Innovation is the base for any country and its company. Innovation has faced extinction during recession. But it is making a comeback although like a coughing engine. Innovation made several decades ago has become obsolete because parameters have changed and new demands have risen. Companies design innovation to create demand and generate money.
Companies can use their assets like human resources and infrastructure to develop strategies which will allow them to create products at low cost. Globalisation has opened many doors to assess world-class talent to grab technology and manpower to improve value chain and supply change of the company. Transformation occurs when we transform our few existing resources to something innovative and pioneer in the field of technology. Great leaders transform their weakness into strength by harnessing their small capital and technology through their talents.
Innovation = Constraints + Ambition.
Indian companies lack advanced technology but these constraints lead them to think out of the box to fulfill their ambition. This also shows how in 500 AD Indian mathematicians discovered zero.
Lack of resources, infrastructure and technology force them to think for alternatives which sometimes come out as a transformation in the form of big innovation. There is a famous proverb ‘Anything is possible if you have got enough nerve’. Everyone in a while, a new technology, an old problem and a big idea turn into an innovation. Whenever change is required it needs strategy which leads to innovation.
Gandhian innovation:
It focuses on using new innovation technologies, process and pricing instead of just relying on old and traditional methods. It includes three kinds of approach:
a) disintegrating business model: Many Indian companies have used Western technologies by altering it to improve their economic conditions. For example many automobile companies have used engines based on western hardware and modified it using indigenous talents to make it usable in Indian market. Indian outsourcing accounts for 5% of global hardware.
b) Modifying organisational potentials: There are other companies who have indigenously innovated technologies like 3D models, software or resources for quick use. Like millenium tower has developed the world largest infopark, with new parameters and databases.
c) Creating new capabilities: Indian governments are focused on building platforms for entrepreneurs and also on acquiring technology from outside to solve their problems. For example Ardeshir Godrej Group leading name in this field, who built his idea and incorporated technologies from Western companies.
How innovation affects business:
After globalisation and liberalisation in 1985, Indian companies also altered the way they perform their business. They set targets of low performance and easily available offerings. Any product and service needs infrastructure and money to build an ecosystem. For example in 2009 Jio came up with telecommunication service for telecommunication but for that company had to pay a huge sum of money to the government. Jio has taken huge debt. Jio set a high price for its subscription to generate revenues. But Indians’ average investment on telecom is very less. So they planned to cover more base instead of just generating it from new consumers. Later its senior advisor decided to outsource all functions by collaborating with Wipro, HCL, and IBM. Also, Jio chooses to pay every small and large vendor like Nokia Samsung to generate more users. Jio also built an open innovation platform to attract big investors. Jio knows they are creating a complex network but generating revenue alone is also not possible.
To get access to rural India, Jio collaborated with BSNL and peace BSNL according to the number of people who get its subscription. This all helped jio to become one of the most affordable telecom services.
Innovation also derived technology:
Mesho Indian brand company has taken ideas from Western companies to provide a new category of innovative product to its customers in India. For that it design app to let users create online stories by selecting merchandise from more than 21000 small and medium suppliers which offer apparel, jewellery and new categories products. Users can market these goods to their personal network through social sites like Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram. Mesho analysed all the calls and requests it got for their scheme and compiled them to implement it in local and regional areas.
Innovation yields new technologies:
Companies want to give their customers something new but at low cost. This can only be possible if we use technology. For example conventionally, developing, validating and testing of medicine takes 11 years and costs more than 2 billion. In order to make it quicker and cheaper, scientists are trying to develop new technology to make the process easier. Biotechnology has made it possible by innovating 3D printing and virtual reality in collaboration with information technology.
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