INNOVATION: Move Ahead,
Stay Ahead
Germin G.
Espino
Every
industry is defined by a few players who are bold enough to take a different
direction and able to define their history and that of their industry's. For
them, Innovation is the rule and not the exception. Finding ways to improve
present performance is an obsession by every member of the organization.
Simply
put, Innovation is 'doing better'.
There are
key characteristics to company with culture of Innovation. They keep
challenging the status quo, have a deep and intimate understanding of their
customers, and are resolved to make a difference at any cost.
Challenge
the status quo. To some organizations, success can be a cause for
failure. Being complacent with success eliminates the urge to improve the
present condition. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a
common mindset for companies who have reached the top of their success, but
somehow lost their leadership over some new players with a different view on
continuous success.
Before
the advent of personal computing, personal digital assistants and word
processing machines, Smith Corona was the industry-leader in the
manufacture and supply of typewriters. Smith Corona started all the new
technologies in the early 80's and sales grew to over USD 500 million in 1989.
They partnered with Acer computers for very short time but later ended the
partnership after declaring that typewriters will continue to be a huge worldwide
market. Wrong! In mid-90's, Smith Corona declared bankruptcy while Acer became
#4 in personal computing manufacturing. Such a big fall-down as a result
of being complacent.
Meanwhile,
Acer's founder Stan Shi, the father of Taiwan's technology went on to continue
the company's quest for finding new ways to improve technology. Acer is a
symbol of how an organization can buck conventional wisdom and succeed. By
being critical of the present condition, Acer's culture of continuous process
improvement lead to various inventions that are recognized in the world.
Deep and
intimate understanding of the customers. The continuous challenge
to the status quo must start from an urge to improve the delivery of a service
or product to the customer - internal or external. Knowing the basic needs of
the customers will give a company, possibly the same basic needs that everyone
else can provide. However, companies that lead the industry thrives on giving
customers more than what they explicitly wants. These companies provide
products and services that customers can't articulate but implicitly need as
manifested by behavior, purchasing patter or body language.
A US
retail giant and purveyor of membership shopping - Costco, revolutionized
shopping by going against conventional method of organizing the supermarket
layout. It is a common reason to organize a retail store according to the
customers’ perceived order of importance. The logic is to make shopping easier
for customers thus making them shop more. Wrong again! Costco knew too well
what the customers buy using their POS (Point of Sale) systems. Knowing the
'must-buys' of their customers enabled them to know how to place these items at
the far end of the shopping floor. Since these are 'must-buys', customers weave
through several aisles of other items and pick up other items along the way.
Thus increasing ticket purchase for every shopper. Genius.
Resolve
to make a difference at any cost. One of
India’s economic giant, who has been in a wide range of industries such as
power, airlines, automotive, steel mill and many others, is 117-yer old Tata
Group. Tata is a perfect example of an organization with clear focus on
innovation.
The company’s pursuit of leading technologies through
innovation starts from its Chairman Ratan Tata who believed that innovation
must be built-in with the DNA of the organization and not just a company
slogan. Thus he mandated all company presidents to be the champions of
innovation in their respective operating companies.
Regular Tata Group Innovation Forums (TGIF) which is
participated 12 top executives of the whole Tata Group. The objective of the
forums is focused on formulating new and different ways to deliver products and
services to the consumers. Disruptive thinking is encouraged and even
applauded. It is in one of the TGIF’s where the creation of the $ 2,000 Tata
Nano car was conceived.
Even regular employees of Tata are mandated to
devote 5 of his 45-hour work-week on personal projects that is geared towards
discovering innovative products and services. All employees’ performance
includes Innovation as a key performance indicator. This culture of innovation
contributes to more than 10% of Tata’s annual revenues of over $ 6.0 B.
As companies moves ahead, innovation will be the
vehicle by which all of use and cultivate as an organization. Staying ahead
will require that the organization adapt a mindset that “we can do better than that”. Any innovation efforts must present how challenging the convention, creative understanding of customers and
perseverance can produce brilliant and yet practical ideas.
With teamwork, creative minds and perseverance,
Innovation is a powerful tool to make a company move ahead and stay ahead.
