Innovation Nukkad

Evolving Innovation Constitution

2012-01-26T21:42:00.001+05:30

Happy Republic Day & A New Year!

INNOVATION is the HOTTEST word today. Every growth paranoid organization needs to try its best to comprehend jobs customers are trying to do (Both for B2C and/or B2B customers). Customers as realized by many great innovators (Steve Jobs for example) do not know what he or she wants, it is in organization’s interest to decode the secret of the unspoken need & further create a value proposition around it. Customer buys product or a service for two reasons; a good reason (tangible) & a real reason (intangible). The second part as concluded by many innovation researchers is what drives growth & profit.

The Ideal goal is then to delight customer by exceeding her value expectations and all this by putting in the least amount of resources, innovation by another name. The next important question is how an organization can be successful by doing what needs to be done to achieve IDEAL BUSINESS GOALS on a consistent basis. To make this happen it needs to focus on building innovation capability. Some of the world-class organizations like Apple & 3M are living examples of this practice. They founded internal universities that work on the minds of their people thus ensuring passing of the very DNA that bequeathed them their present success.

Organization competes on innovation quality & productivity of people more than the assets they hold; therefore people will be at the epicenter of innovation constitution. They influence the quality, productivity of all the other resources needed to create value. So what organization needs to do is to focus on enhancing their creative, innovation productivity.

Three things have assumed prime importance in determining the innovation productivity, the ability to think systemically, connectedness amongst employees &, their networks with the outside world that exists in the form of living communities & lastly an enabling knowledge infrastructure.

I am putting up my thoughts on evolving such an innovation constitution; this is a result of my effort in understanding harder side (tools & techniques of innovation) & softer side (people, processes & innovation management) of innovation. I am prepared to stay surprised & course correct as I move ahead on this path. But I thought I need to make a beginning by creating a reference point and here is an attempt to create one.

Five pillars of innovation constitution

1. Training & Facilitation Units: One amazing fact about us Indians is that we speak different languages, but are still connected by a common language called “HINGLISH” (a combination of Hindi & English). Organization needs to develop this common language of communication to avoid perils of disconnectedness. One of the ways to create a common language is through training standardized and specialized training programs developed by internal training units; their primary responsibility will be to develop specific training modules to boost innovation capability, create supporting material, develop a network of internal innovators and facilitate projects deploying this common language. These internal innovators act as pollinators cross breeding the ideas through their interactions during facilitation and through knowledge sharing sessions. They are connectors as pictured by Michael Gladwell, considering the fact that Innovation happens at the cross roads of specialized disciplines. These internal innovators will play a role of a rocket launcher & take business executives out of their known orbits. This role is very much essential to generate and accelerate innovation momentum.

2. Innovation Process: In order to provide a rigor to innovation, a laid down process from idea to implementation would greatly value add in innovation efforts. These processes will remain dynamic and will change as per the experience gained by several teams across organization implementing innovation projects. More than the typical documented processes these processes need to become practices for people to learn from & build further on. Innovation process will serve as a guide and become process of all other processes.

3. IT enabled KNOWLEDE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM: I like the quote, which says, “What you know is not important, what you remember is.” Like individuals, organizations also know many things; problem is they have not found a way to memorize this effectively. In many companies its mere posting of an article, news, links etc. are some of the ways to capture & share knowledge. Generally such kinds of efforts get little attention by a wider community of people and lies as a pile of junk somewhere in the databases. These days’ people learn more with social networking tools by using of smart mobile devices. The question is how we make knowledge easily retrievable for it to have a chance of effective deployment.

To simply this, I have an anecdote to share here, in our school exam particularly in languages we used to have one question “expand the story” with the help of few words. In KM context we need to exactly do the reverse, have a contracted version of an expanded story. In short “keep it short, simple & retrievable at the first interface”. In systematic innovation terms catch the idea in the form of a contraction, inventive steps, a trend step (business, technical, IT or population behavior trend) or on the basis of function & attributes. In doing so if one uses visuals (either a picture or a film) then it’s still better, because as it is said picture depicts 1000 words and analogy depicts 1000 pictures. A semantic web can be of help in this effort. Here the word “semantic” means standardization of words & nouns that capture knowledge, which makes it retrievable & re-usable.

The knowledge platform will become a trading platform for people to broker knowledge.

4. Organizational Structures for managing innovation: These structures to be led by the member of the senior management team. The mentor needs to be acting as a CONTRADICTON Officer whose role is to identify contradictions that are stopping business achieve its ideal goals. As kernel of innovation is in identifying the contradictions rather than the solutions☺. This will bring required focus. Different organization structures can be created to take care of four strategic objectives

• Stimulate innovation by training & facilitation process described in point no. 1 of the above.
• Shepherd innovation by involving a group of senior leaders early who will vet, prioritize all early-stage ideas and actively shepherd them through deliberation & actively mentoring innovation process
• Spearhead innovation by providing the resources and environment to take ideas from concept to commercialization.
• Strengthen the innovation and enable growth by building alliances, acquiring capabilities or investing in innovative efforts outside the organization.

