The value of inventive services from BusinessWeek’s Innovation and Design Portal

“It’s the biggest part of the economy these days, but many companies’ innovation remain focused on products. Here’s why that needs to change.

Finally, research and development groups don’t tend to exist in most service companies. This makes it more difficult for innovation expertise to find a home. By comparison, product-based companies regularly invest billions to understand where their future revenue streams will come from.“

Observe what is with undivided awareness.

BusinessWeek Special Report: Complete List of Articles

Get Creative!
How to build Innovative Companies.
“Listen closely. There’s a new conversation under way across America that may well change your future. If you work for Procter & Gamble Co. or General Electric Co., you already know what’s going on. If you don’t, you might want to stop what you’re doing and consider this…“

Old Needs, New Ideas
“Paradigm shifts have not just replaced products, they’ve revamped the markets the items sell in. Take a look at some of these transformations…“

Bringing Innovation to the Home of Six Sigma
Says GE CEO Jeff Immelt: “We want to make it O.K. to take risks”.
“Jeff Immelt is creating a stir at General Electric Co. (GE ) Through the years, GE has produced a string of superlative results using precision management tools such as Six Sigma and by giving execs rich incentives for efficiency. Now Immelt wants to turn GE’s buttoned-down ranks into a legion of innovators with a flair for creative thinking. He spoke with BusinessWeek’s Diane Brady about his experiences and his expectations.“

Section on Innovation and Design on the BusinessWeek website. They call it the Innovation Portal. Great news for us!

A Creative Corporation ToolBox
BusinessWeek Special Report on Doblin

What this means for me, as an innovation consultant with Optimus Solutions, USA, is that we are doing it right! BusinessWeek talks of how companies like Optimus are using anthropology and ethnography to help client companies get more innovative – CUSTOMER-CENTRIC INNOVATION is what we call it at Optimus. Our Innovation WorkGroup is headed by David Wittenberg who has been practicing the above since the last 30 years! So it’s definitely not “new” but it’s a great feeling to know that companies are waking up to this approach instead of the “3-Day Workshop on Creativity” approach.

At our recently initiated Indian office, we are already talking to three of India’s leading organizations in various sectors, how Optimus can help them get innovative and have results to show too.

The biggest contribution of this BusinessWeek article is going to be “CLIENT-AWARENESS”. For sometime now, we [the innovation consulting fraternity] have been involved in trying to determine how to make a case for innovation at companies who aren’t convinced. Don’t get me wrong, the typical workshop approach has it’s merits – it increases employee awareness about the concepts of innovation and creativity – but doesn’t really contribute to the organization directly – meaning bottomline.

Like everyone else, since I too am a user of various products and services, I know that if a company [who's products / services I used] picked my brains, they’d probably get some good ideas on how to improve their offering. The latest example being the online networking portal openBC – as a user / member I had ideas and they were enthusiastic and receptive enough to ask. Result: they’re working on functionalities that other online business networking portals might not even be dreaming of.

For more on Optimus: Visit their website.
For more on openBC: Join my network! and visit my Business Networking Blog
For personal attention: E-Mail me!

A few thin slices of Malcolm Gladwell From Powells.com

“The Tipping Point is the biography of an idea, and the idea is very simple,” Malcolm Gladwell assured readers early in his hugely successful debut. “The best way to understand the emergence of fashion trends, the ebb and flow of crime waves, or, for that matter, the transformation of unknown books into bestsellers, or the rise of teenage smoking, or the phenomena of word of mouth, or any number of the other mysterious changes that mark everyday life is to think of them as epidemics. Ideas and products and messages and behaviors spread just like viruses do.“

Robert Paterson’s Radio Weblog has a nice summary of the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. So if you haven’t had time to read the book, I’d suggest you go through the summary.

Chennai: There was no dearth of talent in India but the future of Information Technology was in innovation, NASSCOM President Kiran Karnik said today.

In his keynote address at the annual HR summit here, he said there was a need to change the process itself. While companies could sustain in the short term by making available cheaper and better products, it was imperative for adopting innovative methods in their practices for companies to sustain in the long run.

Mr Karnik said since innovation had to come from young people, it had to be bred at the university level by providing the right atmosphere and making available the right input.

Marketing and monetising of such innovation must be possible, he said and called for greater interaction and mutual cooperation between the industry and the academia.

”Incubate and foster innovations, which is valuable in terms of economics and how to bring to bear the industry’s expertise on innovation gains importance.” Confirming an enthusiastic response from the academia, Mr Karnik said NASSCOM had signed MoUs with AICTE and UGC, giving momentum to its ”IT Workforce Development Initiative.” From the industry’s point of view, he said the need was to work with academia for its own interest.

On the government’s role, he said while funding was welcome, the government as a facilitator, could also provide the cushion of rules and regulations periodically for enabling the forging of private and public partnerships.

Anna University Chancellor D Viswanath, in his address, highlighted that the fundamental resource was in having a knowledge pool. Like a harbour providing a base for flow of goods, there was a need for a knowledge harbour.

He said focus areas would be communication, perfect management and resource management and train adequacy to excellence through these qualities.

Universities like Anna Varsity could contribute through activities like internships, post-doc programmes and data sharing to cater to global increasing demand by providing adequate supply of young talent.

From NewKerala.com