Electronics as Bare Necessities in India: A New Sectoral ‘Innovate in India’ Paradigm

Fitbit is the hugely popular global manufacturer of fitness band and activity trackers. It has recently launched through Amazon in India its fitness watch Fitbit Blaze at Rs 20000 (USD 300). In US it is sold at a maximum of USD 200, with deals in shops like Best Buy dipping the price lower. Fitbit Charge HR is retailed at USD 225 (Rs 15000) in India, compared to USD 125 in US, promotional pricing being USD 100. Microsoft Surface Pro 4 in its mid-range specification (i5, 4GB, 128 GB) costs Rs 90000 (USD 1400) on Amazon India which is the price in US of the top rated Surface 4 Pro (i7, 16 GB, 256 GB) model. Similar is the case with all other electronic products, from smart phones to flat televisions and from washing machines to refrigerators, whether they are wholly imported or made in India.

A UHD curved television costs Rs 300000 (USD 4500) in India while in the US a comparable model costs USD 2500. The usurious pricing of Apple electronic products in India is well known.  It cannot be said that the rather high pricing that prevails in India is only due to import duties, if any. Customs duties on different types of products range from 6 percent to 28 percent, duties on parts being on the lower side. Samsung claims to make its latest range of Galaxy S7 smart phones in India; but they are priced no less with prices upwards of USD 800, a near 50 percent premium on corresponding unlocked models in US. Clearly, whether imported into India or made in India, electronic products seem to have their own premium pricing logic. The economics of electronic products need greater research, it appears.

Bare necessities

Someone must really put their pencil and pen to paper to understand the economic travesty of electronics in India. A pencil in India is probably 10 percent of the cost in US and a pen is probably 20 percent of the cost. There is no reason why we should not aim at cheaper pricing for electronics products in India, in terms of purchase power parity. Given that the exchange parity between US and India is 66 to 1, the impact of high pricing of electronic products on the consumer surplus in terms of broader ability to purchase more necessary products is evident. The price premium (over above the basic benchmark price) that is embedded in one electronic product such as a smart phone (which may be say, Rs 25000) sucks away the money that could be spent on 333 rice packs of 1 kg, 100 knowledge books of Rs 250 each, 12500 A4 white sheets, 2500 ball pens of Rs10 each, subscription for 5000 issues of daily newspaper, or an angiogram, in a manner of speaking.

The comparison is not to suggest that people of India should shun electronics. A nation, in contemporary and futuristic times, can only grow when it is electronics-oriented. However, it must just not be through only consumption of electronic products (that too imported ones); it must be through design and manufacturing of electronics products, from multiple base chips to a range of products in India. A review of history of developed nations suggests that only those nations which balanced competencies in electronics and non-electronics could become

 leaders in industrial development. The point is that electronic products must also be designed, manufactured and sold in India in a manner as natural as any of the bare necessity products. Electronics is no longer a luxury class of products; it is a class of bare necessities!

No more monopolies

There was a time in the 1980s when the semiconductor industry was dominated by Japanese manufacturers such as NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, Fujitsu, Mitsubishi, Matsushita, Sony and Panasonic. From the 1990s, however, Intel began to dominate the chip industry, partly abetted by Japan’s strengthening Yen. In the 2000s, it came to be believed that Intel and to an extent AMD only can dominate the chip industry. India, apart from failing to see the importance of a domestic electronics base, lacked the confidence to establish such an industry for want of basic research base in semiconductors. However, other manufacturers in US such as Qualcomm, Micron, Broadcom, SanDisk and Nvidia and manufacturers from Korea such as Samsung and SK Hynix began researching for newer chips and started dominating the chip manufacture. Part of the decline came from a dip in personal computer chips but the more significant decline was because of Intel’s misjudgement on the growth of mobile devices and the need for customized mobile chips.

At another level, monopolies in manufacture of electronic products got dismantled more decisively even earlier. Korea, followed by Taiwan and China started manufacturing a range of electronics equipment, including more lately tablets and smart phones. Japan, of course, maintained its pioneering dominance in electronics while European countries which were early pioneers recovered and kept making progress with renewed technologies. Throughout all this, China has emerged as the world’s chosen base for electronics manufacture, irrespective of the brand, so much so they have by now established their own status independent electronics producers (Lenovo, Haier, Huawei, TCL, ZTE etc.,). That a Chinese company (Foxconn) has become a white knight for a Japanese company in deep trouble (Sharp) shows the extent to which China has matured in electronics.  India has missed the boat during this period.

Ways to go

India has the promise to be the next hub for electronics manufacture as China has been a couple of decades ago, notwithstanding the missteps even on the few first steps such as Nokia Park. Notwithstanding this, Foxconn has signed an agreement with Government of Maharashtra to set up a USD 5 billion electronics manufacturing park. There are two routes to spur electronics manufacture in India. One is to encourage contract electronics manufacturers such as Foxconn to set up their manufacturing bases in India. The parallel step is to encourage electronics giants such as Sony, Panasonic, Samsung, LG and Apple to set up their own manufacturing bases in India. Both these strategies are likely to lead to a good multiplier effect on the industrial economy of India with newer component bases, newer manufacturing processes, and large number of jobs. What happened in automobile industry can be foreseen in electronics too in India. That may not be the whole story, however. 

The key to developing an electronics base lies in research into new materials, and new processors. Samsung has over 500 patents on graphene, the new material for a host of futuristic technologies. Similarly, global giants have patents on other materials belonging to classes of metals, polymers and biomaterials as well as wearables, sensors and other futuristic gadgets. Water and dust resistant smart phones use materials that conduct signals but do not allow water in their openings. Now, Apple would like to use a material that makes antenna holes invisible. It is difficult to conceive of developing new electronic products without developing new materials. For example, a new development in wearables envisages wearable skin-like polymer. Manufacturing of new electronic products under contract or captive use is one great leap for India but development and manufacture of new materials and new components would be an even greater leap.

100% research

China and India achieved major milestones in manufacture through 100 percent special economic zones for manufacturing. China has, however, gone forward by facilitating exclusive zones for innovation research and demonstration. There are 14 such zones in China now. China has also promised minimal governmental intervention in such zones and research endeavours.  In 2006 itself, China identified lack of indigenous technology intellectual property and indigenous innovation as two major national problems. A nationalistic Chinese government declared in 2006 that without independent innovation, China would be unable to claim an equal place in the world or achieve national honour. Apart from providing financial grants and incentives to encourage R&D, Chinese government openly traded access to the vast Chinese market for technology transfer by MNCs. In fact, as many as 400 of Fortune 500 firms have their R&D centres in China.

