran. Director of Innomantra, drew from his practice that even small companies are manage innovation well. Often firms expect people to innovate, but fails to tell how! So the result is chance innovation. Identified ingredients of innovation are: expertise, creative thinking and motivation. Innovation gets killed in firms when people don't know what to do with their ideas.

These were the talks made and insights shared. Now here's some more for you to ponder over:

Innovation is curiosity vs purpose, in balance
If a start- up is not internet delivery model we are ok, but where it has engineering component we are not there
In India, capital comes with advice but expert advice comes without capital
In India, many entrepreneurs do not have field experience at young age which is critical. This may likely end up in a prescription based model rather than a discovery based model for companies
Financing models are not aligned to cash flows in rural areas so innovation is needed in business model
Hire employees to be entrepreneurs, train them and cut them loose. But shelter them in corporate partnerships to incubate entrepreneurship
Research is an enterprise activity, integrate centralised effort with dispersed field efforts

India Innovation Summit- CII- Day- 1

2011-09-14T13:24:00.005+05:30

Inaugural Session- "Making Bangalore the Innovation Hub of Asia"

Kris Gopalakrishnan, the Chairman of CII's Southern Region set the agenda by highlighting the unique position that Bangalore has as an innovation destination. With a proven record in IT/ ITES, the city also has a rich talent for biotech, aerospace and medical education and is a vibrant talent base with presence of various global companies. This ecosystem of collaboration helps connect the dots and with further support from government, the future holds promises of this city and the region. A case in point: in recent past, over 1.5 million jobs got created by the knowledge sector as again 200,000 by all other sectors, combined. The session further reflected on rate of change for India in next 20 years and the impact digital consumer citizens, pervasive computing and flattening of the world will have on new business opportunities.
Ajay Nanavati, Managing Director of 3M India, reflected on Bangalore as a hub of serious innovation in the space of aerospace engineering and biotech. 3M happens to have India's largest R&D center and one of the fifth largest in the world, with the intent of leveraging this center for innovation for India and a hub to take innovation out to the world. The key for successful innovation in Ajay's view was to stick to the investment in good as well in bad times.
Praveen Vishakantaiah, President of Intel Technologies India, furthered the discussion with insights on how various economic cycles help build innovation. There's also a call for innovation at times of low growth.
Sridhar Mitta, Managing Director of NextWealth Entrepreneurs, had a call for diverse talent and its role in promoting innovation. Drawing on a research study conducted at the Stanford University, Sridhar talked about the Silicon Valley vs Bangalore- Israel- Beijing research triangle, concluding that the uniqueness of Silicon Valley may get dwarfed by the diverse talent coming in from this triangle. He concluded the session appealing that chaos is the best time for innovation to emerge.

Bangalore as a Hub for R&D in Asia

Vivek Mansingh is the President, Communication & Collaboration Group at Cisco India, shared that Cisco spends over 4 to 5 million in R&D in India and has over 700 patents from here. The firm has created a conducive environment to perform number of innovation programs for developing products for emerging markets, such as Cisco Campus which is currently being used by Cisco in Bangalore. Vivek maintained that while education is the key the innovation, equally important ingredients are: talent, leadership, physical infrastructure and academia relation. Talking about leadership profile of technology talent- T-shaped competency and soft skills are to be looked out for.
P Gopalakrishnan, Director of IBM India Research Laboratory, stated that R&D in India is 'small r' and 'Big D', but tide is shifting slowly towards more focused research work. One instance being IBM doing remote mentoring - IBM pushes problems that university students can pick up and are assigned mentors - close to 200 people are mentoring teams of 3-4 students, such that it is scalable- and giving guidance on technology and presentation. Gopal also reflected on connecting Physical World to Digital World, e.g. real time traffic modeling, hence applying different tolls suiting Indian conditions.
Shouvick Mukherjee, VP and CEO of Yahoo! India R&D, stated that India needs to transform itself from R&D-centric to Customer- Centric Innovation Hub. This calls for appreciation of market dynamics, insight about the unmet needs and designing a solution from thereon. Shouvick maintained that it's tough to figure out global needs as opposed to being influenced by Indian requirements. Some of the issues remain, such as, talent with domain expertise, people who can think of problems that haven't been solved, opening up to universities and above all- passion. One best practice shared was Hack Programs , where Yahoo! works with startups to benefit from what they are doing and allow the community to leverage Yahoo's platform.

Bangalore – A hub for advanced engineering beyond IT

Ajay Nanavati, Managing Director of 3M India, started this session with the famous quote from 3M "Research is the transformation of money into knowledge. Innovation is the transformation of knowledge into money". He identified 7 habits of Innovation @ 3M, viz: Leadership committed to innovation; Maintain the corporate culture actively (spends 5 -7% on innovation); Broad base of technology; Networking for innovation; Set outstanding expectations and reward; Quantity efforts; and Get close to the customer (capture unarticulated needs and have high tolerance for failure).
Sanjay M. Correa, Managing Director of GE's JFWTC, talked about the focus of the Center on emerging markets, for instance the MAC 400 ultra portable ECG machine designed and developed here in India keeping in view Indian market. This has been a result of structured approach to capturing the Voice of Customer, which contributes to about 90% of contribution to any new innovation (10% being Blue Sky Thinking). In numbers, the center has $200m investment and 1,000+ patents filed.
Venkatesh Valluri, Chairman of Ingersoll Rand, impressed upon building products through innovation convergence. The three phases of innovation as: Innovation through value creation; Innovation through convergence and finally Open Innovation. Productivity earlier was about costs and now it is not about cost. More importantly when you want to reverse engineer and take costs out that is where productivity is seen. One of the best practices shared is: Entrepreneur creation program, where the firm hires talent, train them and then after two years send out so that they create business and IP. Their IPR teams then work to value IPs jointly. This calls for maturity and transparency within the company and in community.
Vijay Ratnaparkhe, President and Managing Director of Robert Bosch Engineering and Business Solutions, defined innovation as new product for Bosch. These could be invention driven innovations or opportunity driven innovations. He talked about nurturing the culture of innovation via systematic creation against specific challenges.

