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A round table on innovation elicited plenty
of provocative responses from a bunch of corporate India's
knights in creative armour
The subject was innovation, the
setting was a roundtable discussion at the
Tata Management Training Centre (TMTC) in Pune and the
participants were some of the brightest names in corporate
India. Having a cast with impeccable credentials meant a freewheeling
exchange of views on a topic that holds one of the keys to
unlocking India's potential in the global economic marketplace.
Moderated by B. Bowander, director of the TMTC,
the innovation roundtable was focused on India and Indian
companies, but it also took in global developments in the
field, what it takes to nurture creativity, and the practicalities
of making innovation an integral part of everyday operations
in organisations.
Participants
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A. S. Abhiraman,
director, Hindustan Lever |
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Bhaskar Bhat, MD,
Titan |
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Deepak Ghaisas, CEO
(India operations), CFO and company secretary, I-Flex
Solutions |
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M. S. Mithyantha,
VP, Rallis |
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Mathai Joseph, senior
VP,
Tata Consultancy Services, and ED, Tata Research Development
and Design Centre |
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R. Mukundan, COO,
Tata Chemicals |
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S. Ramkrishna, VP,
Pfizer |
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V. Subramaniam, intellectual
property rights consultant |
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V. Sumantran, ED,
Tata Motors |
Moderator:
B. Bowonder, director, Tata Management Training Centre
Innovation
Bowonder: The first issue we would like to discuss
is innovation as a source of competitive advantage. Some circles
speak of India as being far behind, while there are examples
to prove the contrary. We would like to then move on to how
companies can make innovation a part of their corporate philosophy.
Bhat: I read an interesting article that differentiates
innovation and invention. Invention triggers this image of
a mad scientist in a lab trying to develop something, and
it implies that talent and access to a whole lot of knowledge
is essential. Innovation, on the other hand, suggests a mindset
that questions the status quo for a product or process. If
innovation has to be a part of the DNA of a company, it should
permeate the way you produce and market products and services.
Having said that, innovation means different things in different
industries. Innovation in pharmaceuticals may bear little
resemblance to innovation in the fashion or automobile business.
I don't know whether they converge in the same kind of outcome,
processes and mindsets.
Mithyantha: To supplement what you are saying, innovation
is invention plus exploitation. The application of new ideas
need not necessarily be in the developing of a new product;
it could be a new application for an existing product. For
example, farmers in Punjab used a combination of insecticides
to destroy a deadly cotton worm. That's an innovation.
Ramkrishna: India has a cultural problem, in that
we fail to see our own innovations. We devalue the concept
of innovation ever so often; we fail to see that something
which is a product of our genius is capable of having commercial
value. Serendipity is no longer a source for innovation.
Mukundan: Awareness about innovation is pretty poor.
That became apparent recently when we, at Tata Chemicals,
invited some people from the Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad, to do a study of our plant and our processes to
see whether we could do anything innovative. In the first
round itself, they came up with 67 different ideas that could
be patented.
Sumantran: It's probably fair to say that, as a country
and as a culture, we have had a poor track record in invention,
but we have done much better in innovation. Sometimes innovation
is thrust upon us by economic realities. Coming to the auto
industry, it would be unimaginable for us at Tata Motors to
outspend the global big names in terms of cutting-edge R&D.
This has forced us to constantly innovate in terms of technologies
and systems, and I think the observation is quite right that
we don't recognise much of what we do. It's said that nothing
breeds creativity like constraints. The thing to do, going
ahead, is to catalogue the innovations that have happened
and disseminate that information to create awareness.
Ghaisas: I have a different take on this. The pace
of invention or innovation in technology is fast, but their
commercial exploitation is slow. One of the disadvantages
of a networked society is that every innovator is waiting
for somebody else to come out with similar ideas, which are
then combined and made a commercial success. The dot-com story
is a good example. People said in the late 1990s that e-commerce
was possible, but there was a problem with the bandwidth then
available in the country. Maybe we were much ahead in terms
of innovation to make a commercial success out of it. The
pace at which innovations are coming up is fast, but the pace
at which they are becoming successful or commercially feasible
is slowing down. That's happening all over the world in the
IT industry.
Bhat: There is a social and an economic side to innovation.
Ours being a paternalistic society, questioning the status
quo is not easy. Organisations can change this mindset only
through empowerment. Innovations occur at an individual level;
they do not happen at some esoteric 'company' level. Indians
are creative, but whether they translate that into an organisational
benefit by questioning the current status quo depends on the
culture of the organisation and its structure. Empowerment,
encouragement and recognition are needed to build a culture
of innovation into the DNA of organisations.