5. Measurement: I don’t love measurements when it comes to Innovation as I believe “You don’t fatten a pig by first weighing it” but still lot of deliberations need to be done before putting up a measurement system for innovation and it needs to be qualitative than quantitative. One example of such innovative measurement could be measures like “number of bullets (experiments) a project team has fired & the lessons it & in turn an organization has learnt” in its effort to innovate

I will end this article with a quote of Systematic Innovation Guru Darrell Mann whose work keeps us driving

“The 20th Century was the century of the specialist; the 21st Century will be the century of the Silo-breaking generalist. Nearly all the innovation opportunities right now are not in the silos, but in the spaces between the silos, Specialist knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient.”

I invite your suggestions to guide this effort. So do please let me have your feedback.

Once again a Happy New Year & Republic Day

Business Lessons from Grandma Stories

2011-08-28T22:09:00.000+05:30

Vineet Nayar in his book “Employees First Customer Second” puts forward a very strong argument when he says happy & contented employees produce best results for clients, win their trust & bring more business. While reading the book I was recounting a story told by my grandmother.

There was this little village which was confronting with a severe draught. The entire village was on a verge of displacement. As a last resort the village head (Sarpanch) consulted the head priest of an ancient SHIVA TEMPLE to explore whether any ritual can rescue them from this unannounced misery. The priest asked them to perform “Abhishek” (bathing the deity) by offering all the milk the villagers had and immerse the deity with it. Every villager offered the milk they had at the cost of starving their families but yet the deity could not be immersed. The village head sent all his messengers to search for those who have yet to make an offering.

One old lady holding a small glass of milk was walking towards the temple. The crowd was surprised to see the size of the glass and was angry with her selfishness; such a petite offering would not help the cause they thought. The lady first offered her devotion filled prayers before pouring out the milk on deity’s head.

To everyone’s surprise the deity was immersed completely & it started raining heavily in the next few moments. There was an announcement from the heaven, the GOD was very happy with the lady’s compassionate act. She abiding her routine fed everyone at home with a glass full of milk. Thus everyone in the family was taken care before the milk was offered to the LORD. The values & act of empathy, compassion displayed by the lady was engraved permanently in the minds of her family members. This would definitely had the multiplier effect when they dealt with others.

Organization delivers value to its clients, customers through a series of activities and business processes participated & executed by its heart counts. The strong (flexible at best) process framework is cemented by team work, trust & respect for each other’s job. The team members depict family members in the story; everyone needs to take good care of each other & demonstrate empathy for collectively delivering an unmatched value to its customer.

Thus SHIVA (the final customer) can only be satisfied with the value delivered to HIM if the family members (internal teams and its members) are demonstrated with good values & encouraged to unleash their true potential to deliver the best.

BUY IN : Saving your good ideas from being getting shot down

2011-06-02T18:12:00.002+05:30

I seem to have found Midas touch as far as choice of books that I opt to read is concerned. “Buy-In” (By John Kotter, Publisher: HBR Press) is that pot of gold that I touched lately. The central theme of the book as the title suggests is how to get buy-in for your idea (the one you passionately believe in) by successfully countering the attacks and thus winning the hearts & minds of the people who finally decide to support & implement it.

I was reminded of a story from the Oriya Mahabharata while reading this book. Let me recount it before I begin my comprehension of the book. One day, Arjuna saw a strange creature in the forest, a creature he had never seen before. It seemed like a fusion of nine animals, its head was that of a rooster, its neck was that of a peacock, its back was a bull's, it had a lion's waist and serpent's tail, and its four limbs were those of a human, a deer, a tiger and an elephant.

At first Arjuna thought that it was a monster. He raised his bow to kill it. But then he realized that simply because it was a stranger did not make it a monster. A creature that does not exist in human imagination can exist in the imagination of the cosmos. He lowered his bow and the creature raised its human limb, a hand, in blessing. The 'monster' was Krishna himself, checking how much patience Arjuna had for creatures he did not recognize. However everybody is not as prudent as Arjuna & therefore we find many attackers who are ready to shoot an idea that does not appeal to their conscience at first instance.

Kotter describes many forms of such attackers with some interesting names like “Pompus Meani” the one who values self-importance above doing good, “Heidi Agenda” who has some hidden personal agenda in opposing the idea. “Avoidus Riski” who brings in fear in the minds of people who are likely to support the idea. “Lookus Smarti” is the one whose sole objective is to look smart in front of the crowd so he presents irrelevant statistics which no-one understands and therefore challenges. “Divertus Attenti” is the one who diverts people’s attention from the points being discussed by bringing in issues which are irrelevant but according to him are more important than the one being discussed. In reality we find such individuals when we are presenting an idea.

The book like many script has characters, the central one is named Hank (who is a brother-in-law of hero even Kotter like any obedient husband is strongly made to believe that most intelligent person in this world is no intelligent than one’s brother-in-law )

The book is divided into two parts, part I sets up a stage by a way of a story of the Centerville library. The story is about a proposal being discussed at the annual meeting of the members served by the library. Library needs computers for faster & efficient working by the staff and also by the under privileged children who cannot afford a personal computer, there is a vendor who is ready to donate a computer and its peripherals for every six computers bought by the Centerville families. There are numerous attempts by the attackers to shoot down the idea, but every time Hank uses proper strategy to counter them and wins the hearts and the mind of the people who finally support the idea.