Bangalore – A hub for disruptive innovation – A startup view

Sudhir Sethi, Founder and Chairman of IDG Ventures, started by highlighting the trend that domestic companies are buying Indian products and there's been a increased focus towards developing product for the Indian market. There's been over $ 3.3 billion of venture funding happened in recent years, of which 36% has gone to Bangalore.
Mallikarjun Sundaram, President and CEO of Mitra Biotech, said that it's the ecosystem of companies that drove him to Bangalore from the US. Thought India gives an access to talent from domestic as well multinational firms, the funding market isn't that vibrant yet.
Sanjay Nayak, CEO and Managing Director of Tejas Networks, started with a stark fact that this decade India would be importing over $1 trillion of telecom and networking equipments, making it as one of the largest contributors of trade deficit. Coupled with this large market, India now offers experience in product lifecycle management and serious cost advantage. What ever is done in India is increasingly relevant to both developed economies as well other emerging economies, making this an opportune place and time. Strategy is to leverage domestic market to scale quickly.
Rohan Parikh, Head of Green Initiatives and Infrastructure at Infosys, threw light on Infosys' green initiatives. Instances being: Smart Devices allowing people to monitor and regulate energy consumption via sms, etc and other power saving technologies currently being developed and tested at Infosys.

Seventh India Innovation Summit- 2011

2011-09-14T13:23:00.002+05:30

The Seventh India Innovation Summit, jointly hosted by CII and Karnataka Government, got concluded last Friday evening at Hotel Leela Palace, Bangalore. Attended by over 500 delegates from across the country, the two day event did live up to its expectation of sharing insights and practices on innovation drawn from various institutions, large and small. Though I could not be a part of the event (owing to my end-term exams here at IIM Bangalore), the 'Network Effect' did work. My mentor, GS Nathan painstakingly took notes for me to share with you and help evangelist the spirit of Innovation. I owe it to Nathan.

Kindly share the note within your community. Also feel free to add to it online (at http://cii-innovation.blogspot.com) or by writing back to me on innovation.evangelist@gmail.com. Happy reading.

India Innovation Summit- Day-2 Session-VI

2010-06-22T13:17:00.006+05:30

The last session for the day was themed around: Good Practices on Making Innovation Happen.

The discussion was moderated by Naveen Kulkarni (Director- BD and Research Asia, Philips), on deliberation on some of the good practices of managing an innovation program. On the panel were: Anil Menon (President, Globalization and Smarket Connected Communities, Cisco), Pickhard Friedhelm (MD, Robert Bosch Engg and Biz Soln'), and Prof. Rishikesha T Krishnan (IIM Bangalore).

Anil shared that at Cicso, with over 160 acquisitions done, 90% employees are retained and they look for talent in an acquisition and are very selective while doing so. He further opined that having a good competition makes you better. Creativity is often emotionally taxing and the reason large firms' aren't often innovative is that they are designed to survive shocks, have more to loose, and hence resist change. Their tendencies to slap confidentiality on everything and to keep filing patents without knowing good from bad is not always appropriate. At Cisco they don't spend too much time on making strategies, they start first and then if it succeeds, they make plans to scale. He summed it up well by saying that success is your degree of freedom which comes from what all you have tried (and failed at). Don't fear failure.

Prof. Krishnan picked three instances from India, viz: Tata Ace, Bajaj Pulsar and M&M Shaan. He said that innovation models in india are a mix of- top down, tech + biz confluence and need an ability to manage complex projects. He picked from AG Lafley (Former CEO of P&G)- "do the last experiment first", ie- Know what's not working early. Further the best way to make innovation work is influencing stakeholder systematically.

Pickard from Bosch defined innovation as something which is new as well successful. Pickard proposed that engineers are good at problem solving, don't ask them to identify problems, give them problems to solve. On a question on industry- academia relationship, he said that industry expects basic skills from students and rest gets developed on the job.

Naveen did a fantastic job in moderating the panel discussion and engaging the audience in Q&A session. Sighting instances from Philips India, he stated the role of de-centralized operations in managing an innovation program and the methodical Stage Gate approach.

The session followed by the valedictory session.

Two wonderful days, full of insight got over. I draw a lot of learning from these days and believe the same for you.
Take care and do share your comments.

India Innovation Summit- Day-2 Session-V

2010-06-22T12:34:00.005+05:30

The theme for this session was: Potential for Business and Technological Innovation by Industries.

Focusing on the holistic growth of India, the session featured few of the socio-economic opportunities being explored. Subu Goparaju (Head Setlabs, Infosys) chaired the session.

First up was Anurag Gupta (CEO, A Little World), who showcased his novel micro-finance product- ZERO. Comprised of a mobile phone and a handheld device it's a novel solution currently powering some 60 lakh banking customers across India. The device is solar powered, has fingerprint and voice print recognition, and is a self sufficient unit. The bank is run by women inside the house and is fairly intuitive and safe. With one banking branch for every 35 villages in India, Anurag maintains that India has a huge room for micro-finance.

Ashish Gawade (CEO, BOPEE Innovations) was next. Sighting instances from the research work done by late Prof. CK Prahalad and Manashakti Centre of Peace of Mind, Ashish depicted the wealth that lies at the bottom of the pyramid and the need to enable/ mobilize it.

One of the distinct speakers at the session was Dr. Suresh Deshpande (President IAGES), who spoke about his experience in creating a robotic arm useful in laparoscopy operations. The ingenuity and the intent of Dr. Suresh was commendable while creating Swarm which is far economical than other solutions available in the market. For his emphatic talk and commendable achievements, he received a standing ovation from the audience.

The last of the speakers was Rajendra Pratap Gupta (International Heathcare and Retail Expert), the person who wrote the manifesto for BJP. He depicted the 1/3 rule that he coined sometime back, that pretty much applies to everything in India, ranging from mobile penetration to people in BPL and India's GDP. Through a series of suggestions, Rajendra deliberated on pressing issues including- agriculture, healthcare, poverty and distribution. A talk full of interesting facts.

