Innovation for growth Excellent firms do not believe in excellence only in constant improvement and change - Tom Peters

s Success is never final said Churchill. The same is true for all changes, it is never final but an ongoing fine tuning towards excellence. Innovation should permeate all levels of an organization if it has to stay ahead of the competition in a liberalised era. Competition has become the key to the survival and growth of business. The company will not be able to sustain a business on a long term basis unless it becomes highly innovative. Innovation is defined as a creation of new things which have some commercial significance. Innovation can be in terms of development of new technologies or new process or in policies and practices in different functional areas such as finance, manufacturing and personnel. In short, innovation can be in any part of a business but all contributing to improving its growth and competitiveness. Innovation, in products and markets which has long term strategic implications for the organization, is the most important type of innovation for value addition and satisfy the customer needs. Companies which are innovative by habit believe in total innovation covering all sections of the organization and are likely to have quick reflexes to tackle competition. Companies which think innovatively, do not need a long set up time to find solutions to tackle challenges. Innovation takes place regularly in companies following innovative strategies. Innovation is an on-going process of continuous improvement. It has been seen that mostly the MNCS which are driven by their world-wide process, have been at the fore front of innovation. Many Indian companies are focussing on innovation through design or R&D route. Whatever the route, the companies may adopt, innovation is a discipline that needs to be studied and deployed in a methodical manner. If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude -Colin Powell In the twenty first century, there has been a paradigm change in business scenario in a decade than it once did in a millennium. In such a global hyper competitive, highly dynamic and fluid business scenario, we can not afford to walk on the beaten path but to strike new routes, not to benchmark but to be benchmarked and to be second to none. No matter how big or powerful a firm may be today, it is sure to be left behind in the race by newer healthier and more efficient firm if it does not pursue continuous improvement by innovation. Three elements for innovation Inquisitiveness Innovation Initiative Figure 1 Figure 1 represents factors influencing the innovativeness Creativity

Reward Performances Effort or intention Figure 2 Work Motivation model by Smith and Cranny. Satisfaction

Rewards and recognition have become a major motivating factor for innovation development. Development and sustenance of innovativeness is an organization requires the management to reward worthy people. To sustain innovativeness amongst employees it appears to be necessary to introduce them to the market and expose them to the competitors i.e. thereby not letting them to sudden shocks of market effects. Inquisitiveness Innovation + market competition Innovation Development Creativity

Initiative

Many companies already have suggestion schemes for introducing improvements in all its facets and are suitably rewarded and recognised. Without continuous improvement in every sphere of human activity, human societies would have become stagnant. It is the relentless pursuit in quest for excellence that has made so many achievements possible. Gurudev has eloquently brought out the need for relentless striving for excellence in Gitanjali .where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection. Sustenance of growth in any company depends on the culture of innovation by continuous improvement. Suggestion schemes, Kaizen, Quality circle, zero defect concept, six sigma, supply chain management, enterprise resource planning, and knowledge management, statistical process control, total preventive maintenance are some of the technical tool for innovation development for the roadmap of growth of an organization. Doblins ten types of Innovation Finance Business model How the enterprise makes money? Net working How your value chain and partners make your offering distinctive? Process Enabling process Assembled capabilities, you typically buy from others Core process Proprietary process that adds value Offering Product performance Features and functionality

 Product system Extended system surrounding an offering Service How you service customers Delivery Channel How you connect customers to your offerings? Customer experience How you create an integrated experience Brand How you express your value to customers Measuring ideas heat index: Incremental Economic value (IEV) (the sum of the increased revenue or decreased costs associated with each innovation type) divided by Reference Value (RV) (what customers pay for the next best alternative) is equal to Economic value estimation (EVE). Doblin and monitor have developed a simplified version of the pricing tool economic value estimation to calculate by innovation type, how much increased value your idea offers over what is already available. Anything below 1.1 would be cold and anything less than 0.75 would be a non starter. The more ways, in which your idea is innovative, the better able it is to stand up to competitors offerings. According to the research ideas that innovate in six or more areas are well positioned for success. Fewer than three types and your idea is cold; chances are it is not distinct enough from products already on the market. References: Harvard Business Review May 2011-07-13 Growth July Sept 2006 Indian managers.