Interestingly, China has provided targeted support to key emerging industries over the last decade. These are electronics, supercomputing, semiconductors, digital machine tools, robotics, and more recently nanotechnology and rare earth materials. China has also relied on overseas Chinese diaspora in the fields of science and technology to lead such innovation efforts. India needs to develop a completely novel innovation strategy which has path-breaking elements. The following are suggested: (i) complete electronics value chain, from chips and semiconductors to electronic devices and electronics in other devices, (ii) Internet of Things, (iii) new materials (iii) nanotechnologies (iv) wearable technologies, and (vi) autonomous devices and equipment. The current strengths in information technology, heavy industries, capital goods and other industries must, of course, be continuously reinforced with new innovations.

100% research will happen with 100% support from public and private sectors, and all scientific and technical personnel in India and abroad. Governments in India are pooling or providing thousands of acres for airports, seaports, roads and conventional industries, and even financial cities and capital cities which support construction activity and provide direct employment generation. A few thousand acres must be allocated for National Innovation Centres for setting up world-class laboratories in the above areas, and provided free of charge in exchange with equity ownership, with returns expected from commercialized technologies through equity ownership. Governments, public sector corporations and private sector companies must also start making bold moves by acquiring stakes in overseas technology companies developing leading edge technologies. Electronics and electronic products in their various hues are the basic necessities of life, and require dedicated focus, investments and nurturing by all stakeholders in India. Otherwise, Indian economy will continue to fork out huge premiums on imports, and more importantly will not be able to fulfil its true scientific and technical potential.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on May 29, 2016

     

Do Rules Help Innovators? A Practical Paradox for the Digital Age

In the domains of strategy and innovation, the book titled “Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators” authored by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, Professors at the Tuck School of Business, (Harvard Business School Press, 2005) provided an interesting thesis, ten years ago. The book was inspired by the authors’ belief (shared still by the author of this blog post) that innovation is at the core of economic vitality as it drives growth, creates jobs, builds wealth, provides purpose to employees and revitalizes organizations. The authors, in their work, held that innovation would enable companies to simultaneously enhance society and increase profits in two ways of improving productivity and commercializing new products and services. According to the authors, knowledge of the genetic code served as knowledge of the fundamental rules that guide human behaviour. Genetic code is, as then and to date, researched to cure illnesses more effectively, seek immunity from disease proactively and hopefully resist or reverse the ageing process itself. Ten years after the postulate in the book, human genetic understanding continues to hold promise with sporadic discoveries on the above lines.

Vijay and Chris proposed strategic innovation as the organizational code for exploring a set of experimental strategies that could help corporations reduce dysfunctions, sustain growth, and lengthen the average corporate life span beyond that of a human being. The authors held that strategic innovation differed from continuous process improvement, process revolutions and product or service innovations in that, unlike others, strategic innovation would involve unproven business models. Strategic innovation would be successful with or without the three other types of innovation, they held. They also cautioned that strategic innovation offered major challenges to entrepreneurs and professional CEOs, in terms of one-time career challenges in starting and growing a new company as part of, or distinct from, the core established company. The authors proposed ten rules for success of strategic innovation, therefore. Ten years after the postulates in the book, a wave of start-ups with disruptive business models and technologies validate the need for strategic innovation but also challenge us with a leadership paradigm that goes beyond any classic rules of innovation.

The ten rules

Vijay and Chris considered the case of innovation being driven by a new company (NewCo) set up by a big parent company and argued that the middle phase that would exist between ideation and execution required the typical NewCo to forget or unlearn some past practices, borrow the good practices and learn new relevant processes.  The organizational DNA comprising staff, structure, systems and culture was proposed as the compelling inner logic. All the rules, the authors stated, reflect learnings from various case studies of strategically innovative (but also challenged) companies that form the core chapters of the book. They proposed that understanding the relative roles of creativity (typically required at the beginning) and execution (typically required at the end), and the need for identifying the process of strategic innovation through the middle of converting ideas into actions.  The base assumption of parent-child relationship in fostering innovation limits the canvas of strategic innovation, however.

The authors, in their last chapter, distilled and emphasized ten rules (that are summarized herein), rule 1 and rule 10 being general rules. These rules are prescriptive as well as cautionary.  Rule 1 states that in all great innovation stories, the great idea is only Chapter 1. Rule 2 is that sources of organizational memory are powerful. Rule 3 is that large, established companies can beat start-ups if they can succeed in leveraging their enormous assets and capabilities. Rule 4 states that strategic experiments face critical unknowns. Rule 5 is that the NewCo organization must be built from scratch. Rule 6 is that managing tensions is job one for senior management. Rule 7 states that NewCo needs its own planning process. Rule 8 cautions that interest, influence, internal competition, and politics disrupt learning. Rule 9 suggests to hold NewCo accountable for learning and not results. Rule 10 is that companies can build a capacity for breakthrough growth through strategic innovation.

Ten years later…

As observed in the beginning, the book by Vijay and Chris was published in 2005. Today, in 2015, we witness a completely new dimension of innovation. Facebook founded in 2004, Twitter founded in 2006, WhatsApp founded in 2007 and Uber founded in 2009 as well as iPhone launched in 2007, which together represent a completely new dimension of start-up innovation bring into question some of the rules detailed in the book. Ten years later, there is now a clear recognition that strategic innovation, deploying disruptive technologies and disruptive processes, has already rewritten the rules of innovation. These start-ups which grew in less than a decade into mega phenomena (including the earlier ones such as Google and Amazon) came into being with no parentage or legacy and no prior brands or resources to leverage. They had nothing to forget and nothing to borrow from any established entity and everything to learn and everything to execute from their own inspiration. And, some of them have been dazzling successes.

Recognizing what a fresh mind and innovative thought can achieve, the start-up ecosystem has been attracting some of the largest investments ever. The start-up wave has clearly been raising in India, long seen as a country of professional preferences for the tried and tested as well as safe and secure options. While there are certain bubbled up expectations, there is no doubt that not only individual firms but also whole segments of industries (be it the Internet or Biologics) are being built on, and around, start-ups. The sentiment even among the large corporations seems to be to neither compete nor mimic start-up characteristics in their established ecosystems but instead let start-ups come up their own way and acquire them at an opportune time. We have two challenges now, relative to the base case with which Vijay and Chris started a decade ago. The first is that start-up firms need rules that help them make them successful. Secondly, both the large and start-up firms need helpful rules of engagement in the event of acquisition or merger.

