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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Insulin to treat diabetes had been in use since 1920s. While there was constant product development, including the massive one of genetically engineered “human insulin”, the massive transformation happened when the customer experience was addressed through the Novopen. A women doctor, a mother of a diabetic child, was the driving force to the discovery. Fed up with the poor experience of administering correct dosage and the associated difficulties, her unflagging collaboratio

Lessons for corporates on innovation Ola, a company that started as a copy of Uber, launched its electric scooters on Independence day. Now what is interesting is the size of the ambition and the feature set of the vehicle. Plenty of people will say that it is early days and Ola has to prove the quality and reliability of the product and pull off the volume projection. It’s worth reminding that people were similarly sceptical of Reliance when it ventured into oil refining and

I was lucky to be in the audience and hear Sridhar Vembu of Zoho talk about the priorities of Indian companies and the nations as such. Sridhar has led Zoho to become one of the leading lights of Indian software companies, not because of cost efficiency, but due to product innovation. His company outperforms Indian software giants on value-added per employee, a testimony of its innovation prowess. Sridhar contends that our nation is slipping as businesses aren’t focused on th

Magnus Penker has a habit of saying that all Hollywood stories have one of two themes; a stranger comes and changes things or you go on a journey and change things! Innovation is very much like this story. You can wait for someone to come and disrupt your business or you can go on a journey and create the disruption. You have the choice to play the victim or be the protagonist. The choice is yours! We find that it is not very difficult to become the disrupter. All it takes is

Traditional approach to strategy management in business organizations refer strategy to mean corporate strategy (“What business should we be in”) and business strategy (“how shall we compete in this business”) Other references are classified as functional strategies. However, we are discovering that innovation and innovation strategy is now a very critical part of corporate and business strategy. The pace with which markets and businesses are getting disrupted, the lifecycle

In organizations there are many things that you have to execute and some things for which you have to build capability. Take for example market research, it’s a very important activity for quite a lot of organization. However, rarely do you need to build an organization capability to carry out market research. In a similar vein, you get advertisements designed and executed, you don’t build an advertising capabilities. In both these examples, you need a few experts or resource

Throughout my life I have been a voracious reader. As a kid, I took to reading history and books on the world war (non-fiction books) were my favourite ones. Subsequently, I took to reading science fiction and spy thrillers. One of the interesting things I found in many spy thrillers was a curious topic of papers being written by ignored analysts about future or emerging scenarios. In many novels, these neglected papers would come to haunt the decision makers and the hero in

We have had a year of pandemic and a new financial year has started in India. As a leadership team you would have probably gone through a strategic planning process and developed a strategy as well. Does your strategy go beyond business planning for the year and look into your future? Well if you are unsure, check out if these elements are addressed (thanks Magnus Penker, your book is a classic on this topic) Scope: Does the scope of your strategy include the following? Core

Organizations are spending enormous resources on “digital transformation”. Do we understand what digital transformation means and how this enables innovation? This blog is an attempt to create clarity on the topic. Gartner provides a good definition for multiple terms when it comes to anything related to digital Digitization is the process of digital enablement or converting analog (paper based) into a digital format. This could be data and forms as well as process. ERP is pr

This is part 3 of a multi part article. Read earlier parts here - https://bit.ly/3s2T7PH and https://bit.ly/3dMGvqG Every organization wants to innovate and the boards are very supportive of innovation efforts. But how good are you at recognizing the smoke that indicates that innovation is now a priority? An analysis of the great organizations that have failed to survive disruption in their industry, will show that even great organizations can fail to see the danger signals o

This is part 2 of a multiple part article. Part 1 can be read here: https://bit.ly/3s2T7PH Every organization wants to innovate and the boards are very supportive of innovation efforts. But how good are you at recognizing the smoke that indicates that innovation is now a priority? An analysis of the great organizations that have failed to survive disruption in their industry, will show that even great organizations can fail to see the danger signals or grab disruption opportu

Big organizations appear to have everything that takes to succeed with innovation. They have resources, they have leadership bandwidth, they have a brand, they have customers to provide insights and they quite often generate great ideas. However, very few organizations seem to succeed with innovations. Startups on the other hand have little resources. They lack the people strength of large organizations, they struggle to reach customers, they don’t have a brand recognition an

Part 2 on removing serendipity in innovation The key to innovation is a process of marrying ideation and commercialization and is about matching a problem and solution. Any innovation, hence, involves deep knowledge of both a problem and a solution. Innovation can be classified into two broad categories, push innovation and pull innovation, based on where you start from, problem or solution. If an organization identifies a real customer problem/need first, and then search for