According to author there are four strategies attackers use to shoot down an idea

1.Death by Delay: In this attacker endlessly putts off or diverts discussion of your idea until all the momentum is lost. Some of the statements that are made to put of the idea are “ the right time to implement this idea is in our silver jubilee year, which is ten years from now”  or rather better & indirect is by saying “ let’s set up a committee to review the merit of the idea”

2.Confusion: presenting so much distracting information that confidence is your proposal dies. Here some other information is presented in so much detail which does not have any relation with the proposal being discussed, still it makes people believe that a presenter has a point of view which they are not able to understand, so they stay back from the proposal

3.Fear Mongering :stirring up irrational anxieties about your idea, I think these people are “ Virgo”  ( I can tell this from my personal experience, my wife is a virgo  & I courageously put this here as I am sure she is not going to read this post  )

4.Character assassination: undermining your reputation and credibility this shuts off the idea presenter completely. The strategy many times may not be direct but takes an indirect route; sometimes by saying “We have many Newtons here we don’t want one more. We know apple falls due to force of gravity” in other words what it means is that you are not presenting anything great and we all know it better than you.

There are counter-intuitive strategies that author talks further

1.Gain people’s attention by allowing the attackers in and letting them attack.
2.Win the minds of the relevant, attentive audience with simple, clear and commonsense responses.
3.Win their hearts by, most of all, showing respect.
4.Constantly monitor the people whose hearts and minds you need, the broad audience, not the few attackers
5.Prepare for these steps in advance

The best part of the book comes in chapter 7, where author recounts twenty four attacks that are commonly observed, if you find the 25th please write to Kotter and also let me know. What is the best part you may ask, first & foremost each attack is summarized in one page & to make it crispier it is divided into two parts; viz attack description and likely response. Each of these is so convincing that I have decided to keep this part of book in the form of cards, so I can refer it when I need it. I never copied in any exam but the professional life these days is like a open book exam, so all is fair while one counters the attacks & also my current job entails this.

I am not going to list here the 24 strategies which you can see for yourself by getting the book on your shelf & then in your hand. I also fear if I share this part Kotter will sue me and he being master of BUY-IN can really buy-in everyone against me and then I will not be writing the blog posts ever after, so let me end this by giving you three sections the author has classified these 24 strategies into.

1.We don’t need your idea because the problem it solves doesn’t exist.
2.Okay, a problem exists, but your solution isn’t a good one.
3.Okay a problem exists and your solution is good one, but it will never work here.
So here is a great book with a very handy message in the end. I summaries it like a VEG CRISPY;

Don’t get 51 % people in your favor to win a mandate; there are good chances that it will never get implemented. Try to win a mandate with a support in excess of 80 % by answering all the questions attacker is shooting at you all this by being humble, passionate about your idea ( if you are not passionate don’t ever present the idea) and using a common sense.( which is not liked by a erudite)

Go learn the tactics; after all you don’t have to learn everything from your own experiences, there are others to help you , just lend your eyes (if you are observant) and ears ( if you are a good listener)

Obliquity – Why Our Goals Are Achieved Indirectly

2011-01-27T00:01:00.003+05:30

The New Year began on a good reading note as I just finished John Kay’s “Obliquity” John is a regular columnist for the financial times and a visiting professor at the London School of Economics. John ran an economic consultancy business and much of its revenue came from selling decision making models to large corporate clients. This has set John thinking about building similar models for his purpose. Soon he realized that his clients were not using his models for decision making but used them internally or externally to justify decisions that they had already made. 

The central theme of the book is “Why Our Goals Are Best Achieved Indirectly”. The book is divided into three parts the first part makes us realize the existence of obliquity in the world around us. The second part describes the oblique rationale  behind why we need “Obliquity” or Oblique thinking. The third part enumerates how to cope with Obliquity which means how to solve problems in the complex world using oblique approaches.

The first section explains the central theme and quote lots of examples to make us conversant with the concept of obliquity and help us realize its existence in the world around us.

The shortest “straight crossing” in Nicaragua separating Pacific Ocean in the west and Atlantic in the east is not as short as south easterly oblique crossing in PANAMA. This shortest crossing was discovered by the people who were looking out for silver & gold & not oceans. The author continues his arguments by further stating that “How the happiest people in the world do not pursue happiness.” “How the most profitable companies are not the most profit oriented.” “How the wealthiest people are not the most materialistic.” All of this makes our understanding about the concept of Obliquity that is being talked extensively in this book.

People who climb Everest actually go through a painful experience but their pain, misery during the journey is the means to a HAPPY end when they actually make it to the peak. So more than anything it’s the realization of individual’s potential is what leads to happiness rather than the end result itself.

Merck & Boeing were more profitable when their leaders had single passion for commercial application of chemistry & making and flying of jets respectively (Oblique Approach) These companies saw a decline in profit & share holder’s value when the succeeding leaders talked about stake holder value & profit (more direct approach) & made all the decisions based on this direct approach. Thus Boeing focused less on commercial passenger aircraft & eyed on fixed orders from the US government for its military requirement (predictable steady revenues) giving an opportunity to its rival to improve its product in the passenger segment which resulted in launching of Airbus A 380. The author notes the next generation companies like Google & Apple and its founders did not focus on re-engineering of the existing businesses but rather they created new businesses and in the process carried employees as well as customers on a wave of enthusiasm. According to author direct approaches make a distinction between means and ends that often does not exist in reality. Winning at any cost creates pressure and angst which makes you lose more often, he notes.