The new ten rules

Ten years later, the rules of strategic innovation, according to the author of this blog post, need to be completely different. These are as follows:

Rule 1: Innovation does not necessarily come from new discovery; it would emerge from digital development of physical and biological processes. From email which digitized physical mail to Uber which digitized taxi hiring, digital face of innovation is evident. 

Rule 2: One has to only look around, but extremely perceptively, for the multiple opportunities that exist for strategic innovation. Every physical or biological activity will one day or the other ‘virtually’ mapped to a digital activity. Keeping a health track of biological parameters is just the beginning.

Rule 3: The route to innovation in the digital age is not necessarily perfection; once the core clicks, the rest easily falls into place. Twitter moving from mere text tweets to hashtags and vine is an example.

Rule 4: In the new age, collateral earning capability of a strategically innovative platform is as important as the fulfillment of core business need. Each product or service tends to be a purveyor of social networking. On-line newspapers are an example.

Rule 5: Strategic innovation may have several chapters but passion is the binding thread of all the chapters; from idea to delivery, through several chapters of execution. When passion starts ebbing, practicality, including sell-off, begins as can be seen from the increasing trend of early sell-out of start-up stakes.

Rule 6: Strategic innovation may be aided by establishment of R&D Centres and creation of Innovation Offices but it is nurtured only with an organization-wide culture of innovation. The inner DNA of an innovative organization condones failure as much as it seeks success.

Rule 7: Unlike established organizations where management’s primary responsibility is to resolve intra-organizational tensions, the primary responsibility of managements of experimentally innovative businesses is to resolve the tensions between themselves and their investors. The issues faced by certain start-ups are reflective of this.

Rule 8: Frontend digital innovation can come about only when there is someone to back it up with innovation in both back-office and shop floor. Without huge fulfillment centres and competitive products, for example, it is impossible to snap billions of deals!

Rule 9: Innovative organizations must be established and run almost as academic laboratories where the talent has no obsession other than bringing the products and services through successful pilots, betas and eventual commercialization.

Rule 10: Whether it is portfolio investors or established companies, the firms betting on strategic innovation should aim at more than one initiative of strategic innovation, for in respect of some, others could be ahead of them, and in respect of others, their own initiatives could be ahead of time. 

 

The rules reflect the reality that while digital is the new dimension of strategic innovation, digital alone cannot provide the complete solution. Classic corporate stuff, from physical brick and mortar to human aspirations and ambitions would be an integral part of strategically innovative firms.

Innovate to live or morph?

Logically, leadership of strategic innovation requires a talent landscape that covers more than conversion of innovative ideas to commercial fruition; it requires leadership that not only dwells deeper into the core of product or service innovation but also connects the dots of innovation across the business value chain. It is a high intensity leadership that finds not only inspired internal owners in the organization but also like-minded external sponsors amongst investors, vendors, buyers, bankers, regulators and so on. The greater the intensity of competition in the innovation space, the greater would be the need for a leadership bench that is actually deeper and broader than that exists solely in either the classic, established and brick and mortar businesses or the neo, emerging and digitally driven businesses.

It was noted in the beginning of the blog post that Vijay and Chris wrote their book in 2005 hoping to institutionalize a rule set of strategic innovation that helps firms reduce dysfunctions, sustain growth, and lengthen the average corporate life span beyond that of a human being. The reality, just ten years later, is that highly innovative companies are a complex set of universe; some have such compelling power of universal innovation that they have become the new mega corporations with new rules of perpetuity while several others are not necessarily looking for life beyond the next decade, let alone beyond the average human life span. It is, however, becoming increasingly clear that established firms as well as the new mega corporations need smaller but sparkling innovative firms and entities in increasing measure to stay relevant in the digital age.

Given the amazing pace of innovation and the frenetic entrepreneurial zeal, it is not surprising that the book by Vijay and Chris finds itself overwhelmed in just a decade of its writing. It is certainly clear that any book on strategic innovation would need to be rewritten every two years!

Posted by Dr CB Rao on October 24, 2015 

The Mind of the Imitator: Replicating, Improving or Evolving?

Imitation, it is said, is the best form of flattery. Imitation is the natural follow-on for innovation. Innovation itself is a complex and challenging but essential facet of progress, as we discovered in my blog post of last week. The said post on three horizons of innovation titled “The Mind of the Innovator: Imaginative, Re-imaginative or Disruptive?” was published in Strategy Musings, September 19, 2015 (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2015/09/the-mind-of-eternal-innovator.html). While it is good to be innovator, not all individuals or firms can be innovators. Several individuals and firms find it not merely expedient but even appropriate to be imitators. Given the high cost of innovation and the intellectual quality that drives them, innovations are protected by patents. Innovations that are not protected by patents or whose patents can be challenged and innovations that outlive the granted patent life are open to imitation.

Imitation, unfortunately, has acquired a somewhat negative connotation. Imitation, at least at an intellectually objective level, needs to be seen as a natural concomitant of human and corporate behaviour, and of social progress as much as innovation is.  Imitation, actually, is the creative aspiration and expression of individuals and firms to reach to the level of a leader. The adage ‘art imitates nature’ puts imitation in its perspective. Human innovation, like nature, is fundamental. Just as art brings nature to every home and office, imitation brings innovation to the common man. In fact, the greatest contributions, in terms of both affordability and availability, to healthcare sector have been from development of generic pharmaceuticals which are replicas of pharmaceuticals or are essentially similar in respect of biologic products. This one example, leading several other examples from other industries, is more than sufficient to demonstrate the power and relevance of imitation.

Simple but complex

Simple as may sound, imitation is also a complex subject that involves as much science and art as innovation does. Firstly, there can be no bar on, or imitation of, ideas. Creativity in ideas by a few and embracing of expressed such ideas by many is a fundamental first step for efficient and equitable socio-economic development. Parallel innovation is not imitation. This is best illustrated by Nobel Prizes which are often shared by scientists working in different universities and laboratories across the globe. Industrial development takes place innovatively by parallel developments of similar, if not identical ideas, but developed innovatively. For example, the idea of elliptical exercise equipment could be shared by many but only a few can produce differentiated elliptical equipment with truly harmonious leg and arms movement with differences in innovation (for example, Precor and Octane).