Subu did a very good job in moderating the panel discussion and keeping the Q&A focused (often a tough task).

India Innovation Summit- Day-2 Session-IV

2010-06-22T12:23:00.006+05:30

The theme for the first panel discussion on day 2 was- Is India Innovating?

It was more than a question. It was a challenge as I Vijaya Kumar (CTO, Wipro Ltd.) likes to put it. He maintains that while India often fails to innovate, Indians do, and it comes from the power of ecosystems. Due to the novelty and visibility factors of products, their innovation is easy to appreciate, while that's not the case with services, making it more obscure. He set the context of the panel discussion around the Innovation Clusters and how to improve the Ecosystem.

The first speaker was Manoj Kumar Mandelia (Founder, Canopus India), a student from IIT Kharagpur. Started by five students from the campus, Canopus focuses on Waste Water Treatment for SME industry and household. Leveraging its patent pending LOCUS technology, the approach uses microbial fuel cells and not just treats water but also generate electricity in the process. Realizing the dearth of treatment plans in India, the team geared up to designing those as well and are now scaling up. Manoj concluded his talk very nicely by depicting the way a great idea loses its advantage from mind-to-market and how often our academic system is responsible for our risk averse behavior.

The next was Paul Basil (CEO, Villgro Innovations Foundation), who presented a very strong case about the big business opportunity existing in villages of India. He stated that there are 600 million Indians dwelling in about 600,000 villages and there's a huge room for creating social enterprises out of these. Through a very engaging presentation, studded with images of ingenuous creations from across India, Paul very effectively brought home the point that a little bit of investment in rural areas can yield rich results. Some of Villgro's investments include: MyIdea Program for students, Seed Funding, Talent Mentoring Networks, InnoHub, Unconvention (innovation awards), Innovation Fellowship Programs, and Teaching Entrepreneurship at schools, among others. A very emphatic talk.

Next came Preetha Reddy (MD, Apollo Hospitals) who gave a very interesting perspective on innovation in healthcare, especially in India. The 4 Ps of health care being: Predictive, Preventive, Personalized, and Participatory. While there are access issues in India, both in terms of physical and financial, India leads the world in low cost, high quality healthcare services. For instance Yeshasvani Healthcare Insurance Scheme where rural people deposit Re 1 covering their surgery cost, and Apollo Reach are ways of bridging the gap. She also hinted at the US learning from India in terms of cutting waste and adopting process innovations in healthcare.

Talking of Innovation in India and missing out Reva, doesn't happen often. It was Chetan Maini (CTO, Reva Car Company), talking about the need to innovate and his vision for EV in India. Stating the ambition of Reva to be earth's favorite Electric Vehicle Mobility Solution company, he depicted highly innovative and contemporary approaches in the making. With 40% of workforce involved in R&D, the key drivers of innovation at Reva are- Strong IP Committee, Rich Consumer Insight, Thinking and Doing Differently, and Value Innovation coupled with High Tech. Chetan opined that often not having a benchmark helps innovation. Talking of the two new products- NXR and NGX-2, Chetan depicted novel additions such as solar roof, advanced telematics, intelligent energy management and low carbon footprint as key. He also illustrated the innovative selling and distributing approaches adopted in London while leveraging online media and teenagers. Chetan summarized it well when he said that in India there exist pockets of excellence, which now need to come together.

Last of the talks came from Arvin Baalu (Head of Engg- Harman India), where he mentioned about the work Harman India is doing to support new product launch, globally. That's like moving up the value chain.

In all a very well moderated session after which the audience broke for tea.

India Innovation Summit- Day-1 Banquet Session

2010-06-22T12:21:00.003+05:30

Exhausted with a day full of stimulation around business, technology, academia and government, the audience needed something different. The banquet session did very much the same. Studded with the likes of Kiran Bedi (Retd. IPS Officer), Sudha Murthy (Chairperson, Infosys Foundation), Shashi Deshpande (Writer), and Raj Kumar Khatri (Commissioner of Industrial Development, Govt of Karnataka) the stage was set for some different strokes.

Moderated very well by Kris, the panel was the highlight of the day.

Narrating instances from her wee days at police, Kiran Bedi stressed upon the need to generate resources without complaining. She urged the audience to focus on what's available and what you want to achieve. Calling policing as 'legal social engineering', Kiran mentioned about galli schools that have evolved to become Navjyoti Community College, recognized by IGNOU. Another being Safe India e-Complaint which allows citizens to file police complaints over the internet. Yet another being India Police which aims at providing education to the children of cops. She appealed to the youth to add something before and something after money, ie. Ethics before making money and a purpose after. And then making money is not bad. In her highly inspirational and candid talk, she said that courage is the single most important element of success. She maintained that Business Schools for the Poor, Community Colleges, and Home Care Industry have a huge potential for propelling future growth.

In her down to earth style, Sudha Murthy confessed that being impractical is her greatest strength and biggest motivation. This impractical approach has helped her build compassion. For her, discipline and creativity aren't opposite, but one drives another. She urged youth to run after passion and not money, as life is a colorless picture and you can color it as you wish to. Having quizzed on work-life balance, Sudha said that one needs to lead a balanced life and discipline helps in doing so. Sudha opined that telling stories and giving real life examples are the best ways to inspire people. While doing so, never be judgmental, let the students derive conclusions.

Shashi furthered the sentiments by narrating her early career struggle as a writer and how persistence helped her reach to this level. She said that writers have a rather tough life owing to little social dealing and often one is left alone. It's only the self confidence that helps sail through. To her, being true to oneself and working for no external reason are important to a satisfying life. She also said that having a compartmentalized approach, one for work and one for family, has helped her largely.

Raj added his experiences too on how vital it is to be driven by the concerns of clients (citizens of the country) while sighting instances from managing the Global Investor Meet at Bangalore. Raj complemented the panelists very well and one could see the sparks flying on the stage.

A brilliant finish to a very insightful day. Thanks CII and all the organizer for such a fulfilling gift.