In oblique approach unlike in direct approach high level objectives are loosely defined and are multidimensional. The achievers learn every moment while moving towards their goals & objectives. Here the author discusses about the FOX strategy (Oblique) & TIGER strategy (Direct) used by businesses. While pursuing the former organizations are observant, cautious and learning at every moment than when they adopt the TIGER strategy. The prey (competitors) do not comprehend fox intentions (as they being oblique) till the time they themselves fall prey to the oblique moves. The FOX strategy helps these companies achieve higher goals in the end & the world of business just does not know what & how something different happened before even they knew it is happening. This occurs because they constantly redefine the criteria , strategy of their achievement as they move towards higher goals.

Obliquity is not all about finding out an Oblique answer but equally about framing the question obliquely; this then often leads to a quick direct answer. To quote an example from personal experience here if you ask someone “What is the shortest Train Route from Elphinston Road station to “Parel” will likely result in an answer which is more oblique in nature and is something like this; “Go to Dadar taking Western Line, change to the central line and get down at the next station in a train going towards CST”. Instead if I now frame the question obliquely and ask what is the shortest route I can take for going to Parel from Elphinston Road then I am likely to be told to walk the bridge connecting these two stations on different lines. Thus here my framing of the question was oblique for me to get quick direct answer. So according to author complex problem can be broken down into a simple one by framing the questions in an oblique manner, the solution then will be more quick, direct and simple.

The biggest trouble with most of us is that we want to have a rational answer to every result whether it is good or bad, so with the benefit of hindsight we deduce a model, a rational answer, search for a cause that lead to an effect. People thus have tried to find out the causes for successes of the best companies, solved differential equations in fluid dynamics to know the mechanics behind Beckham’s famous kick against Greece. Author thus concludes that by downplaying genuine practical knowledge and skill in pursuit of a mistaken notion of rationality we have in practice produced wide irrationality and many bad decisions. According to him the notion of best solution may itself be misconceived.

I found amazing correlation between the discussions in this book with the science of systematic innovation / TRIZ particularly because to understand obliquity requires not an alternative solution/s but alternative way of thinking. For e.g. if you want to reduce the travel cost of your company then you might have to think about the means that take care of reasons for which the travel is undertaken. Instead we adopt more direct approach and try to reduce cost of every element involved in travel process or simply deny travel.

According to me meditation, spiritual base will be very useful for building oblique thinking skills as these practices makes you more aware about the situation & help you to live in the moment more frequently sinking the distance between your future goals , objectives and your present actions.Just go for this book, appreciate what is written there & sharpen your lateral thinking skills.

After all personal as well as professional life is not as direct as direct city of Chandigarh  but is as oblique as Mumbai. 

Shesh, Adi & Anatha - Stages of Customer Intimacy

2010-12-26T23:44:00.001+05:30

World did not come into being till LORD NARAYANA was in a deep slumber lying in the coils of a serpent which was floating on the sea of milk1. If seen from the perspective of our own mind & imagination, then our mind is like a sea of milk & our imagination is like a serpent. In the state of slumber the serpent is called “Shesh” (zero), when our mind is awaken then we start realizing the world around us, the state of the serpent is called ‘Adi” means one. When our mind realizes the infinite possibility with which we can affect the world then the state of serpent is called “Anatha”. In this state the serpent (imagination) churns the milk (mind) in infinite ways to produce butter (novel ideas)

My friend Prasad returned home at dusk totally exhausted finishing day’s errands. While sipping cup of hot tea, his school going daughter ADITI came up to him with a loving request to accomplish. She wanted him to do her CRAFT work, which is required to be submitted in the school the next day. Bit annoyed Prasad said why she didn’t tell him that earlier, (he thought his daughter was much like his BOSS every time taking him to a daunting task needlessly ) but like an obedient employee he was also a loving father, so he immediately set out to buy the needed craft material. He was already sensing a hardship for next two hours crafting a House, constructing a real house was much easier he thought 

He went to the nearby shop for buying craft material, the shop keeper was quite indifferent ( “Shesh” State ), even though there was no one else in the shop he did not find it necessary to engage with his sole customer . Prasad took the first step (now in “ADI” state) opened the list of items & impulsively bought all the material that he thought would be useful for the craftwork. He paid @ Rs. 250 for all the stuff that he bought which included card paper, ( he did not get the card board he was looking for) coloring pens, decorative paper rolls & some sundry material for decoration etc. His dream of one-stop shopping fell short as he did not get the glue stick, a card board that he would have preferred over a card paper. He hurried to another shop on the same street hoping to end his buying spree and start the tough work that lay ahead of him.

Shopkeeper greeted him with a smile and asked him how he can help him. He was already in the ADI state. Prasad told him that he wanted a glue stick and a card board if that’s available. Shopkeeper handed over a glue stick and asked why he needs a cardboard. He overheard his daughter saying that a house cannot be made without a card board and now he is in the ANANTHA state looking for more than one customer interaction. He suggested Prasad not to buy a cardboard but try using “used box” or a carton to make a House. Prasad was in no mood to appreciate his idea as it means searching for such a box which he does not have with him. Shopkeeper was proactive he gave Prasad one empty box and showed him how he can make a roof by raising the lids and pasting them together . He showed Prasad how he can cut the windows and doors with a blade and can decorate the house with the brick design decorative paper adding some colors in betweem. Prasad was really relieved and his daughter was cheery. The shopkeeper did not charge for the box, so his solution came totally free.

