Innovation is a process...

Jim Stikeleather in this Managementexchange article argues that Innovation is a process. He says it is no longer a stretch goal that you give to employees, it has to be built in their day to day work. They do not have to stop after an Aha moment and get back to routine work, but have to move on to work on creating the next Aha moment.


Incorporating the Innovation goals within the operational goals of an organization is a challenge that not many organizations have explored. It is not going to be easy, specially for those who do it the first time, but it would be rewarding. It may take a few iterations to get it right, but eventually this is what will ensure that there is sustained effort going into innovation across the organization. 

ITE - Repair Centre

In this time and age, repairs is becoming a vanishing concept. It is difficult to find someone who can repairs your clothes, shoes, household goods specially in the upcoming areas dominated by shopping malls. At the same time repair is something that is needed to keep the green cause moving. If you can setup a center for all kinds of repairs say:

1. Tailoring - including repairing broken shoes, bags, curtain rings, changing sofa covers etc
2. Appliances repair - maintenance of mixers, iron boxes, TV
3. Home needs - Plumbing Services, Carpentry services, painting job

If you can provide this at a single point of contact, you would be a big hit. Trick would be to provide reliable and dependable service. If you can establish a pool of trained or skilled service providers, there would be no dearth of customers. Challenge would be manage such a pool and run them professionally. Customers will be willing to pay and even give you time to serve if the service is dependable. 

You can either target it for urban upper middle class, and work on a low volume high margin model or for the large middle and lower middle class with high volume low margins.

Another variation of this could be a working women's aid, all the help that she needs for running her house. 

Paul Sloane talks about this Declaration of Innovation in his latest newsletter.

I think this is what all leaders who want their organizations to be innovative need to do. Not just talk about innovation, but make it relevant to every employee's job. Talk in specifics so that people at every level in the organization can relate to it.  Make it a goal that the organization runs after. Ask for a innovative solutions for known problems, for unexplored opportunities but make it specific so that people understand what is expected of them. It also creates something that can be seen and may be measured. 

Commitment is another big difference maker. the moment people sense a commitment from the leader they take the idea seriously, because they feel comfortable that their efforts would be taken care of and not wasted in 'just another good to seen doing' initiative. Here again commitment has to be communicate through actions more than the words. And the most important resource that a leader can commit is his own time to the initiative, everything else then will follow with a flow. 

Electric Cars and their viability

My friend Arun Kottoli reviews Electric cars both technically and ecologically. I think it is a brilliant analysis by someone who has been a user of an Electric car for sometime.

I think the ecological issues have to be addressed by reducing consumption and not shifting from one energy source to another. Shifting from petrol or diesel to electricity is just doing that. It may give us a 'feel good' factor for sometime, but ultimately we are still consuming non-renewable resources. Only solution is Reduce, Reduce, Reduce.