Innovation

Innovation deals with bringing in new methods and ideas resulting in required changes leading to successful innovation. The term innovate derives from a Latin word which means, ‘to renew’. Creativity and Innovation are different in principle. Creativity is the spark and Innovation is the fire in the fireplace which cooks and bakes. Planned innovation requires analysis, systems and hard work. Creativity is divided into four components: the creative person, the creative process, the creative product and the creative environment. Why Innovate? Innovation turns problems and inconveniences into profitable elements of a business. The mightiest of modern organizations have been built in a few short years through the power of information and the human mind. Helping to manage human imagination, to develop creative solutions, will be the secret of winners in the future. Innovation can be seen in every field and every sector. Corporations that adopt innovation as a way of life never need to compete. Theirs is the path where no one has gone before; the path which leads to untold success. ‘There are no limitations to the possibilities of the human mind. Microsoft’s only factory asset is the human imagination,’ Frank Moody.

Innovation

Innovation deals with bringing in new methods and ideas resulting in required changes leading to successful innovation. The term innovate derives from a Latin word which means, ‘to renew’. Creativity and Innovation are different in principle. Creativity is the spark and Innovation is the fire in the fireplace which cooks and bakes. Planned innovation requires analysis, systems and hard work. Creativity is divided into four components: the creative person, the creative process, the creative product and the creative environment. Why Innovate? Innovation turns problems and inconveniences into profitable elements of a business. The mightiest of modern organizations have been built in a few short years through the power of information and the human mind. Helping to manage human imagination, to develop creative solutions, will be the secret of winners in the future. Innovation can be seen in every field and every sector. Corporations that adopt innovation as a way of life never need to compete. Theirs is the path where no one has gone before; the path which leads to untold success. ‘There are no limitations to the possibilities of the human mind. Microsoft’s only factory asset is the human imagination,’ Frank Moody.

Culture of Innovation

The culture of innovation in large companies is always a systematic long term process gradually involving all key players in the company through small commando teams of between 5-7 people. Beginning with building the intangible positive field, it involves the systematic practice of thinking tools, the formula for thinking out of the box. The tools are embedded like gems in the necklace of the positive field. Regular practice of the tools makes them a part of your mental software. It becomes as much a part of you as breathing. To think systematically, every day is not a normal habit. One has to make the effort. Involving others makes it easier because thinking as an interactive activity is far simpler than thinking alone. The ping pong of team interaction helps keep new ideas in the air, while developing them. As in weight watchers, the support of the team is critical for sustained innovation. Some people ask, how one can go through this whole process and get any work done. The answer is simple. While learning to drive one has to keep so many separate actions in mind. But once you have learnt to drive, most of these actions become automatic. Often, you are almost on auto pilot, as you think of the day ahead. The same thing happens once the process of Innovation and the thinking tools are internalized.

The Road Map to Transformation

 To create an initiative to be led by team leaders and their ideas, so that their youthful, proactive innovations can transform the organization creating a positive climate and using the 47 thinking tools.  The present system is geared to do the opposite: it seeks to fit them into the existing traditional system.  There is also a need to take senior and middle management along if this is to work. Mentors should be part of the process of innovation.  An Innovation champion will be chosen from the group, who will steer the Innovation Initiative facilitated by an Innovation Trainer.  Innovation Stars will be made responsible for innovative actions. This will be a part of individual KRAs with feedback and rewards systems.

Enhance a Positive Field

• Light a fragrant agarbathi or use an aroma therapy diffuser. • Open all the windows and let in the sunlight. • Call a friend who really likes you and just bathe in the unconditional positive field of friendship. • Turn on your favorite music and let it pour over you and into your mind and heart. • Try to organize a car pool or transport van for team members. • Organize an outing with the team. • Organize joint shopping expedition for a limited value. • Eat together during lunch, specially for a weekly treat. • Have a well-decorated office. • Organize a movie screening.

Everything Changes

The first rule of innovation is ‘everything changes.’ A block of ice becomes water and later rises up as vapor in the unlimited sky. Air and water and ice are essentially the same. Let us consider the changing nature of life. Should furniture and living space change as a child grows from babyhood to a teenager? The height of beds, the handles of cupboards and doors should take into account the eye level and hand level of the growing child. Barrier free spaces in public places will be needed by the physically challenged as well as the changing demography of rapidly aging populations. A more human approach is architecture for the blind, where sensory signals can be felt with the bare feet or hands, like you feel typewriter keys with your fingers, is essential. A paraplegic once reminded me that I was a TAB – Temporarily Abled! Anytime, any place, can signal the first time we become physically disabled. Michelangelo was once asked how he created all those wonderful statues. He said, “I have never created a statue in my life. I just stand in reverence before a block of marble, when it arrives from the quarries of Cararra. For I know within every block of marble, there lies a statue waiting to be liberated by the touch of the Master’s hand.” So too, within every space, lies the possibility of a masterpiece, emerging with the touch of an artist’s imagination.

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!

The mind is the greatest resource needed for innovation

With mental capability, there are few limitations. Overload a machine and it can break down. Even computer chips have their speed limits. Resources can run dry. However, if we can help people make better use of their minds, the returns are immeasurable. The mind computer has the capacity to store an equivalent of 7550 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Scouting other industries

Studying the methods used in other industries is a method of importing ideas from a totally different field. To proactively network with totally different industries can spark off extremely innovative ideas. In a very successful turnaround, an Indian scooter company borrowed ideas for its dealer outlets from high fashion retailers in Paris.