Prasad & his daughter has now become his lifetime customers; based on Prasad’s recommendation his office administration also started buying their stationary requirements from the same shop at a much competitive price. Prasad narrates this story to everyone so there are few more converts like me.

There are few lessons to learn from the anecdote

1. Customer expectation trend moves from Commodity, Product, Service, Experience to Transformation. The shopkeeper did not sale a glue stick instead he sold the total solution which was more valuable and came at no cost. ( IFR = Infinity)

2. The customer rarely buys what the business thinks it sells him. The real WOW comes when he gets What’s needed, On time & With Value.

3. Business is not only about selling but about making lasting impressions & relationships

4. Shopkeeper must be a good father just like Prasad. He must have dealt with this situation earlier with his own child, he just shared his solution, which he never thought could help him increase his business  so small things can turn BIG

5. It’s always better to use already available cheap resource ( Used Box) instead of creating a new one

Well let’s apply these lessons in our business & life.

Reference: 1) Devdutt Pattanaik Friday 17, 2010 The Economic Times “ Mind Must Be Churned To Produce Ideas http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/features/corporate-dossier/human-mind-must-be-churned-to-produce-ideas/articleshow/7111625.cms

Decoding DNA of Great Minds

2010-08-13T09:51:00.000+05:30

Mathematics to most of us is a subject to be hated and loved at the same time. On one hand, the enmity with mathematics is because we had to learn, memories a pattern / method taught to solve a problem in anticipation of the problems we might face in our real life when we are out in the world from our safe cocoons. Although I never applied math to my real life problems as they seem to be more complex to solve with the scant knowledge of mathematics I possess. . On the other hand we were forced to love mathematics because it helped us score good marks and gave us a chance to progress by choosing lucrative professions. Answers were more important than the methods with which they are derived because you can’t get an answer with a different method than the one which is already established.
In my wildest of the dreams I never thought of seeing a play on the work & life of a mathematician, but I did see a very different play “The Disappearing Number” based on the theme of passionate collaboration between mathematics genius Srinivas Ramanujan (1887-1920) and his mentor, guide a Cambridge Scholar Godfrey Harold Hardy. (G.H.Hardy)
Ramanujan had no formal training in pure mathematics and was introduced to the subject when he was 10. He had a difficult childhood and adulthood. But that did not stop him pursuing his passion & the genius went on to make the greatest contribution in mathematical analysis, number theory, infinite series & continued fractions. For continuing with what he knew the best he had to take up a job at the Madras Port Trust as Class 3, Grade IV clerk, making merely 30 rupees a month. His seniors however encouraged him and gave him space to pursue his passion. At that time with guidance of some of the seniors he wrote to several famous mathematicians about his work which no one understood for lack of explanation / proof and was not considered for publication. After receiving several rejections he finally wrote to Cambridge mathematician G.H.Hardy. Initially he had also ignored his correspondence for lack of sound explanation of his work until he saw one formula that a struck a chord with him. To the uninitiated it seemed to make no sense at all. It read something like this
1+2+3+4+5+….. = -1/ 12
It was this very formula that provided Hardy with his first inkling that Ramanujan was a far from a crank. Hardy knew that there were sophisticated mathematical techniques developed in Germany that has spread widely. He realized that Ramanujan must have single-handedly reconstructed them. It is for exploration of such mysterious things has resulted in making of this play.
Ramanujan went to Cambridge to work with Hardy against his Brahmin beliefs. Hardy was fascinated by his work & kept himself busy preparing explanation for his proofs while Ramanujan kept on adding several more during the day. It was exhausting for Hardy to work like that and he wondered from where Ramanujan gets this knowledge to come up with a new theorem that frequently. Ramanujan credited his acumen to his family Goddess, Namagiri of Namakkal, and looked to her for inspiration in his work. He often said, "An equation for me has no meaning, unless it represents a thought of God”
Unfortunately he had a tragic end at an early age of 32 with several liver infections; he spoilt his health due to his strict vegetarianism and spent many days of starvation and ate only rice & fruits occasionally. This part of story rides the audience on an emotional rollercoaster. Today Ramanujan’s mathematical discoveries are used in crystallography & string theory which explains how everything in the universe is connected with each other.
String of thoughts sparked off as I took the train back home after the play, one of them being the genesis of the work that these great minds do. Why they only are able to do what they do & not many of us. Three other genius minds struck to me at that very moment Genrich Altshuller- Father of TRIZ (Science of Systematic Innovation), Micheal Faraday inventor of electromagnetic theory & electromagnetism one of the first forces that exist in nature & the last one is Steve Jobs inventor of devices like smart phones i-pod, i-pad. What is common in all of them? I thought
Altshuller, a patent reader in the patent office of USSR was imprisoned by Stalin for political reasons when he shared his ideas of decoding innovation with fixed number of patterns. His communication with the dictator became a reason for his captivity, as dictators don’t like IDEAS they like IDIOTS. He enthused his inmates who also were intellectuals with his ideas, after setting free they together saw a dream of decoding innovation and mined nearly 200,000 patents to make common rules that lead to a science of predictable innovation. Altshuller did not make fortune in his lifetime with what he did but left all of us a treasure to innovate with. (http://innovationnukkad.blogspot.com/search?q=remembering+altshuller)
Michael Faraday was born to working class parents and eked out a meager existence as an apprentice bookbinder in the early 1800. The young Faraday was fascinated by the enormous breakthroughs in uncovering the mysterious properties of two new forces electricity & magnetism. He joined Prof. Humphrey Davy and in his absence went on to create series of stunning breakthroughs that led to the creation of generators. Empty space was not empty to Faraday at all they were forced lines. His was not trained in mathematics but his notebook was full of hand drawn force of lines. One day he found while moving a magnet over a coil that a current is generated so the lines of forces were not useless but had the power to generate electric current. What you are reading now is because of Faraday’s invention. His invention energized the world and changed the course of world’s civilization. Faraday’s DNA was imagination, experimentation and observation.
I have nothing more to say about Steve Jobs as many of us use his creations i-pod, i-phone & i-pad to conduct our daily chores. To describe more eloquently about the form of creativity that we talked about so far I use his own expression
When you ask creative people how did they do something, they feel little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while that’s because they were able to connect experiences they have had and synthesize new things. And the reason they were able to do that was that they have had more experiences or they have thought more about their experiences than other people.
Unfortunately, that’s too rare a commodity. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences, so they don’t have enough dots to connect and they will end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem.
The broader one understands of the human experience, the better design we will have.
Why these minds were different & creative than the rest I seem to have found an answer in G.H.Hardy’s book “Mathematical Apology” (here the word apology needs to be taken as explanation and not as regret) there are two things that shape the work of great minds the first of which is intellectual curiosity and the other being the pride that they take in their own passion which has a ‘pukka’ connection with their soul. They see several patterns of things they are passionate about and connect those patterns differently to come up with some new creation each time. All these creations are against all odds. So greater is the difficulty the more beautiful their creation becomes. They follow a non-linear path of thinking.
To conclude I would say every organization has at least few of its own Ramanujans, Faradays what probably is needed is equal proportion of Hardy & Maxwells to create a new knowledge and value.