India Innovation Summit- Day-1 Session-III

2010-06-22T12:14:00.002+05:30

The theme for this panel discussion was- 'Organization and the Creation of Innovation DNA'

Though the word DNA sounds quite loaded, the weight of speakers on this panel did the justice. Chaired by Ajay Nanavati (MD, 3M India), the session revolved around good practices of managing a structured innovation program in a corporate and enabler there of. Ajay started with this cute definition, 'Research is converting Money into Knowledge and Innovation is converting Knowledge into Money'. He outlined the Innovation DNA to be comprising of- a marketplace of ideas; visionary leadership; systematic approach; and collaboration, supported by human and technical skills.

The first speaker was- Andrew J Ouderkirk (Corporate Scientist, 3M), who spoke about the yin and yang of operations execution and innovation entrepreneurship in every successful organization. At 3M, a culture of innovation stems from: Access (to markets and platforms); Resources (including 15% time, funding and network); and Systems (for New Product Introduction, Metrics, and Stores). While depicting the Periodic Table of Technologies, Andy explained the way a technology evolves. This could be evolutionary (expert led), recombinatory (scouts and architects led), or revolutionary (scouts and architects led). These technologies result into a myriad of new products and that's how innovation get managed at the powerhouse.

Next was Rahul Bedi (Director- Corporate Affairs, Intel India), this time as a panelist sharing traits of inspirational leadership. Rahul maintained that at Intel, the two drivers of culture are- Egalitarianism (equality) and Constructive Confrontation (ConCon). The former makes it truly an open door (no door as he likes to say) company, and the latter allows people to debate objectively. He also warned that often visionary leaders might overshadow the company leading to over alignment and deselection of what's not on leader's side. That's what kills diversity. That brings back to the two principles Rahul discussed that shape Intel.

Idit Biton (CMO, Systematic Inventive Thinking), furthered the discussion with a brief introduction about her company, followed by illustrating some principles of creativity. While engaging the audience in real creative exercises, Idit introduced- Subtraction as one of the useful tools for idea generation. The talk brought freshness into the session, not just because of the presentation by a lady (first one since morning), but also because of her ability to involve the audience. A well received talk.

The session was concluded by a brief talk from VR Ferose (MD, SAP Labs India) on SAP Developer Network and some of the work SAP is engaging with partner organizations.

India Innovation Summit- Day-1 Session-II

2010-06-22T11:59:00.007+05:30

The theme for this session was: 'Changing Demographic Profile of India- Role of Youth in Innovation'

The stage was set with people from across age groups. Moderated by Rahul Bedi (Director- Corporate Affairs, Intel India), the panel focused on role of youth in innovation. Rahul started with a candid Q&A with Kaushik Srivatsan (Grand Prize Winner, Intel International Science and Engg Fair). Young Kaushik won everyone's heart with his innocent responses to some real pressing questions and lived through his journey of reaching (and then winning) the grand prize. What stood out was the role of mentors and scope of such engagements.

Next was HK Mittal (Adviser and Head- National Science & Tech Entrepreneurship Development Board). Must be in his 50s, but quite young by spirit, Mittal narrated anecdotes and stories from Indian entrepreneurs in driving the point home that Indians are ingenuous. His was the most admired and engaging talk of the day. He revealed many instances of grassroots level innovations which came from the strength of Innovation Ecosystem and often driven by personal passion.

He was immediately followed by Suhas Gopinath (CEO, Globals), who became one of the world's youngest CEOs at an age of 14. Suhas took the audience through his schools days and interesting moments of his startups journey. What came out was a profound sense of applying creativity and having an ambition.

The last talk came from Shouvick Mukherjee (Head, Yahoo! R&D India) where he discussed about the early days of his working with Yahoo! and how David Filo (Yahoo's co-founder) used to be frugal in innovation spending, but rich in customer insight. In all a well received talk session. Was the time for audience to take another break and be ready for the next session.

India Innovation Summit- Day-1 Session-I

2010-06-22T11:24:00.004+05:30

After a brief tea break, which allowed people to socialize a bit, the first session was quickly on. It was Ashish Chatterjee (Director, Asia Connect + Develop Head, P&G) who set the context on the Power of Networks. While introducing the Open Innovation model at P&G that really opened up the R&D front to over 2 million scientists worldwide, Ashish did very well in providing the structure to the discussion. He talked of three models of engagement, viz: Power of Networks; Collaborative Competition; and Open Source. Power of Networks could be leveraged via- Scouting Teams; Intermediates; or by tapping into Network of Networks. Collaborative Competition can manifest itself on the lines of accruing- direct collaboration, competitions through grand challenges, and for mutual benefits. He also depicted Open Sources instances such as Linux, Human Genome Project and Drug Discovery. A well set context.

The first talk of the panel was by Wolfgang Lehmacher (CEO, GeoPost Intercontinental). Talking about the extent of collaborative innovation at the company, Wolfgang depicted the enablers of innovation as- Local Autonomy; Lean Centre; De- Centralization; Policies, Processes and Incentives; and an Entrepreneurial spirit. He also gave instances of process, product and business model innovations.

Next was Girish Wardadkar (President KPIT Cummins) who illustrated the benefits of adopting an Open Source model of software development and deployment. He presented some very interesting stats from the company.

Now it was the turn of a pharma company to talk about innovation networks. Swaminathan Subramaniam (Director- Licensing and External Research, Merck & Co) laid out the challenges of R&D in the pharma space and how open innovation is getting increased acceptance. The models he depicted were: Leasing and Research Collaboration (19 scouts at Merck globally); External Discovery & Preclinical Science (Virtual R&D); Co-opetiton -I (AstraZeneca and Merck); and Co-opetition -II (Lilly, Pfizer and Merck). He also gave instance of Puretech Ventures where likes of Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, Abbott, Lilly, Pfizer and Merck have come together to develop technologies and machines.

Next talk came from Deepam Mishra (CEO, i2 India Ventures), where he shared his experiences from the trenches in nurturing product development for India, leveraging breakthrough technologies. Allegedly, i2 Ventures exist in a space which is the confluence of market, people and technology, and best way for innovation is proactive deal creation. With a focus on Water, Energy, Waste and Agriculture, Deepam maintained that venture for India come from need driven ideas, aided by technology. The talk followed a round of Q&A, though the questions weren't well articulated, in fact most were suggestions. But in all a well received session. People left of lunch as it was well past 1 PM.