Imitation does not seek to change the product configuration or functionality. It seeks to simply make it cheaper or more efficient (or both). Lack of patent barriers does not mean that imitators have an open sky opportunity. There could be significant other barriers for imitators, including barriers related to development, production, people, quality, and market barriers. Market barriers could include brand image, channel access, distribution strength and so on. Imitation with differentiation is essential for acceptability. At firm level, viable imitation could be a matter of superior management skill but at an individual level viable imitation is harder to achieve. No individual can, in fact, be imitated though some of the characteristics can be imitated; for example, characteristics like application, communication, networking can be imitated but the total personality cannot be.

Imitation, whether at firm level or at an individual level, requires a clear strategic thinking backed by execution excellence. The reasons are obvious; an innovator has the first mover and first provider advantage and, more often than not, succeeds in building a brand loyalty. Imitator has to challenge the innovator to be able to succeed. And most imitators take the easy but important route to succeed – of competing on price. In some ways, this is a natural structural reality of imitation as the imitators do not need to commit huge sums of money in experimental R&D or prototype evaluation on one hand or on distribution channels and market making on the other. In several cases, third party manufacturing may be an available option and in some cases, the market itself may be weary of market dominance by a monopolist. The real challenge of imitation lies in none of the above which are fairly commonplace enablers or corollaries of imitation.

Three horizons

The previous blog post on innovation hypothesized three horizons of innovation, namely imaginative, re-imaginative and disruptive. The author proposes that imitation, likewise, can be made to happen in three horizons of replicating, improving or evolving. Imitation at its basic form of replicative imitation exists when a complete spec to spec to copying is resorted to. This happens, in fact, at the tail end of imitation lifecycle when a product or service is commoditized with low entry barriers. Replicative imitation can survive solely on the basis of price competitiveness for lack of any differentiating feature. Replicative imitation gets a lift when such products are offered by firms with a superior reputation for quality, customer satisfaction or scale and scope. A processed food product offered by an FMCG giant, for example, would be seen as a better product than that offered by a small scale regional player though it could just be a perception and not necessarily a reality.

Imitation in the middle horizon of improving imitation occurs when a product or service idea is imitated with notable improvements thus providing a differentiation. Firms as a matter of routine seek to imitate their own products with improvements. The personal assistants in smart phones, for example, are improvements over successive generations of their own products. Improvement in imitation can help firms gain a foothold in the marketplace in the face of dominance by an innovator. Samsung’s Galaxy phone line-up has been an imitative improvement by an imitator firm seeking a strong entry into the turf of Apple, the dominant innovator. Even innovators gain through imitative improvements. The market believes, for example, that as a concept Apple’s latest launch of iPad Pro is an imitative improvement over the rather successful Microsoft Surface tablet computer that could revive iPad sales.   

   

Imitation in the higher third horizon of evolving imitation occurs when a product concept is evolved to imitate innovative competition better. Bajaj Auto’s Quadricycle (RE 60, now called Qute!) is an evolution to compete with its own three wheelers on one hand and the lower end of LCVs and passenger cars operating in the taxi segment on the other. Tata Motors is taking the evolutionary imitation to the next level by launching Magic Iris, its low end LCV, as a safer alternative to Quadricycle. Evolutionary imitation has pros and cons. The advantage obviously is the ability and felicity to build on an existing platform while the disadvantage is that evolutionary product development may not mach the robustness of a ground-up holistic new product development. This is evidenced by the criticisms being faced by RE 60 in terms of safety and other challenges. Yet, evolutionary imitation represents one of the most impactful facet of balanced product development.

Philosophical balance  

As a high level philosophy, everything that is synthetic is nothing but an imitation of nature. Whether it is innovation or imitation, neither is as original as nature. To consider, therefore, that only innovation needs to be aspired for, and imitation needs to be deprecated is probably presumptuous. That said, innovation represents the higher intellectual challenge of fundamental development while imitation represents a different type of challenge of holding one’s own against innovation. With three forms of innovation (imaginative, re-imaginative and disruptive) and three ways of imitation (replicating, improving and evolving) being available, firms can develop a judicious mix of innovation and imitation. The balance between innovation and imitation depends on whether and how originality and creativity are built into only product development or all through the value chain, from development through manufacturing to delivery of the product.

There are three principles for such a philosophical balance. The first is to innovate in a niche where the firm is willing to commit significant resources, including time. This could be in terms of reinforcing the core strengths of the firm or adding new core strengths. Investments by Sony in camera sensors and by Samsung in OLED panels are two examples of the first type of innovation that strengthens the core competencies. Investments by Microsoft in devices, especially gaming devices like X-Box and computing and connectivity devices like tablet computers and smart phones are examples of the second type of innovation, The second principle is to unhesitatingly imitate a pioneer’s idea, especially when it purports to become a new wave but develop, manufacture or deliver the product in a more innovative way than the pioneer could or would. Development of elliptical trainers with additional patented movements or development of body-countered seats with electronic dynamic adjustments are two examples.

The third principle is to just imitate all through the value chain but making sure that in each part the firm offers better quality and lower cost. The third principle reflects the essence of generic competitive strategy, with a strong focus on superior execution. Markets and nations immensely benefit when a fair and judicious balance of innovation and imitation is offered to the consumers.  Firms and individuals need be neither obsessive nor deflective of either. The challenge for leadership is to develop an ecosystem wherein both coexist symbiotically because that is the way the society gets benefitted the most. In its pristine form, innovation transforms the way we live. In its sublime form, imitation stretches innovation to its limits. At some point they combine to reinvent both innovation and imitation. The brilliant mind of an artful imitator is no less important to this world than the exceptional mind of a creative innovator, and vice versa, in a philosophical sense!

Posted by Dr CB Rao on September 26, 2015  

The Mind of the Eternal Innovator: Imaginative, Re-imaginative or Disruptive?

Innovators are intellectually and attitudinally driven people who are essential for progress. Without their innovations, the world would not have been, and would not be, a better place to live in. Granted that some of the innovations have had negative consequences for the society (for example, explosives) and granted also that each positive innovation can be wrongly used for negative purposes (for example, cyber-hacking), the overall benefits of innovation far outweigh the negative consequences. We can also take heart from the fact that misuse of innovations can be moderated, if not controlled, by positive social alignment and family environment. The common purpose of innovation is to create devices, equipment and infrastructure that can improve human life. The ultimate purpose of innovation could be to extend life by eliminating diseases and enhancing wellness, and to even monitor, regenerate and recreate life.