trenDNA - Understanding Populations Better Than They Understand Themselves

2010-08-10T09:50:00.001+05:30

It’s around a month that I have not come up with something new for your grey matter. I mentioned to you about reading a book titled “trenDNA” ( Understanding Populations Better Than They Understand Themselves) - a book by Darrell Mann and Yekta Ozozer. I finished reading it and now deeply diving down to explore the approach and hunt for the innovation challenge treasure .Here I am with a brief summary of trenDNA. I feel this book is one of the important one in overall journey of innovation facilitation.

After reading this I got convinced with what Darrell once said “ Systematic Innovation is necessary but not sufficient”, two things that are very important and ably complement the SI are ; ‘trenDNA” ( Defining Innovation Challenge ) and “ Fundamental Design Method” ( Book for Breaking Psychological Inertia & Art of Thinking) – By Late Edward Matchett, a designer with Rolls Royce Aero Engine Division.

Do read this piece, I am sure I will able to generate good amount of interest in the approach. I am still learning the approach, with Indian context also. But it looks pretty universal. Let me share some of my initial learning with you. Together we will learn more & more.

Follow the Link for accessing the artilce

http://trizindia.org/profiles/blogs/trendna-understanding

Business Lessons From the Games We Play

2010-07-06T23:17:00.000+05:30

I had a very “sporty” childhood; I played almost all the games that involved gush of adrenalin. Our funda was simple play the game of the moment. During the dwell, we played local games like Kho-Kho, Lagori, Son-Sakhali. These are typical Marathi names for those adrenalin boosting encounters. Though I don’t play these games anymore (how boring the sport less life can be…) but I do enjoy watching others play. Fortunately there is a school just behind my apartment and I get to watch all these games being played there. Watching children play these games is really priceless. There is no fixing, no “IPL”ing but one can see & feel the true spirit of sportsmanship. 

On one of these days, I watched students play the game of “Son-Sakhali”, a human chain, which is progressively formed by trapping other players one by one. It starts with one player trapping someone to start a chain. Then they two hunt for the then member and the chain expands. As the subsequent links get added the chain becomes less & less flexible. The bigger the chain gets, chances of it catching a free player becomes more & more difficult. Sometimes the player at the end of the link is very near to a free player (potential pray) but others in the link drag him back due to their own inertia.

So funny isn’t it…you have “excessive resource” syndrome here which means more of anything is not always good. Isn’t this situation analogues we find happening to many organizations which have grown over the years into a large chain. At one point in time, they fail to capture the opportunities that are freely moving around as the inertia that they have garnered over the years pulls them back from pursuing a fresh one. There are some smart people at the end of the chain who spots the opportunity and run for it but are eventually dragged by the hierarchical structure, management beliefs and processes that follow them in the organizational chain.

The solution: break the chain into smaller manageable parts to make it nimble. (Small teams instead of one large one). Each team is thinking it to be a startup & thus eager to grab the opportunities hovering around & finally is able to convert many of them into great business ideas & eventually into profitable businesses.

The Moral: Three tines make a good fork, adding any further really doesn’t help.

What do you say?