India Innovation Summit- Day-1 Inaugural Session

2010-06-22T10:50:00.006+05:30

The Sixth India Innovation Summit, supported by CII and Government of Karnataka was another confluence of thinkers and doers in the space of innovation. This has been one of the few events in India where a rich mix of youth and experience could be seen. With about 500 attendees, over 20 speakers and two days, the event lived up to its promise. Here's a quick summary of what transpired. For the event log, you can also visit Twitter (CII Summit archives, 140 char at a time, as my friend Hema likes to call it).

The session began after a 20 min delay with Aroon Raman (Chairman, CII Karnataka State Council) setting the context of what to expect from the Innovation Summit. He opined that innovation is one of the world's oldest professions and that it's inherent in human mind to search. The primary objective of innovation in the 21st century would be to address practical problems and have/ share real experiences. With this pretext, he welcomed all to make the most of the opportunity of interacting with a galaxy of stars on innovation and (un)learn.

It was followed by a brief talk by Kris (CEO, Infosys) on the four elements of development in India- Education, Employability, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. He maintained that with over 600,000 professionals working in the city and a very supportive government, Bangalore is fast emerging as not just an IT hub, but also as an Innovation Hub.

The key note of the session was from Ravi Venkatesan (Chairman, Microsoft India). Ravi identified the top technology priorities of Microsoft, viz: Cloud Computing, Natural User Interface; New Devices, Many Screens; and Democratic Access (to IT). Through a series of AVs, Ravi depicted the power each of these technologies possess, and how India is becoming the test lab for such disruptive technologies/ experiences. These include Microsoft Hohm, Windows MultiPoint Server, Medical Bayesian Server, and Project Natal, among others. He also said that, while for the past 20 years the government has allowed the industry to flourish in an untamed fashion, now it is the time for government to intervene and shape policy agenda to enable innovation.

The sentiments were echoed by Murugesh Rudrappa Nirani (Minister of Large and Medium Industries, Gov of Karnataka) as he highlighted the investment done around holistic development in the state. In all it was a very well received opening session.

Themes for the Event

2010-06-14T12:06:00.003+05:30

Here's a quick (tentative) overview of what one should expect at the CII Innovation Summit '10.
Day-1

Inaugural Session- Key notes by Ashok Nayak (HAL); Dr. K Radhakrishnan (ISRO); and S Chandrasekhar (CII Karnataka State Council).
Session 1: The New Models of Innovation- Talks by Ashish Chatterjee (Procter & Gamble); Dr. Swaminathan Subramaniam (Merck & Co); Wolfgang Lehmacher (GeoPost Intercontinental); and girish Wardadkar (KPIT Cummins).
Session 2: The Changing Demographic Profile of India- Talks by Rahul Bedi (Intel); HK Mittal (National Science Tech and Entrepreneurship Development Board); Suhas Gopinath (Blobals Inc); and Shailesh Rao (Google)
Session 3: Organization and Creation of the Innovation DNA- Talks by Ajay Nanavati (3M); Andrew J Ouderkirk (3M); Dr. Md Yunus (Grameen Bank); and Idit Biton (Systematic Inventive Thinking)
Banquet Session: Innovation Beyond Business- Talks by Kris (Infosys); Dr. Kiran Bedi (Former DGP); Boman Irani (Indian Film and Theatre Actor); and Anil Kumble (Former Indian Cricketer).

Day 2

Session 4: Is India Innovating- Talks by I Vijayakumar (Wipro); Arvin Baalu (Harman); Chetan Maini (Reva Car Co.); Raul Basil (Villgro Innovations); Manoj Kuman Mandelia (Canopus India); and Preeta Reddy (Apollo Hospitals).
Session 5: Opportunities for Biz and Tech Innovations by Industries- Talks by Subu Goparaju (Infosys); Anurag Gupta (A Little World); Capt. Raghu Raman (National Intelligence Grid); Mahapara Ali (SBI); and Dr. Suresh Deshpande (IAGES).
Session 6: Valedictory Session- Talks by Kris (Infosys); VP Baligar/ Dr. Raj Kumar Kharti (Govt. of Karnataka); Katta Subramanya Naidu (Govt. of Karnataka) and Aroon Raman (CII Karnataka State Council)

You can also follow the event on Twitter- #CII_Innovation.

Here comes - Sixth India Innovation Summit 2010

2010-06-07T11:55:00.003+05:30

After five very successful years of leading the Innovation Thought Leadership baton, the India Innovation Summit is back in Bangalore. Championed by CII and supported by a range of companies, the Innovation Summit has emerged to become one of the most sought after events of the year. Over the years the event has seen speakers and audience joining in from all over India as well from abroad.

This year's summit is happening over 17th and 18th June at Hotel Taj Residency here in Bangalore. Keeping in perspective the growing prominence of India and other emerging economies on the innovation landscape, the theme is aptly chosen- "Making a Difference in an Emerging Economy".

Panel discussions are around topics pertaining to- New Model of Innovation, Innovation in Social Sector, and Indian Style of Innovation, among others.

As you can see over here the topics are pretty relevant and debatable. Would want you to make the most of the opportunity. To register for the event, click here.

See you there.

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

2009-06-16T15:13:00.006+05:30

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

2009-06-16T14:57:00.004+05:30

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

2009-06-16T14:15:00.004+05:30

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

2009-06-16T13:55:00.004+05:30

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

2009-06-16T13:39:00.005+05:30

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

2009-06-16T10:59:00.002+05:30

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

2009-06-15T15:59:00.005+05:30

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

2009-06-15T15:36:00.005+05:30

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

2009-06-15T15:16:00.003+05:30

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

2009-06-15T14:36:00.004+05:30

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

2009-06-15T13:39:00.005+05:30

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.

