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Krishnan on Innovation

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About innovation pioneers, fast followers and defenders

Krishnan Naganathan

Jan 12
5 min

About innovation pioneers, fast followers and defenders

Innovation can be a key driver of growth for businesses and organizations. It can help organizations introduce new products or services, improve existing ones, and find new ways of operating that increase efficiency and competitiveness. Innovation can also help organizations adapt to changing market conditions and customer needs, which can be especially important in times of economic uncertainty or disruption. Even though there are forces other than innovation that can drive

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Do you really need external advice on innovation management?

Dec 8, 2022
4 min

Do you really need external advice on innovation management?

Check out this recommendation before you speak to a consultant When I joined the consulting industry, my guru's taught me an important lesson. They told me that clients are of three distinct types Those who don't know what changes are required Those who don't know how to change Those who don't have the capabilities and resources for the change In the first case, clients may be proactive or reactive. Proactive clients are those that are looking at the future and are purpose-dr

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Ensuring Desirability, Feasibility and Viability in Innovation

Dec 1, 2022
5 min

Ensuring Desirability, Feasibility and Viability in Innovation

The words innovation and creativity are often used interchangeably. Are innovation and creativity two different things? If so, what is the difference? Should we be bothered about the difference? The dictionary definition of creativity (taken from thesaurus.com) is below. "Creativity: the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.; originality, progressiveness, o

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9 Stages of Innovation

Nov 6, 2022
6 min

9 Stages of Innovation

9 Keys for innovation from idea to scaleup The opinion and belief of many are that innovation is a game of chance. They believe that a large number of innovative ideas are likely to fail and only a few succeed. This is the result of the belief that innovation is an output of the "Eureka moment". This is arising from the belief that innovation is a result of emotional creativity, either spontaneous or deliberate. Subscribers to the theory that creativity drives innovation, bel

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Corporate strategy development led by scenario planning

Oct 6, 2022
3 min

Corporate strategy development led by scenario planning

In his book “The Concept of Corporate Strategy”, Andrews (1987) defines corporate strategy as the pattern of decisions in a company that determines and reveals Its objectives, purposes, or goals Produces the principal policies and plans for achieving those goal Defines the range of business the company is to pursue The kind of economic and human organization it is or intends to be and The nature of the economic and non-economic contribution it intends to make to its sharehold

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Different strokes of innovation

Aug 1, 2022
6 min

Different strokes of innovation

What can we learn from innovations in photography? Taking a photograph of your little daughter cutting cake is a breeze today, whip out your phone and you are ready to shoot a nice picture and post it on Instagram. However, it wasn’t so easy in the past. Photography was a specialist business. You needed to be a professional with large equipment and specialist processing techniques to take photographs. This made it expensive and a luxury Kodak changed it with the films and the

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Is innovation a process or an outcome?

Jul 28, 2022
3 min

Is innovation a process or an outcome?

Why do we need an innovation strategy? During my conversations on innovation, I have come across two common questions. Isn't innovation a process? Why is innovation strategy required when we already have a business strategy? In this blog, I have attempted to clarify these two questions. Is innovation not a process? Innovation is most categorically an outcome! The ISO 56000 standard refers to innovation as a new or changed entity, realizing or redistributing value. It includes

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Need for open Innovation in the Indian auto industry

Jul 20, 2022
4 min

Need for open Innovation in the Indian auto industry

Henry Chesbrough wrote one of the defining research articles on open innovation in 2003 (MIT Sloan Management Review, April 2003). Unfortunately, the industry hasn’t internalized and adopted this approach in India so far. This blog explores Chesbrough’s original work in the context of the Indian auto industry. Chesbrough defined 3 broad roles and identified 8 different types of innovator profiles. The three broad roles are innovation funder, generator and commercializing idea

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Ideation Sprint

Jul 4, 2022
4 min

Ideation Sprint

Ideation is not equal to creativity Shark tank is a wonderful television program and seems to be inspiring a lot of corporates to emulate it. But as things go, its absolutely the wrong way to drive innovation in an organization. Surprised? Shark tank is the best example of a linear approach to ideation and innovation. You evaluate a number of ideas and select one of them or a few of them based on the "sharks" judgement of the value. Unfortunately, in most organizations, there

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Innovation Diagnostic

Jun 30, 2022
2 min

Innovation Diagnostic

What is stopping you from innovating? Analysis of data from over 5000 organizations that have taken the InnoSurvey(R) reveal common 8 blockers to innovation The organisation either lacks a clear innovation strategy or it misses clear goals and direction leading to a lack of faith in innovation Large organizations tend to prioritize current business and current year over long-term thinking They fear failure and avoid dealing with uncertainty and risky projects (and innovations

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The 3 Horizon Approach to Growth