The Innovation Stack

2010-06-08T21:25:00.002+05:30

Why some companies stand out from their competitors for years together? A typical research question in the minds of business researchers

“What is that we need to do to negate their unique position?” The question every business leader of the competing company has on his mind.

Let us take an example of TOYOTA, when all the other car makers in the US were struggling and were in RED, Toyota made profits. GE, VISA, Proctor & Gamble, Southwest Airlines are some other examples that are occupying a North Star position for many years. I have several other Indian examples to quote like Arvind Netralaya, ITC e-chaupal, Shantha Biotech, Cavinkare which may not be as big as the companies mentioned above or some of the Indian biggies but they have their unique position in the Indian innovation story.

I often wondered what may be the reason for their continued success. In other words, when in the world, things get copied, replicated in no time, how these companies were able to maintain their leadership position year after year. I seem to have got some direction in this quest as I laid hands on a different book written by world’s renowned management thinker Gary Hamel in his classic on management innovation “The Future of Management”

Before I go further presenting the gist (may be more of it in my forthcoming posts), I would like to take you through a brief discussion on different Innovation types & create a setting. It is my endeavor to build my own understanding on different innovation types and evolve a universal framework for seeding, growing, managing & sustaining innovation. For the purpose of better understanding I present to you a schematic of innovation types.

1 st Tier : Management Innovation ( Think Differently in what you are doing)

2nd Tier : Strategic Innovation ( Sell Different)

3rd Tier : Product / Service Innovations ( Make Different)

4th Tier : Operational Innovation

(Without innovating in top two tiers you can not innovate in the bottom two)

There is no doubt that innovation element played an important part in the success of all these companies. All these years it was recognized as Quality of what they did, thinking it today I feel what they meant by Quality was Quality of Innovation or stream of ideas that have been put forth into practice.

Innovation, at the core is an idea which gives organization a competitive edge. There are two parameters of success for innovation before it is executed first of which is “knowledge about an idea” and second one is “possibility of it being known to the organization”. I plot these two parameters using Johari Window and discuss each quadrant briefly.

Quadrant I Known to Organization, Known to Others: (tangible) This is nothing but the open secret transferred to you through a partner or the things which you yourself can comprehend, understand, validate & implement. e.g. innovative packaging, it can be seen and reverse engineered & can be adopted.

Quadrant II Unknown to Organization & Known to Others: (tangible) Ideas you yourself are not aware of but outside consultants who have worked on it can guide you through its design & implementation. So these ideas can be known through a consultant or technology partners who are not bound by an agreement & therefore can share them openly or alternatively you can hire key personnel from your competitor’s stable.

Quadrant III Known to Organization, Not Known to Others (tangible) Now if you can do all that with your competitor he can do that as well so there is a little less chance for you to escape from all those tactics.

Quadrant IV: Unknown to Organization, Unknown to Others (Intangible) it is very difficult to imitate most of the things lying in this quadrant & lot of it depends on the management’s thinking at all levels (starting from top till lower down the hierarchy), value system, culture, , thinking doing gap, organizational DNA conceived at the time of its birth or conception.

It deals with the softer (non-analytical), part of the overall business thinking. Many companies know about TOYOTA Production System & most of them learn it by touching its external body of knowledge but often miss the spirit of its soul, the way it has come into being.

In the next few posts we will see “What is Hammel’s Advice to become a “Management Innovator” which will offer company long term competitive advantage “& also about the innovation landscape citing examples of each innovation type i.e. Where to innovate)

Stay tuned with “Innovation Nukkad” your own space for provocations on Innovation.

Reference :

1.The Future of Management – Gary Hamel, Harvard Business School Press, 2007
2.“ trenDNA” by Darrell Mann & Yekta Ozozer “ Understanding Populations Better Than They Understand Themselves” IFR Press, U.K. 2010

Birthing Organizational Innovation Capabilities - Life Stages of a Butterfly

2010-05-20T21:18:00.002+05:30

As a sequel to my blog post “Meeting Systematic Innovation Guru- Darrell Mann & Thoughts of Rejuvenation” wherein I said organizations need to solve a contradiction “We want to improve “heartcounts” (Not headcounts) innovation capability, in other word which means organization’s innovation capability” but fear in the process “organizational efficiency may suffer” as innovation process is long drawn, unsystematic, unscientific, serendipitous & perceived to be time consuming with very low success rate.

To me building organizational innovation capability is an evolutionary process1 much similar to the life stages of a butterfly. The capability building trend requires organization to progress through five stages1 viz Seeding, Championing, Managing, Strategizing, and Venturing. I will very briefly touch upon these stages.

1. Seeding: This is the phase where you identify someone as an anchor (like me Hahaha..) & entrust him with responsibility of seeding a thought for a need to innovate by dealing with few problems which no one is interested in solving but everyone agrees that they need to be solved. At this stage the senior management or the team should not be tempted to attempt in taking bigger and most important problems, instead they choose a problem that is thorny but if solved could attract attention of many. Thus at this stage success is more important than the scale. For e.g. in SAMSUNG one of the very first TRIZ case studies was a “low-key” manufacturing cost reduction problem that turned out to save $91M.