Services Innovation- Humanics

2008-06-21T00:37:00.006+05:30

Here's an experience:

Airlines A: Ontime takeoff, ontime landing, luggage on time; studded with technology but lacks human touch.

Airline B: Ontime takeoff, ontime landing, luggage on time; great human touch.

As for the metrics, both score well on all parameter. But which one would you choose to fly with. For me and for Samson David from Infosys, the answer is clearly Airline- B.

Impressing upon the point that customer delight is created not just by Mechanics but largely and increasingly by Humanics.

Customer delight is a three step process that involves: Knowing --> Engaging/ Exciting --> Partnering.

By taking examples from firms such as Lego, Apple, Nike, and a few telecom firms, David drove the point home that how vital is to partner with customers as co-creators.

While attempting this, three questions needs to be answered:

How can I design for my experience?
Are my internal systems aligned to make it happen?
Is my top management game for it?

Remember, customer delight can come from serendipity. It needs to come by design and Humanics goes a long way in ensuring it.

Services Innovation- ICICI Bank

2008-06-21T00:16:00.006+05:30

India's largest private sector bank and one of the most admired firms globally has a lot to learn from in terms of innovation. Madhabi, Executive Director of ICICI Bank shared in a very interesting presentation ICICI Bank's way of inspiring innovation at the firm.

In Madhabi's view: Innovation = Ideation + Execution to Scale

Execution to scale calls in for a culture that would encourage taking risk and processes to contain these. Of the several challenges to successful innovation is- Not Invented Here syndrome, where people stick to their own ideas and aren't open to look outside for ideas and adoption. Another challenges is fear of failure.

Some of the practices that ICICI follows to encourage innovations are:

Copy- cat Award: Awards conferred to best copied ideas implemented well. This helps drive away the NIH syndrome

DNA Award on Innovation: Reinforces innovation to be in the DNA of the organization, that being a separate function limited to a few sets of people.

Idea Laboratory: Employees contribute ideas and gets points against these. Business Units that garner maximum ideas are awarded periodically.

Madhabi opined that what makes services special is the people dimension in it. With very high dependence on people there needs to be high level of discipline. ICICI leverages technology to bring this discipline around processes. Further the process of processizing itself is cascaded across the organization is a cautious and systematic way in a group of 10 to 12 people at a time.

She believes that one of the prime cause of innovation is- Impossibility of Goal. So it helps when people are given impossible goals and giving sufficient resources to strive the achievements.

Instances such as ICICI Direct, Shifting customer from branch banking; increase usage of mobile banking; and introducing banking as a part of curriculum in educational institutes went as some of the best examples of systematic innovation in services leads by ICICI Bank.

Innovation in Emerging Markets- Microimage

2008-06-20T23:59:00.009+05:30

What can a natural disaster do to the survivors?

Inspiration!

This is what Harsha Purasinghe, CEO of Microimage, got when Tsunami hit Sri Lanka and may other parts of the sub-continent. The mega natural disaster changed his life for ever and what he created out of it promises to be an early warning system for disaster leveraging mobile phones.

DEWN, that stands for Disaster and Emergency Warning Network, is Harsha's attempt to minimize loss of lives and property in the advent of disaster.

DEWN leverages existing deployed base of GSM in Sri Lanks in delivering these services augmented with some very intuitive features, all using SMS services. The innovation sets examples in designing and delivering innovation for the emerging markets.

Some of the lessons learnt during the creation of DEWN are:

Using existing technology

Usability challenges

Adoption and implementation of the solution

A confident Harsha talks in length of technology, business model and other enablers around the innovation. All this just needs to be admired and get inspired from. No doubt Microimage won several accolades including GSM Annual Award of Innovation for 2007 and several other awards from National Science Foundation.

Innovation in Emerging Markets- Microsoft

2008-06-20T23:45:00.002+05:30

Dr. Kentaro Toyama, the Co-Founder of Microsoft Research India identified creating technology for emerging markets as one of the key charters of this India lab. On of the areas of focus as a part of this ongoing research is on child education. Dr. Toyama discussed three of the high impact solutions that are been created and successfully launched to address the school based educational system in rural India. These solutions are:

Multi-point mouse system: Here CPU, monitor and key board are shared between a group of students, whereas they would use multiple mouse with a different pointer color.

Split screen computers: Here the screen could be shared between multiple students while they could have individual mouses and keyboards with shared CPU.

Digital StudyHall: This is an attempt to bring good quality level education in digitized format to schools in rural parts of the country. Classes delivered by teachers in city schools are captured and then shared using a DVD player on TV to students in rural schools.

Each of these innovations have been significant in increasing the access to PC for students at a very low cost, thus living up to the commitment on delivering innovations for the emerging markets.

Customer Inspired Innovation- Touching Lines, Improving Life

2008-06-20T23:30:00.003+05:30

The keynote address for the summit came from Dr. Shekhar Mitra, the Global R&D Vice President of Beauty Care, Procter & Gamble where he shared the philosophy, drivers and some of his personal experiences on customer driven innovation at the firm.

According to Dr. Mitra the key principles that drive innovation at the firm are:

Innovation requires a new global view of scale

Innovation occurs at the confluence of ideas

Social responsibility sparks innovation

In an attempt to deliver meaningful and credible innovation to the consumer, the firm relies heavily on stakeholder collaboration at various stages of the consumer lifecycle. And all this is driven by a deep market insight which aids in mapping technology to needs.

Shivakumar

2007-06-15T00:25:00.000+05:30

Country Director, Nokia

At Nokia Shivkumar is incharge of pushing growth in the handset business and supporting other lines of business like networks. Earlier he was the executive director and vice president of Philips India.

Chandra M. Kintala

2007-06-15T00:21:00.000+05:30

Director, Motorola India Research Labs

Based in Bangalore, Chandra Kintala oversees the work of all Motorola Lab Centers of Excellence in India. He is responsible for engaging research with Motorola's businesses units and Global Software Group - the software arm of Motorola India. He is also responsible for Motorola's partnership with industry and academia in India.