Mathai: There are two aspects to innovation. The first
we are very good at, which is making things work in the face
of constraints. The fact that business has thrived in India
for so many years in the face of several constraints is evidence
of this. There is another side to innovation, the disruptive
one, which challenges the way you do things. Culturally, socially
and economically, we have been less empowered to take risks.
Sumantran: There's a trend that I'm sometimes concerned
about. Empowerment is certainly important, but there's another
contributor and that is the freedom to think. There is a dangerous
side in our drive for efficiency. Many large manufacturing
industries are not giving their people the time and space
they need to think. We have to ask ourselves if we are allowing
people enough time and resources to truly engage in creative
ideas.
Ramkrishna: If we were to look at two kinds of people
from whom innovations or inventions originate, one is the
conventional or classical concept of an inventor: frizzy hair,
slightly maverick, an intrinsic genius. Then you have a different
set of people who work as individuals but within the confines
of a focus group. They don't have the luxury of any wide-open
system. They operate in fairly pressurised environments, but
some of them are geniuses and do fairly well.
Sumantran: I wonder whether there would be a danger
in identifying two species. Perhaps there is just one species,
with a little bit of that fuzzy hair thrown in.
Ramkrishna: It's probably the personality traits.
One doesn't like to be confined, so will perhaps be happier
in a university setting, while the other takes home the challenge
of needing to deliver.
Sumantran: I would push the point further. There used
to be a time when organisations said quality is the responsibility
of the quality department, but today we say quality is what
everyone should do. If we talk about innovation in the same
spirit, as a state of mind, then it is likely to seep into
every part of the company. It's amazing how much time Japanese
manufacturing companies give their people at the end of every
shift just to talk about what has happened. It's not the unconfined
space a researcher would have, but more like a 20-minute session
to say what went right and what went wrong, or what could
have been done better. This sort of elbowroom has triggered
enormous innovation and productivity in a variety of areas.
I've dealt with colleagues at my old company in Japan and
it is not uncommon for them, for the entire department, to
finish the day and then go to, say, a bar and spend a couple
of hours in a different environment. They are still thinking
and talking about work; that's their creative time and it
shows in their products and systems.
Ghaisas: In the IT industry it's a little different.
I-Flex has 3,000 people and it's an intellectually volatile
mass. We don't differentiate between R&D and line people.
We have an intranet where people can post their ideas. A committee
of seniors goes through these and awards recognitions to those
whose ideas are implemented. That delivers empowerment and
encouragement. The flip side is: how does one keep the balance
between process adherence and innovation? If I do not adhere
to a process and everyone wants to innovate and beat the process,
then that becomes a major task. In the final analysis, the
customer must be happy.
Mukundan: Our dilemma has been how to make people
question the big questions rather than the small ones. One
of things we have institutionalised is the building of linkages
with research institutions that are far away from our workplaces.
We give them projects and ideas to work on that are disruptive
to our processes.
Bhat: Do you really need disruptive innovations?
The way we are organised and the economic output and pressures
of day-to-day work force a large number of incremental innovations
that occur across the length and breadth of the company. First
of all, for disruptive stuff to happen we require a huge knowledge
base. People dealing with current technologies are limited
to that and often do not have the time to acquire new knowledge.
Instead of a few people innovating, if a large number innovate
you create an innovation culture in the company. At Titan,
we want to encourage more innovation in our backroom activities
such as supply chain, production, etc, and not just among
people in marketing and branding.
Sumantran: All problem solving which leads to innovation
starts with how you define the problem. If you define the
same problem differently, you open yourself up to a new set
of solutions.
There is always the balance between the less you know of it
the better, to the more you know about it the better. The
group which subscribes to the former theory is, no doubt,
better at breaking down constraints. If you don't know the
constraints, you see fewer of them. But, by the same token,
for every single disruptive innovation, we need 99 incremental
ones. I guess there has to be a constant balance between not
knowing enough (or not wanting to know enough) and knowing
enough.
In the American auto industry, it is common practice for the
big three manufacturers to send their people to California,
far away from Detroit, and set up an innovation studio there.
They try to populate it with people who have worked in the
industry before, and they give these professionals plenty
of time. They are removed from some of the local constraints
and yet have some relationship with the processes and the
industry. In Europe they would send you to Amsterdam, a freethinking
city where you can have fun and be creative.
Subramaniam: What the IT industry calls skunk works.
Do you think one solution could be to have those who know
very little about the problem listen to those who know plenty
about it?
Sumantran: Actually, you made a very good point.
At Lockheed, they were up against a tough problem and they
sent a team to solve it. This was the time when the aviation
industry was just learning how to manufacture jets. They framed
the problem thus: I want to fly at 100,000 feet, non-stop
for 22 hours and be undetected. This was an aircraft nobody
even knew how to make and Lockheed pulled it off. That's how
the word skunk works derived its origin.
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on August 9, 2004
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