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

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

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

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

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

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

Three key points from the session were:

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

And that was the end of two eventful days.

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

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

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

A brilliant context setting!

The speakers for this leg of the event were:

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

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

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

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

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