Gulu L. Mirchandani

2007-06-15T00:12:00.000+05:30

Chairman & MD, MIRC Electronics Ltd. (Onida)

'Envy, Owner's Pride' is undoubtedly one of India's largest and most recognizable campaign ever. The man behind the success of Onida brand of TVs and now other home appliances is Gulu.

Today Mirc has reincarnated themselves with the slogan- Nothing but the truth. But the devil persists.

Rajiv Narang

2007-06-15T00:01:00.000+05:30

Chairman & Managing Director, Erehwon Consulting Pvt. Ltd.

Founder and CEO of Erehwon Innovation Consulting, Rajiv’s passion and mission is to fuel the growth of innovative leaders and organizations. Rajiv has, over the last 17 years, developed a keen insight into ‘what does it take for leaders and organizations to innovate and grow’.

He is the innovation consultant to the ‘Innovation for India’ foundation and also a member of the managing council.

Venky Rao

2007-06-14T23:57:00.000+05:30

Vice President, Satyam Computer Services Ltd

Venky is a Vice President, Real Time Leadership Center at Satyam Computer Services Ltd and part of his responsibilities include Innovation Enablers full-life-cycle-business at Satyam. His extensive global experience includes most recently as the Head of Cisco Systems global development center in India responsible to start its Indian operations and developing eco-system partnerships.

Subu Goparaju

2007-06-14T23:46:00.000+05:30

Vice President, Infosys

Subu Goparaju is Vice President and Head of Software Engineering and Technology Labs at Infosys Technologies Ltd. He has been with Infosys for the last 18 years. Goparaju has spent more than a decade in IT consulting, project management and solution delivery management.

Subu's mandata is to look at emerging technology continuously and identify ways to explore those for business benefits both for Infosys and its clients.

Dr. C Mohan

2007-06-14T23:27:00.000+05:30

IBM Fellow and IBM India Chief Scientist, IBM India

As IBM India's Chief Scientist Dr. Mohan's responsibilities relate to serving as the executive technical leader of IBM India within and outside IBM. He is an inventor on 34 patents and was named an IBM Master Inventor in 1997.

Don't miss listening to this REAL innovator.

Dheeraj Gupta

2007-06-14T23:18:00.000+05:30

Managing Director, Jumbo King

Called as India’s McDonalds…..Jumbo King is the first institution to wrap and serve Vada Pav. The efforts begun with the simple premise that the common man has a constitutional right to get hygienic food at an affordable price!

Dheeraj Gupta and Reeta Gupta, MBAs, gave shape to their dreams on 23 August 2001 and today Jumbo King has a huge fan following in and around Mumbai.

An inspiration for several such MBAs.

Vinay L Deshpande

2007-06-14T23:06:00.000+05:30

Chairman & CEO, and Founder, Encore Technologies

Vinay heads the firm responsible for the famous creation- Simputer, one of the world's cheapest and smartest computer. His firm - Encore Technologies is driven on a judicious blend of relentless innovation in using technology and exceptional customer service.

Vinay is an MSEE from Stanford University, USA with over 35 years of experience in hardware/ firmware development, and in R&D Management.

Neil Foley

2007-06-14T22:57:00.000+05:30

Senior Design Manager, Titan

Having graduated from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, in 1995, Foley’s professional career began designing bus interiors, and he quickly caught the attention of Titan Industries in 1996, where today he works as senior design manager.

Foley’s dream is to take Indian design to a level that commands international awe and respect. “The cultural influences of my country have a lot to teach us, and pose practical solutions for today’s fast-paced lifestyle problems,” he says.

What do you say.

Mehmood Khan

2007-06-14T19:13:00.000+05:30

Global Leader, Unilever Innovation Process Management, Unilever

Mehmood Khan is Global Leader of Innovation Process Development at Unilever. For Mehmood, what has become prevalent in innovation is the issue of sustainable value creation. His work involves working with people around Unilever by establishing Unilever Innovation Communities across the business as well as spanning across Categories, Brands, Continents and Country boundaries

According to Khan, innovation is about turning creativity in a successful enterprise.

Interesting thought, what do you suggest.

Harish Manglik

2007-06-14T17:25:00.000+05:30

Chairman & Managing Director, Accenture India

With over 25 years of experience as a global business and consulting leader, Manglik heads Accenture's operations in India.

Manglik observes Accenture having a culture of combining innovation, teamwork and global scale to deliver high performance to its clients.

Douglas Solomon

2007-06-14T16:51:00.000+05:30

Chief Technology Strategist, IDEO

Doug Solomon leads technology strategy efforts at IDEO, working with clients to effectively leverage technologies that create both business and social value. In the course of his career, Solomon spent 15 years at Apple where he was senior vice president of strategy and corporate development, at Interval Research as co-president, and at Palm as chief strategy officer, in addition to positions at many other startups and corporations.

More recently, Solomon was vice president of investments at Omidyar Network, helping to develop a diverse investment portfolio to create opportunity for individuals to improve the quality of their lives. He holds a Ph.D. in Communication Research from Stanford University and also has attended the Chinese Language Program at National Normal University in Taipei.

The name IDEO is sufficient. Do listen to this innovator.

Prof. C.N.R. Rao

2007-06-14T15:34:00.001+05:30

National Research Professor & Honorary President & Linus Pauling Research Professor,Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research

Prof. Rao is one of the world's foremost solid state and materials chemists. He has made prolific and sustained contributions to the development of the field over five decades.
Apart from being honored with Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan, Prof Roa is also conferred with Hughes Medal by the Royal Society in 2000, India Science Award (the first recipient) in 2004 and Dan David Prize in 2005, among others.

Do listen to this legend and share your thoughts.

Kris Gopalakrishnan

2007-06-14T15:11:00.000+05:30

S. Gopalakrishnan - CEO and Managing Director, Infosys

The ex- Chairman of CII Karnataka, S. Gopalakrishnan is one of the founders of Infosys. He plays a key role in defining Infosys' strategy and in using technology and innovation continuously to maintain its leadership of the industry.

In his views, "The best way to measure innovation is through patents".

Share your views on Kris' speech.