Innovation is not for all; otherwise there would not be two distinct classes called innovators and copiers or leaders and followers in business, academia and society. Steve Jobs once said, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and follower”. That said, the greater the divide between the two, the greater would be the power of monopoly built around innovation and the less would be the distributed social impact of innovation. In leadership and management theories, there is an embedded view that innovation at individual level is for people with rare endowments and at a firm level is for companies that are willing to bet huge investments and efforts on innovation. Evidentially, however, the contrary seems to be true. Innovation is as much about an innovative mind-set as it is about intelligence quotient or investment commitment. Innovation is also about a facilitative ecosystem that supports generation and acceptance of innovative ideas.

Imagination, re-imagination    

Innovators not only imagine but also re-imagine. Eric Schmidt, Chairman of Google, Inc said, “The characteristic of great innovators and great companies is they see a space that others do not. They don’t just listen to what people tell them; they actually invent something new, something you didn’t know you needed, but the moment you see it, you say, I must have it’’’. This implies that innovation is about having a vision for novel products and services and converting it into commercial reality. The ‘Pushpaka Vimanam’ of Hindu mythology and the aeroplane of industrial revolution are perfect examples of imagination bringing forth new products to fulfil intrinsic needs. Organized and structured research in academic and industrial laboratories follows the path of imagination to create synthetics that mimic or excel over the natural or the pre-existing synthetic.

That said, innovation is also re-imagination of what has been existing all along. For example, measurement of blood pressure has been there from the time medicine became organized, for centuries in fact. However, making measurement of blood pressure real-time and self-monitored through a wrist band or a wrist watch is the result of re-imagination of an existing activity. Driverless car is not a fundamental creation; rather it is re-imagining the process of human driving in terms of machine driving. In re-imagining, innovators consider several parallel developments in other technologies that could make re-imagination feasible. The important point to note is that imaginative innovators and re-imaginative innovators are significantly different in their approach to life, be it individual or corporate.

Visualization, re-visualization

Imaginative innovators set out to develop reality out of the abstract. They set and re-set innovation goals, conduct and re-conduct experiments to validate hypotheses and eventually succeed in bringing to life a new product or service. They look to bring novelty as the prime dimension of their innovation. Such inventions can be very purpose-oriented and goal-driven or quite accidental and serendipitous. Development of aeroplane by Wright Brothers, imagining the bird as the inspiration, was a very specific purpose driven invention. Discovery of stainless steel by Harry Brearley while experimenting with different proportions of metals, especially chromium, in steel was an accidental discovery. So was the discovery of Penicillin by Alexander Fleming or discovery of radium by Marie Curie, in a sense. That said, imaginative inventions are never by chance but are a result of serious application of knowledge and generation of experiments in which chance may also play a part in steering the course of discovery.

Re-imaginative innovators, in subtle contrast, are keen observers of what is available to create new realities that fulfill new needs or help perform current needs in a different way. Re-imaginative visualizers adopt convergent thinking (bringing together different functionalities and products in one product) in some cases and divergent thinking (deploying current products for different functionalities) in some cases. As products and technologies keep getting developed in an exponential manner, the potential canvas for re-imaginative innovators vastly expands. The projects by Google to deploy its Google Glass technology for diabetes management is one example. Re-imaginative innovation may deploy common technologies for multiple uses. It is interesting that while one purposive mind-set drives imaginative innovation the same mind-set could block re-imaginative innovation.

Disruption, transformation

The potential for innovation is, more often than not, never fully exploited. Companies and individuals may be known for consistent innovation but could have their blind spots in harnessing the full potential of innovation. Leading automobile companies of the world, including such innovation stalwarts as Toyota and Nissan of Japan, had decades ago deployed unmanned automated guided vehicles to move materials, components and products into and out of warehouses. However, it never occurred to such innovators that they should develop driverless automated cars. The companies had, for decades, used sensor technologies to govern movement of components and fool-proofing production and change-over cycles on the shop floors. Here again, it did not occur to such manufacturers that they should lead projects to elevate sensor technology and deploy it to improve navigation and safety in automobiles.

There can be several such examples from different industries where despite commitment to, and achievements in, innovation organizations fail to make the best use of their innovation potential. The reasons are not far to seek. Firms, typically, work in silos, focusing on maximization of efficiency within the existing business construct rather than disrupting a successfully operating business model. Reverting to our example of automobile industry, innovation focused on engine efficiency, transmission smoothness, chassis sturdiness, lighter but stronger materials and elegant aerodynamics to make the automobile better and safer for driving, travelling and owning rather than eliminating driving itself. That Google and Apple have taken this project is a classic reaffirmation of Eric Schmidt’s statement that the characteristic of great innovators and great companies is that they see a space that others do not.

Innovation horizons

Fundamentally, transformative Innovation can be disruptive, and hence many firms tend to delay disruptive innovation until it begins to take the form of a serious competitive threat, especially by new entrants. Rather than baulk at the prospect of disruptive innovation, competent and capable firms must find approaches integrate disruptive innovation into long term business models in a seamless way. The author of this blog post suggests charting the business in terms of three innovation horizons, the first one being the horizon of incremental innovation, the second one being the horizon of breakthrough innovation and the third one being the horizon of disruptive innovation.  Lasting businesses can be built only when a firm operates in all the three horizons of innovation.

The first horizon corresponds to imaginative innovation for performance and specification improvement, the second horizon corresponds to re-imaginative innovation where product-market interface is completely redefined through either convergence or divergence, and the third horizon corresponds to disruptive innovation that eliminates key product anchors in favour of new disruptively innovative ones. Firms may vary in approaches with regard to revenue-investment mix in each of the three horizons; some may follow a 50-30-20 mix while others may risk a 20-30-50 profile too. The extent to which the innovation horizon model is adopted depends on the innovation mindset of firms and individuals, and the innovation ecosystem they are able to nurture in their organizations.

Innovation mindset

There are certain characteristics of innovation oriented firms, their leaders and their team members that tend to be unique. Leadership for innovation is a separate competency-set by itself. Innovative leaders explicitly seek expressions of innovation, from simple ideas to complex prototypes. They embrace the idea of products doing things differently or doing things never done before. They take responsibility for incubating ideas, providing innovators with financial and people resources as well as equipment. They also understand that intellect and data powered debate is an essential component of bringing the best of innovation to the fore. They respect the short term improvements (to sustain current business) but without losing the aspiration for longer term transformations (to reinvent and transform business).