Jun 30, 2022
4 min

The 3 Horizon Approach to Growth

Do you have a portfolio of initiatives that cover both today, the future and the space in between? The three horizons of growth was proposed by Baghai, Coley and White and published in a book The alchemy of growth (1999). It is a framework that has served well over the years. Bill Sharpe presents the three horizon framework as a futures tool, a tool to drive transformative change (Three Horizons: The patterning of hope, Bill Sharpe (2013)). In a world which is facing massive

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Using scenario planning to create your future

Jun 29, 2022
5 min

Using scenario planning to create your future

The speed of change, especially climate-related, means that the future of the planet and companies are changing very fast. How does your future look? Scenario planning provides the answer. Can you predict the future? Most likely we will fail. But we could always prepare for possible future scenarios. Just like Royal Dutch/Shell did in the 70s. In the late 60s and 70s, Shell developed a method called "scenario planning". Planners carried out in-depth analyses of possible futur

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Do you have a narrative for innovation?

Jun 14, 2022
3 min

Do you have a narrative for innovation?

Most successes, if they have to be recounted, start with a story that goes "once upon a time ...". Here is my little story. In 1997 I was offered a role that I didn’t apply for. I visited Castrol as a customer from Ford, one of the QS9000 audit firms that invited us to witness their QS 9000 audit. At the end of the audit, I was explaining to the Castrol leadership the reasoning behind some of the requirements, that Castrol was not meeting. At the end of the audit, Mr Ram Savo

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What's keeping CEO's up at night: Insights from C-Suite Challenge 2021

Jan 27, 2022
4 min

What's keeping CEO's up at night: Insights from C-Suite Challenge 2021

2021 saw the developed world and some of the developing countries succeed with the massive rollout of vaccination to deal with the COVID pandemic. The end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022 is bringing renewed optimism that the worst of the pandemic might be over and we are entering the phase where the pandemic turns endemic; milder infections that can be managed without lockdowns and disruptions. In this context, the C-suite challenge 2021 report from The Conference Board pro

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Ensure your offerings are relevant in the market

Jan 18, 2022
4 min

Ensure your offerings are relevant in the market

I was recently asked for advice by a friend regarding buying a DSLR camera. He was getting a wonderful offer. He always wanted to take photographs like the pros with big lenses. After going through the needs, we concluded that despite the DSLR being a fantastic offer, it made little sense to buy. A great product at bargain pricing, but completely irrelevant to the customer needs. The digital camera industry is going through such a transformation phase. We have manufacturers p

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Doing Things Right and Doing the Right Thing

Dec 14, 2021
4 min

Doing Things Right and Doing the Right Thing

In 2006, Nokia commenced production of its mobile phones in India with a lot of fanfare. They brought in the best manufacturing expertise, implemented lean manufacturing, had an excellent supply chain process. Very soon Motorola would set up a factory very close to them as well. It was indeed a moment of pride for Tamil Nadu and Chennai. However, Apple, a company with no record in the mobile phone business, was set about disrupting the industry. In 2007, they launched the iPh

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Puppetry of Innovation - Distinguishing features of innovators who drive growth through innovation

Nov 15, 2021
3 min

Puppetry of Innovation - Distinguishing features of innovators who drive growth through innovation

Puppetry remains a fascinating art, a thoroughly enjoyed event that has few masters. You marvel at the skill of the artist in manipulating strings and wonder what sort of genius it takes to do it all. A master puppeteer will tell you that it’s all a science and not sorcery. It takes years of practice, understanding how the strings work when it’s pulled and mastering the angles and science behind the strings. But then you also require the ability to build a great story that th

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Puppetry of innovation - Introduction

Nov 15, 2021
3 min

Puppetry of innovation - Introduction

Puppetry remains one of the fascinating art, a thoroughly enjoyed event that has few masters. You marvel at the skill of the artist in manipulating strings and wonder what sort of genius it takes to do it all. A master puppeteer will tell you that it’s all a science and not sorcery. It takes years of practice, understanding how the strings work when it’s pulled and mastering the angles and science behind the strings. But then you also require the ability to build a great stor

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Gathering New Ideas to Drive Growth

Nov 12, 2021
3 min

Gathering New Ideas to Drive Growth

When I see the advertisement from one of the online investment platforms like Groww etc., I wonder why this didn’t come from an established player. I am sure boards of their competitors must be wondering why they didn’t introduce the new product or service that has hit the market from an unknown company. I am certain that these organizations spend time on strategy, generate new growth ideas, have “innovation” as a priority, have a digital transformation agenda etc. Yet, break

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Strategy and Strategy Making

Sep 14, 2021
4 min

Strategy and Strategy Making

The CEO of one of my SME clients remarked at the end of our engagement that for the first time he realized strategy could be a process! Coming from a person who had an MBA from an IIM and one who was looked up to by many other SME owners, it surprised me. Later when I became a member of a network of SME owners, I was far better prepared to explain my work. Many would ask what do you mean by strategy and strategy making? To put it simplistically, strategy is the decision that

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