Innovation Networks and Partnerships

2007-06-13T17:37:00.000+05:30

Solutions and concepts for most innovation needs can be best met by looking at places beyond the traditional sphere. Increasingly, companies are realizing that the innovation potential that lies outside of a company is exponentially larger and often, much more effective & viable than the in-house capability. Innovation networks and partnerships are all about systematically tapping into these external innovation assets.

Innovation networks: Innovation networks bring together either problem solvers or power brokers (who have access to problem solvers) on a single platform so that a specific innovation need or problem can reach out to the best possible solution provider.

Open Innovation ecosystems: Open innovation ecosystems revolve around the philosophy of like-minded organisations with complementary needs being co-located in a single campus/location, pooling manpower and other resources and working together on new innovations relevant to all participants in this ecosystem.

Strategic partnerships: Industry-Government partnerships & Industry-University alliances deliver innovations to solve real-life problems in a model that brings together industrial funding and the best brains together in win-win relationships.

Innovation Tools, Systems and Structures

2007-06-13T17:30:00.000+05:30

What are the various breakthrough tools, systems and structures that have been leveraged to maximize the innovation throughput in organisations? Is there a way to systematically learn and draw out systems and structures from other industries and sectors? What are the learnings (and guiding principles) around customizing Innovation tools and processes for individual organisations?

Some of the tools employed by successful innovators are:

Innovation enabling tools: Systematic innovation in organisations can be driven through focused exercises that encourage the practitioners to think outside the box and look for solutions in places they would not normally look for.

Knowledge management systems: New ideas and learnings developed in-house need to be captured, mapped and made available to everybody else who might benefit from this journey. Knowledge management systems include “learning reports”, technology chat groups, blogs, etc.

Technology mapping: A pre-requisite to driving new innovations is to understand the current state of technology, and also map new “white spaces” where new proprietary innovations are possible.

Commercializing Innovations

2007-06-13T17:28:00.000+05:30

Recognizing the challenge and creating breakthrough solutions is one thing and commercializing Innovation is quite another. The session would primarily evaluate the various go-to-market models for Innovative ideas. What are the learnings, guiding principles and pitfalls around commercializing Innovation? What are the various ways and mechanisms available for innovators to generate commercial value for their innovation? What are the challenges in commercializing innovations –regulatory, infrastructure, Intellectual property, ROI measurement etc that India Inc faces today?

Funding Innovations

2007-06-13T17:26:00.000+05:30

How do organisations create a fund for nurturing innovation? How do innovators & entrepreneurs within and outside the organisation get their ideas/ventures funded? While examining Innovation proposals what do Venture Capitalists and Angel Investors look for? What are the emerging trends in areas like – Concept uniqueness and relevance, Market Acceptance, Business plan – revenue generation, profitability and exit options, and Leadership – Innovators passion, expertise and competence etc? What are the various parameters along which Innovation successes are measured? Given the unknown territory and unseen results how do innovators make their funding propositions more innovation friendly?

Innovation in Large Organizations

2007-06-13T17:04:00.000+05:30

Many large organisations have innovated successfully to catapult India Inc.’s reputation at the global stage. Many others in sunrise sectors like Retail, Health Care, Hospitality and Biotech etc are poised to follow suit. Also, when it comes to functional disciplines, Innovation has transformed the very fabric of these organisations – Manufacturing, Supply chain, Marketing & Positioning, Human Resource Management, Technology etc.

What has made this happen? What have been some of the successes and learnings in stimulating Innovation in Large organisations? What are the paradoxes and dilemmas that these organisations typically face? How do they strategically balance their existing profitable businesses with creating ‘never seen before’ solutions?

Leadership in Innovation

2007-06-13T16:43:00.000+05:30

How do leaders develop create and nurture aspirations, identify breakthrough propositions, unleash the passion and energy in teams, explore new ways and challenge old assumptions/behaviours & mindsets, and identify and build leadership competencies?

New innovations in organisations are primarily driven by a broad innovation culture coupled with top management ownership. Building an innovation culture involves creation of an organisation that is set-up to continuously look-out for new ideas and concepts, either inside or outside the organisation, and reapply them rapidly to drive both incremental and disruptive innovations.

What does an Innovation friendly culture mean? What are the reward & recognition structures? What is the Leadership attitude towards Innovation failure? How the learnings from the failures are crystallized, harvested and made available continuously for the organisation. How is the Innovation culture embedded in the Organisational DNA?

Session Details

2007-06-13T16:06:00.000+05:30

Sessions have been built around 6 Major themes which will take the delegates through various stages in the journey of Innovation.

The inaugural Session talks on 'Innovation in India'. Here we discuss that while mapping the Innovation landscape for Indian companies, what are the critical strengths and limitations that Indian Innovators bring.
It is followed by context setting from Erehwon Innovation Consulting, introducing the concept of 'Orbit Shifting Innovations' whithin Products, Processes, Services and Business Model. It sets the stage of exploring the innovation sensitive capabilities and competencies that organisations today need to master to stay ahead in the game.

The six major themes are as follows:

With subject matter experts, innovation evangelists and practicing managers, the break-out sessions would be full of energy and learning.

What's new in 2007

2007-06-13T15:49:00.000+05:30

The Third Bangalore Innovation Summit has been conceived around a new, powerful and highly interactive format, as it goes beyond listening to speakers. In the true spirit of innovation, the format enables you to extract learning and transfer it to tackle your innovation challenges.

A half day has been allocated for speakers, across diverse industry sectors, bringing alive their innovation journeys complete with learnings and challenges.

In the afternoon sessions, the participants would have a choice to participate in breakout parallel sessions of their interest and value. . These in-depth engaging sessions are an invitation for the participants to better understand the various nuances of Innovation and also be able to generate and crystallize value specific to their organisational need.

Welcom to India Innovation Summit- 2007

2007-06-13T15:41:00.000+05:30

The Third Annual India Innovation Summit, showcases stories in Innovation across the spectrum and helps Indian companies respond to the new challenges and leapfrog themselves into the global scenario: from being peripheral entities to centre stage.
To learn more click here.