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The key to adapting and succeeding in any environment
Managerial leadership in modern business environment Increased complexity, contextual unfamiliarity and knowledge intensity in firms today Necessity of leveraging managerial leadership qualities.

Playfulness
Playfulness is one thing that helps connect disparate pieces of information into winning ideas. It is simply the ability to play with information combine, connect, twist, cut and paste it in myriad ways. This ability just develops from having a sense of humor about things, a certain sense of adventure and the need for variety. Playfulness is a state reached by being open. But it is more than just openness because it has this little ingredient of imagination that separates the playful from mundane. These four simple attitudes can dramatically change the organizational climate creating an environment, which enables creativity and innovation. This ensures that all available knowledge is connected in new ways and gets converted into brand new ideas.

Creative Capability
This is where it all comes together. Coming up with new ideas is all about linking insights, concepts and facts in a unique manner. Creative ability represents just that the ability to connect pieces of knowledge in a completely new way. There are two parts to this capability; one is the ability to bring together two or more pieces of knowledge in a novel way and two, putting in place the enablers that let this happen. For the first ability there are a whole range of techniques that organizations can adopt. The second is about putting processes in place.

Techniques
Ideation is usually treated as a black box. The output is evaluated and the process is often seen as a mystery. But if novel ideas are a result of linking insights, concepts and facts in a manner not done before, then a set of techniques can be developed. One of the most popular techniques is called ‘metaphor’. Here, two very different concepts or themes are forced together and this results in a very different view of the world. When Honda was developing a new car for Asia, they used the metaphor of ‘automobile evolution’. This resulted in the concept of ‘man maximum, machine minimum’. The new Honda City is the proof of this concept. Another more radical technique is ‘reversal’. Here opposites are brought together; the Saffola positioning is an example of this technique - oil that is actually good for the heart. Reversal can be a radical technique for both product development and communication. Then there are also techniques like ‘association’. In this, one concept is associated either with a related concept or radically, with a random concept. The techniques illustrated here are only a small fraction of the established techniques in use today.

Communication
The big challenge in a large organization is to facilitate the process of knowledge sharing both within and from outside. IT is a great enabler and a lot of companies use it to share information across functions. Intranet sites in organizations link people, so do bulletin boards and emails. Intranet can also be devices of sharing information from the outside world using web links.
Organizations should encourage both formal and informal channels of information sharing. Informal networks can be great repositories of information as well as fountainheads of innovation.

Innovation Space
Space for innovation is relevant both in the spatial-temporal sense as well as in the sense of providing people with enough sense of security to innovate. In the spatial-temporal sense it implies that in the daily pursuit of efficiency and reliability managers lose the focus on innovation, hence a special space needs to be created where innovation can happen, Organizations have experimented with lounges, special time zone, informal groups, project teams etc. The process that suits the organization best needs to be picked up and implemented. Creative capability is all about making it possible for many kinds of knowledge to come together to create now ideas. The few pointers given above certainly help in that endeavor.

Conclusion
The capability perspective on innovation accomplishes something important; it converts innovation from a process to a resource or competence that organizations can deploy to take care of short term or long-term exigencies. What it also means is like any other resource innovation capability needs to be maintained and enhanced because like any other resource or competence it can deteriorate if not reviewed & revised. Organizations that take this view are building a source of lasting competitive advantage. The building blocks of this capability are equally important and on their own can be sources of advantage. Together they form an unbeatable combination. This is becoming increasingly indispensable in a world where the rate of change itself changes at a mind-numbing pace.

The first concept that we talked about is that novel ideas come from linking facts, insights and concepts in a unique manner. A great example is the iPOD. Based on a consumer insight that consumers increasingly want music to be easily available, want a large range of choice and want to be able to personalize their collection, the iPOD has changed the face of portable music. This need was manifest in the fact that a large number of consumers were using computers to listen to music. The other implicit insights are on the design value of personal products, ease of use, the need to de-mystify technology and the fact that music on the move is already a market. Which was the manufacturer, which could have delivered this combination? Apple. They had significant expertise in technology and design. The key difference was that they added knowledge from the consumer world & looked beyond their traditional consumer base. This combination proved unbeatable. A clear example of innovation capability enhanced through greater knowledge capability.

Being open, aware, curious and playful can result some great innovation. One example is the invention of the microwave oven, something, without which the modern kitchen cannot be imagined. Microwaves were used in radars in WW II by Britain to spot Nazi planes. Percy Spencer who worked with Raytheon Corporation (large defense suppliers) discovered that microwaves melted candy in his pocket. Raytheon as an organization was open and playful enough to take this though forward and run experiments which proved that microwaves heated up food more quickly than normal ovens. In 1954 Raytheon launched their first microwave oven for institutions. These were as large as a refrigerator! But by 1967 the technology had been perfected for domestic use and the first domestic microwave oven was launched.

Marketing Examples:
Expanding knowledge capacity is a sure-fire way of innovating. The Ford Ikon launch campaign is a case in point. Ford gathered consumer knowledge to ensure that it got the right positioning of the car in the consumer’s mind space. The first step taken was to move beyond demographic positioning. A large-scale psychographic segmentation study was carried out, which threw up six psychographic segments of the target customer demographic. This was coupled with another stream of knowledge that was consumer feedback on cars driven in car clinics organized by Ford. The Ikon came across as an attractive and peppy vehicle in this research. These two pieces of information were put together. The target segment chosen was ‘full of life’ and ‘affluent Puppie’ (the Punjabi Yuppie!). These were the people who worked hard, played hard and enjoyed what they did. They needed a car to match this lifestyle. This target segment also turned out to be the trendsetter segment in the car market. Ikon fitted these segments well and the ‘josh machine’ campaign was just a logical extension of these platforms. The campaign was very innovative and a great success because for the first time a car manufacturer was positioning a car not on features but on lifestyle and attitude. The Ikon also quickly became a market leader in its segment.

Manu Parashar is an innovation consultant and the CEO of Gone to Fish – Innovation Consultancy. He is based out of Bangalore & has 9 years of sales & marketing experience.

manu@gonetofish.com; www.gonetofish.com

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