When businesses operate in terms of the three innovation horizons they move from a position of business sustainability to ‘future-shaping’ business. Rather than keep pace with innovations that come in from multiple sources as competing businesses they create their own innovation engines to influence the future. The acid test for such innovation leadership is a willingness and boldness to make its own current products obsolete. If Apple tried to protect its iPod as a music player without providing music-play capabilities in iPhone, the latter would never have been a blockbuster while the former would, in any case, been overshadowed by other smartphones. Disrupting one’s own product line-up and business strength by norm-defying innovative mindset is probably the best assurance of business perpetuity, besides being provider of global competitiveness.

Post-script

After the author has penned the post, the report of World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on global innovation rankings has been published in the Press. Disturbingly, it says that India has slipped further down the Global Innovation Index, ranking 81, from 76 in 2014. In this survey of 141 countries, China retained its ranking at 29 while Switzerland had the top spot. India’s performance on innovation marks a sharp decline in the assessment of the state of innovation in India over the past few years; in 2008-09, the nation had ranked 41^st globally. India’s low performance on innovation is troublingly inconsistent with the aspiration and expectation of turning into a global economic and industrial powerhouse by 2030. The author hopes that the discussion in the blog post on the types and horizons of innovation would help policy makers and leaders to embed innovation as an essential part of India’s economic, industrial and social culture.  

Posted by Dr CB Rao on September 19, 2015      

Innovation with Perfection: When Parts Become the Whole

Innovation is seen as the hallmark of creative development while perfection is seen as the surrogate of supreme quality. Customer delight arises from a combination of innovation and perfection. Innovatively designed products that are made to perfection surprise, delight and inspire customers. From an economic point of view, a combination of innovation and perfection results in greater productivity and sustainability. The beauty of this combination is that it is applicable not only to products and services but also to processes. Generally, however, innovation and perfection are seen to be somewhat antithetical to each other, with innovative products running the risk of failure and perfect products being a result of highly standardized inputs and processes, proven in millions of repetitive cycles. This intriguing reality has probably a socio-economic behavioural causation too; one can wait for innovation but not eternally and one can seek perfection but not at the cost of immediate needs.

While innovation could be a result of spontaneous intuition or diligent serendipity, and perfection could be a result of a mind-set steeped in conformity and quality, in most cases innovation and perfection are highly organized activities requiring time and effort. In principle, the greater the time and effort expended on innovation and perfection, the greater is the possibility of innovation and perfection. The pathway to innovation on which time and effort are spent is often dictated by the target of innovation. The pathway to perfection on which time and effort are spent is dictated by the level of specifications on one hand and usage feedback on the gap between specifications and requirements on one hand and the gap between specifications and performance on the other.  The targets of innovation and perfection are, themselves, set somewhat subconsciously by what humans as the experimenters see as the limits for innovation or perfection. As this process is complex, practitioners seek optimality which ironically could be sub-optimization.

Substrates

In reality, innovation that we see in products or services is invariably preceded by innovation in basic technologies. The innovative televisions of today are made possible because of innovations in display screen technologies such as OLED that were seeded a few years ago for palm size screens. When several innovative technologies become available novel products incorporating such technologies get to be developed, albeit with a lag. Strange as it may seem, rarely innovation gets defined ab initio at the end-product level. This facet of innovation in multiple technology substrates represents both an opportunity and a challenge for product level innovation. The opportunity arises in terms of choice and speed while the challenge arises because of imbalance in innovation of parts. Rarely one gets to have a total product technology mission that targets innovation in raw materials, components, integrating systems, manufacturing equipment, production processes, and end-products as one holistic mission.

That perfection does not necessarily move with innovation, and vice versa, is fairly obvious. Apple which has seemingly attained perfection with its iPhone range until recently (say, till iPhone 5) has not necessarily been innovative in all the departments. On the other hand, as the innovation level (as exemplified by a slim form factor) got bumped up in the iPhone 6 range, perfection lagged as evidenced by bending phones, protruding camera modules and blurred images in some lots. Samsung has been innovative in form factor and stylus based phones but never reached the top in terms of perfection. Incorporation of OIS modules in slim phones represent a greater challenge in terms of achieving perfection rather than integrating innovation. Inevitably, every first generation innovative product, be it cell phone or holography headset, emerges to be a rather bulky, blunt or crude form of innovation (at least, until after the next generation products are unveiled).

Parts and the whole

The author of this blog once wrote a post titled “Style is Substance: Management of Product Design and Manufacture”, Strategy Musings, August 8, 2009 (http://cbrao2008.blogspot.in/2009/08/style-is-substance-management-of.html). The post argued that the style of a product demands substance in design and manufacture of a product, and boosts efficiency, encourages creativity, promotes flexibility and drives growth but also demands management competence to ensure all of this. The blog post was, in fact, inspired by the crop of stylistic products that began to be unveiled during those years. Much intellectual water has flowed under the bridge since then with rapidly evolving products and amazingly shortening life cycles. While style and substance seem to have stood up over the last six years as a solid pair, perfection and innovation seem to be moving out of step, of late. This can be traced to the mismatch of perfection and innovation in the parts and the whole.

Product design as a technical discipline has such versatile facets that a few parts can make a significant change to performance but such trend can neither be unlimited nor perpetual. For example, a superior drive-train can step up an automobile to a different performance trajectory but without matching strides in overall strength-weight parameters or navigation systems, enhancement in performance of parts would soon be blocked. When breakthrough products are conceptualized, every part needs to be thought of for innovation and perfection. When Airbus A380 was designed as the largest commercial plane, each and every part had to be redefined to newer standards. The difference between a spaceship for a lunar expedition and a spaceship for mars mission would need a complete conceptual redesign. The challenge of perfect innovation lies in absorbing the approaches from such uncommon products to common products.

