Thinking outside the box

Breaking the boundaries and thinking outside the box can have interesting results. Space is often treated like a closed box. The Japanese poets have always spoken of the skyscape and trees and landscape as being part of the living space. Designs should celebrate the sky and trees that surround the space. Consider the concept of stress free architecture. Old Indian village homes had a pot of water at the entrance, to wash your feet and face before entering. How would it be to walk through a water channel as you enter a house? The Japanese who have a culture of discipline where one rarely disagrees with an elder, have punching bags in their offices with increasing levels of daily stress and long working hours; I would recommend a stress busting corner in every working and living space. A place to absorb earth energy by walking barefoot on a safe, springy patch of grass. A central space in skyscrapers, where trees can grow and birds can sing and sunshine can pour into the hearts of concrete jungles. I still remember the circular shape of a hospital in Mangalore, with a garden and flowing water in the middle. “No one can get well, if they cannot see the sky, smell the flowers and hear the flowing water,” said the chairman of that hospital.

INNOVATION IN LIVING SPACES

Peter Drucker in his classic work on innovation speaks of a real estate company which became a success in a depressed postwar market. It was in the aftermath of the Second World War. Nobody was investing in buying new houses. Young people, just married, were particularly averse to investing in a home. Till a young real estate genius became a runaway success in a depressed postwar market. He did not sell houses, he sold dreams. He sold a little 200 square feet studio apartment with a 2000 square feet blueprint of a dream house. “Build your dream home as and when you can afford it, in modules,” was the message. He used the concept that people invest in dreams rather than immediately visible, touch and feel products. The innovation tool, ‘Turn it upside down’ (TUD) helped me turn a major corporate hospital brand from a place of illness to a sanctuary of wellness. The same hospital taught me that the most important part of a place of healing, is not the floor, not the walls, not the counters. These things were important to caregivers who were on their feet, vertical to the floor. But hospitals are built for patients – most of whom are horizontal, on their back, lying on beds, looking at the ceiling. One of the hospitals where special care has been lavished on the ceiling is the Singhania’s hospital in Kota, Rajasthan. The ceilings are a blaze of color. Collages are created out of broken marble chips. What must have started as an attempt to practice economy, has resulted in a masterpiece to keep patients as happy and amused as the changing patterns of clouds in the sky!

Cross Functional Teams (CFT)

These teams help break down turf protection. However, they need to be carefully managed. Just including people from many departments does not automatically make a CFT more effective. Too much information can just confuse everybody. Clarity of goals and top management support as well as recognition and rewards are critical to the process. Managing cross-functional teams is one of the challenges of new product development. Yet, how members from different functional areas come together, interact, and arrive at consensus, is a poorly understood process.

Flexibility and adaptability is key to Innovation

Adapting to change and proactively responding to opportunities are daunting tasks. Top management needs to handhold teams through these risky processes. Failures need to be dealt with in a way that protects and encourages risk taking. Only CEOs can provide the time and resources required for companies to be outwardly focused, scanning the environment of competitors, customers, academicians, suppliers and even different industries. Such companies have a better chance of becoming innovation stars. CEOs can provide courage, zest, enthusiasm and speed to the whole organization. It is this energy that will drive an Innovation Initiative. Large, traditional companies have a tendency to become more bureaucratic. Bureaucracy produces politics, red tape and power struggles. People find a hundred rules to protect themselves from acting. This can repress the natural energy and enthusiasm of the organization. CEOs can prevent this deadening disease.

Water and Flowers

The most beautiful and common expression of God as an artist, is seen in flowers. Today, Scott Kelly Commander of the International Space Station tweeted a photo of a yellow Zenia, outlined in red! Last year he grew lettuce in space! Flowers and water have a symbiotic relationship. You need water and sun to grow flowers. Consider the rose All that is precious and rare must be protected. Like the rose. A rose will bloom only when it is cherished. When it receives the benediction of rain and sun. When it is wrapped in the love that guards it against pests and the harshness of the elements. It needs to be carefully and regularly watered. You cannot forget any more than you can forget to feed your gold fish. If you do not want to lavish so much care on your garden, get yourself a gaudy patch of sun flowers which bloom with loud and careless gaiety. Happily insensitive to the most hostile conditions. But remember a rose can fill your days with a fragrance no sunflower can aspire to. On the other hand there are other plants which will flower only when they are not watered. One is often reminded, especially by those who have never had firsthand experience, that hardship refines the soul. I found this difficult to believe until I started growing bougainvillea. This hardy shrub flowers only when it is starved. In the midst of the hottest summer in April and May, it is not watered for a week. The leaves grow yellow and fall. The branches stand gaunt and ghostly in the pitiless sun. After these weeks of this stern discipline, it is watered twice a week. One morning I noticed tiny buds blistering the tips of every stem. The I began to water them profusely. Three weeks later the garden was a blazing dazzle of colour. Branches of multi-coloured flowers exploded on every branch in an incredible celebration. Then, it rained. All the earth was green with rejoicing. But the flowers of the bougainvillea began to drop in great unsightly handfulls. Till not a single flower was left. Leaves covered very limb, but not a single flower appeared. Somehow there is always something flabby in those who have never known the exhilaration of the struggle. There is a loss of the sharp – edged flash of brilliance that comes only with the conquest of unbeatable odds. Achenyo Idachaitra, from Bayeku, a riverine community in Ikorodu, Lagos, Nigeria, has turned the deadly plant, the water hyacinth, into a thriving business. Living in a rural community, criss crossed by Nature’s bounty of running water, she watched God’s gift being destroyed. The fishing industry crippled chocked water ways and transport destroyed, by a devilishly beautiful plant, with gorgeous, showy lavender flowers, called the water hyacinth. The Igala language has given it an unforgettable name: ‘death to mother and child’ (Kp Iye Kporia). Others call it the Devil’s weed. She took action: a. She got into the waterways and harvested the water hyacinth b. The stems were dried c. She then contacted the Sabo community, who taught her to weave the stems into ropes. Malam Yahaya, who spoke only Hausa, taught her. Today she has a flourishing business which makes, pens, table ware, purses and tissue boxes from the water hyacinth plant. The same killer weed is now called ‘provider of food for mother and child’. Flowers and water are beautiful and create wealth. Rekha Shetty Water Warrior