Perfect innovation

Perfect innovation may be defined as an organized process in which each component of a product is covered with innovation. This requires concurrent engineering and manufacture of a different detail and differentiated calibre. To institutionalize perfect innovation, a firm has to approach product development and commercialization in two distinct tracks. The first track covers the routinely followed quick-upgrade product cycle. This would incorporate typically certain innovative upgrades to differentiate products across generations; such product cycles may alternately focus on innovation or perfection. Typical examples are found in white goods and consumer goods sectors. The improvements in loading systems or washing cycles in washing machines, enhancements in purification and water recovery in water purifiers, integration of new materials in cooking systems, miniaturization of routers and dongles, enhancements in pixel density of display screens, improvements in aperture sizes of camera sensors and inverter integrated air conditioners are examples of such routine product developments.

The second track, which actually is the track of perfect innovation, reappraises the entire product concept in terms of the total design and functionality of the end-product at one level and the design and manufacture of every material, component, system and assembly at another level. The first editions of digital camera, smart phone, flat panel television, and several such others represent close examples of perfect innovation. The reasons are that each of the products had several totally new components (not merely upgrades of existing ones) involving new materials, new designs and new manufacturing processes. All of these products had new operating systems as well. Introduction of digital technology has enabled definition of metrics for measuring innovation and perfection. Until the entry of digital technology, mechanical fits and tolerances determined the perfection of manufacture. Digital technology helps monitor the perfection of manufacture as well as on-site performance on a continuing basis in critical equipment such as medical imaging equipment, diagnostic equipment and infusion equipment.

Bill of innovation

Perfect innovation is a multi-stage iterative process which starts in the first phase with a total redefinition of the product concept. This stage can be applied to any product, from a telephone or a television to a hotel room or operation theatre. This stage requires truly out-of-the-box thinking on product configuration, which could reposition even plateauing or declining products. For example, the land telephone which has reached a stage of plateau can be subjected to this process.  From a mere dialing instrument for physical communication, it can be converted into a home management robot. At the very least all the functionalities of a smart phone like multiple ringtones, display screens, voice assistance, voice recording and play back, and a number of utilities such as alarm, compass and calendar can be incorporated. At a higher level, it can be embedded with a mini-computer which can provide instructions to various devices and equipment in home, serve as daily organizer and also serve as a real-time camera to record entrants to the home. A fundamental re-positioning of a traditional product, based on a new technology substrate, is the first phase of perfect innovation.

The next phase is the crucial operative phase which comprises four parallel inter-connected streams of technology substrate choice, detailed bill of materials, bill of innovation corresponding to bill of materials and component-specific manufacturing perfection scheme, including testing and quality assurance and equipment planning. These four streams encompass the product on an end-to-end basis, from design to delivery. At the end of this second phase, the first prototypes of the new breakthrough product would be available. The third final phase is the iterative phase when the prototypes are honed to perfection, adding incremental innovation and perfection to each component to perfect the overall product style and substance. At the end of this phase, the product would be ready for homologation and commercial manufacture. As opposed to a typical 6 month upgrade cycle, perfect innovation would require a minimum development and commercialization cycle time of 3 to 5 years. Firms would do well to split their R&D and Manufacturing functions into Improvement Business Units and Redefinition Business Units.

Posted by Dr CB Rao on September 01, 2015

Innovator Competitive Strategies: The APPEXP Framework for Competitive Advantage

Michael Porter postulated, in 1980, three generic competitive strategies that are appropriate for most industries and their several phases of evolution. These are cost leadership, differentiation and niche (or focus). These are both intuitively and practically elegant. Any firm that has cost leadership can ensure price competitiveness or earnings superiority, or a combination thereof with certain inter se trade-offs. A firm that follows differentiation can achieve a superior market and price position based on a set of differentiated features. A firm that follows a niche strategy seeks to adopt narrow product-market strategies that are unique to the firm. Some firms are successful in adopting a mix of the three strategies to eventually emerge as industry leaders. The three generic competitive strategies are yet to be dwarfed by any other superior set although over thirty five years have elapsed from the time the framework was first postulated by Porter.

A question may arise if the three generic strategies are relevant for companies engaged totally in innovative products or services. By innovative products or services we may mean products or services that fulfil a new use (or application) and/or fulfil an existing use (or application) in a novel manner. From Sony Walkman to Apple iPad and from diagnostic imaging to new molecular entities, innovator companies fulfil the above two criteria through their products and/or services. That said, firms that deliver an existing product or service through an innovative way of delivery may not be considered innovator firms; for example, firms engaged in transportation of a product utilizing trucks tracked by RFID devices may not qualify as innovator firms although they have struck upon a somewhat inventive component in their service value chain. Regardless of innovation levels, innovator firms also require the three fundamental generic competitive strategies.

Basic purpose

Many times innovation gives a strong entry into, and a significant time-reprieve in, the marketplace, and even provide a monopoly, but only so long as a strong follower product or service does not get introduced. The three generic competitive strategies help the firms develop brand equity at product or service level and secure staying power at firm level. Without cost leadership, innovators could get priced out when new competitors enter the market with lower cost of products. Even if such competition takes time, cost leadership builds a reservoir of accumulated profits to invest aggressively in new product innovation. With differentiation on certain specific attributes, innovators are able to build brand equity which provides a strong defence against market erosion. The association of Toyota with quality or Mercedes Benz with safety, for example, is reflective of how brand equity accumulates over time.  

 

Niche or focus strategy is particularly relevant for small firms. This strategy is well deployed by small firms in drug discovery area (focusing on just one target or at most on one therapeutic area) and in component area (focusing on just one component or at most on one system). Clearly, individually or together the generic competitive strategies are a vital adjunct to innovator firms even though innovation provides them with the first mover and monopoly advantages. That said, innovator firms would do well to have certain strategies that are unique to innovator firms, and which could work in a synergistic manner with the three generic competitive strategies. This blog post proposes three innovator competitive strategies that would be foundation strategies on which generic competitive strategies can be superimposed or worked as adjuncts. Prior to that we may review why R&D itself is not being seen as the sole innovator strategy.

Revisiting R&D

Clearly, Research & Development (R&D) is recognized universally as the foundation for new product development. A clear R&D roadmap and a robust R&D budget have always been seen as the drivers of innovation in a firm. It is, in fact, expected that the level of R&D budget both in absolute numbers and as percentage of sales determines the difference between an innovation-led industry segment and a generic industry segment. In each category as well, the R&D focus determines the relative inter-firm scaling in innovation. There are firms that still stand by R&D as the engine of organic growth while increasing number of firms are opportunistic about inorganically acquired R&D. It may, therefore, be questioned as to why anything other than R&D leadership is required as an innovator competitive strategy.

The answer lies in the fact that over a period of time, R&D has also become a “mechanical” or routine function rather than the kind of dynamic innovation hotbed that the domain is expected to be. It is seen as a product renewal domain rather than product redefinition domain. From time to time, product re-definitions do occur but the overall theme of R&D in a great majority of companies is to find a new product for the same application or to make the existing product better. In a recent McKinsey Quarterly (April 2015), it was postulated that innovation is indeed difficult for established companies and suggested eight essentials for innovation: Aspire, Choose, Discover, Evolve, Accelerate, Scale, Extend, and Mobilize. The first four attributes are considered to be strategic and creative elements and the balance four organizational and delivery components of an innovation operating system of a firm. The author of this blogpost feels that these eight essentials are enablers or practices but not innovator competitive strategies like the Porter’s generic competitive strategies.

Three strategies

As with the generic competitive strategies, the innovator strategies must prescribe end-goals which are not project-specific, project-dependent and also are not firm-specific or firm-dependent; rather the goals should be somewhat universal strategies of innovation that provide a sustainable competitive position for an innovator firm. These are Application Leadership, Experience Leadership and Application-Experience Hybrid. These are discussed below.

Application leadership

Every product is designed to meet an application. Password, for example, is a product to ensure security for the user of either a computer or a safe. Depending on the product, passwords have been taking more user-friendly but more secure forms. Patterns and colours have been the first step. Fingerprint scanner has been the next step. Iris scanner and face reader are the more recent ones. These developments are done more easily on a smartphone because the smartphone has a processor as well as a camera. If, for example, the same functionalities (of processor, camera and communicator) are brought to the password mechanism of a safe, an entirely new safety system of not only multiple password possibilities but also recording all those who attempt to open the safe and communicating the photo identity of those who break the safe would be possible. It would be a game changer, at least for the domestic or office safe industry.

Application leadership requires a disruptive approach (in a positive sense of making things better, of course) to how user functions or product functions are to be performed. These usually require aspirations that are far beyond the obvious (like a flying city car, for example). Such ideas require breakthrough or disruptive technologies. In the example of flying car aspiration, this requires a breakthrough combination of automotive and aeronautic as well as electronic and communication  technologies like mini-rocket engine for vertical thrust, mini-jet engine for flying and an on-board computer which controls these two engines alongside the traditional gasoline or diesel engine and the navigation systems thereof. Reverting to the home or office safe example, similar disruptive engineering is required. Firms committed to application leadership would be having many laboratories dedicated to discovering and developing fundamentally new technologies, and fundamentally new ways of integrating them.

Experience Leadership

In contrast to application leadership which reengineers the usage-product mix completely, experience leadership focuses more on a product meeting higher levels of sensory satisfaction. The touch keyboard is an example of transitioning from mechanical to electro-mechanical and electronic, resistive and capacitive. Capacitive touchscreens have brought in a new level of touch-feel to screens in smartphones and tablets. The next experience change would be when 3D touchscreen keyboards are commercialized. The virtually silent automotive engine, the passenger seats that reconfigure optimally to a driver body profile, voice communicators (such as Siri of iPhone or Cortana of Windows phone), the visual graphics of a high technology movie are all examples of experience leadership. The movie blockbusters, in fact, are an excellent example of experience leadership, bringing superlative experiences onto conventional tales.

Experience leadership requires a combination of product and process approaches to take user experiences to a different level. Often, novel material and precision manufacturing technologies have to be used together to conceptualize and provide an elevated level of user experience. Certain firms (like Apple) focus on experience leadership to achieve market dominance (for example, iPad was not the first tablet to be made but became the leader with the experience leadership approach of Apple). Experience leadership typically focuses on the worst case situation or the most demanding situation and develops the products to meet such extreme needs. Low floor buses which are designed to let even the old and disabled commuters enter the buses most comfortably is an example of design perfection for the most delicate need. At the other extreme, a rugged all-terrain sports utility vehicle caters to the most punishing terrains while insulating the passengers from excessive trauma.

Application-experience hybrid

The application-experience hybrid innovation is a niche model relevant for situations where markets are segmented or resources are varied. It could vary from a resource optimized situation to a resource rich situation. Unlike the earlier two models, a resource optimized application-experience model would not be securing reputation dominance but could enable higher market coverage, albeit with lower margins. Cadbury’s chocolate range to meet diverse needs is an attempt to develop a hybrid of different applications and different experience levels. To be really effective, however, there must be distinctive and differentiated technologies to calibrate the application and experience dimensions. Full-line firms are usually better positioned to achieve this hybrid while niche firms would need to choose their competencies carefully.

One of the most interesting examples of application-experience hybrid can be found in the watch industry where the technologies of dial and movement and the design elements of form factors and display factors enable a grid of application-experience hybrids. It is interesting, for example, how Citizen focuses on ‘wear and forget’ super-light perpetual movement watches while any typical Swiss watch focuses on bold designs that need as well as seek attention. The success of Apple watch, in this context, would depend on bringing to the user a high level of novelty in both application (communication and healthcare) and experience (real-time and selective), packaged in high standards to which the watches are typically made. The hybrid model requires a much greater perfecting and fusion of new technologies than the application leadership or experience leadership would individually suggest.

Innovation mind-set  

Innovator competitive strategies require a leadership mind-set, both at firm level and functional level, to understand and implement innovation enablers. The organizational DNA must encourage aspirations to make transformational changes in product-market configurations, expressing of the aspirations through multiple ideas, analysis, evaluation and prioritisation of ideas, and development of implementation plans. It must also have the resource framework to work on such action plans over long periods of time, retaining the ability to be nimble and flexible in the face of changes in technology and markets. Innovation requires creativity and steadfastness but openness for review and integration of new pathways. 

Innovator competitive strategies require collaboration between agencies. Low floor buses would be useless if civic authorities do not construct bus shelters and pathways that are friendly to the differently abled. Luxurious aircraft would provide little overall convenience in airports that do not have aerobridges and have chaotic inter-aircraft transfer paths. The best of ultra-high definition televisions would not provide the viewing pleasure without commensurate transmission services. Oftentimes, the dilemma would be who should be the driver of innovation – the product manufacturer or the service provider? While there is no clear cut answer, as long as leaders in vantage positions think and act by and for innovation, eventually, the total consumer value chain would benefit. Innovation works best in an innovation-driving organizational operating system nurtured by an innovation-inspired leadership mind-set.  

Posted by Dr CB Rao on May 2, 2015