I have passed the stage in my earlier engagement, when I was called to look at problems where the experts were struggling to find a solution and had expensive & time consuming solutions which could have delayed a product launch; it took me a day to arrive at the solution after thinking through the problem. The solution, that looked very simple, but was not obvious before was implemented. (Of course I would have loved to think through the problem beyond the implemented solution, but many times teams get withdrawn once they see the sight of the solution which is implementable) The reason this happened because I was devoid of any prejudice, I just looked at it independently as my slate was totally clean and also I had little TRIZ background which helped me achieve that state.  Here I must give credit to the project owner who gave me space and time to work without interfering, pre-empting during the ideation process.

2. Championing: With few “runs on the board” the innovation team should now be ready to begin spreading the word, building a network of supporters and most importantly, begin introducing some tools, systems or methods into its infra-structure. The primary aim during this championing stage is to achieve broad acceptance across the organization that innovation is a key business process rather than an ethereal, high-risk enemy. At this stage quantification of improvements in projects undertaken is necessary. The stage is where management gets confidence that a predictable innovation capability is getting developed. Appointment of at least one dedicated innovation trainer, facilitator, networker, champion, knowledge officer is necessary at this stage.

Many solutions that will result in improvements may seem obvious in hindsight, and others in the organization may say “these were obvious we don’t need an innovation team to do that for us” quite often forgetting that if they were so obvious why they were not thought earlier, Also obvious solutions only has a great chance for implementation as it can be best imagined by the people responsible for implementation. Of course here with due respect to the domain experts, innovation team need to make a great camaraderie with experts, as experts are going to be knowledge brokers when innovation teams wants to connect them with different set of experts to create a new innovative solution

3. Managing: At this stage coming from the earlier stage there is a clear innovation process in place & a framework in place. A well developed virtual “happening “space is in place, where many in the organization are able to know what is going on & how can they can play their part in the innovation process. Organizational connections are widening & people start feeling the larger whole (the organization). Innovation quite often is considered as “Risk Prone” business the team needs to assure management by way of dialogue that the systematic innovation process itself is capable of managing risk as it identifies contradictions leading to innovation and address them thus minimizing the residual risk.

At this stage more number of people needs to be taken on board & to be trained. This is done with the view that a common language is evolved with which ideas and people can be connected faster. (Like we have Hindi in India so despite the language barrier we are able to communicate effectively with each other). At this stage the inevitable problem is that the organization has to simultaneously keep doing day to day business as well as stay engaged in building innovation capability. “Imagineering” to become a key attribute at this stage

4. Strategizing: At this stage top management appoints a senior leader (may be to the level of director) with full time responsibility to drive innovation all across its business. He has the organization which is permanent, as well temporary as innovation champions come on board from the disparate businesses, serve by contributing during their term and go back to their businesses to facilitate induction of new members. Donating only generates fresh blood.

There has to be “to & fro” from the business to this central innovation organization. The success of the organization is when more number of people wants to join & consider it as “the place to be”.

At this stage the team starts looking at the world & start drawing pictures including in it several other elements of the current system. For e.g. Detergent & Washing Machine manufacturers will have a close eye on the development of textiles which are self cleaning, thus eliminating / reducing the need / dependency on the products they make.

The key skills at this stage is to develop scenario-planning, story telling, thought sharing and managing the internal knowledge / interest of people at times beyond their core. At this stage innovation inputs are integral to the strategy planning process of the organization.

Here at this stage we acquire new knowledge or redeploy the existing one to truly serve the customer’s need.

5. Venturing:

At this stage an organization reaches a stage where majority of its employees (ideally all) have all the traits and mindset of an entrepreneur. They are able to connect disparate knowledge & innovate in a partnership. Thus the company is transformed from a product & services company to a ‘knowledge creating company” like what Nonaka and Takeuchi envisaged in their pioneering work. Organization acts like a venture capital firm ready to finance promising ideas of its employees. The organization at this stage truly becomes ambidextrous & is many contradictions ahead of its competition.

I will conclude this post with a moral drawn from its title “If you want a beautiful butterfly you need to be patient all through its life stages”

Reference: 1. Mann Darrell “Building Organizational Innovation Capabilities “ Systematic Innovation e-zine issue 96, March 2010

Meeting Systematic Innovation GURU Darrell Mann & Thoughts of Rejuvenation

2010-05-10T20:29:00.001+05:30

To me last five years have been different from the rest, the differentiating factor being introduction to the subject of Systematic Innovation by Darrell Mann. Since then I have been tracking Darrell through his “well informed” (Best Tellers) books & e-zine articles. The best part of his research is evolution of Systematic Innovation (building it further on TRIZ) making it current, relevant, all encompassing & practicing science by inclusion of disparate management thinking and behavioral science theories like Spiral Dynamics (Pioneered by Prof. Clare Graves). His version of Systematic Innovation can therefore be used for everything under the Sun that needs significant improvement through innovation. His work inspired many of us & helped mold our thinking to look at things differently.

Last week Darrell was in India & luckily for me in Mumbai, he was busy conducting workshops & attending several other business meetings. I could catch up with him and treated him with a “Guajarati Cusine” (That’s an awful act to do with a westerner) We had great company of Prof. Apte & Sh.Pankaj Vora. The discussion was really interesting Just summarizing my comprehension of it.

Darrell trots globe for his SI Consulting Business and interacts with disparate clientele from technology to consumer product companies, academia, and market research groups so there is lot to learn from him. During discussion it came out clearly that world over companies are interested in looking out for innovative solutions to overcome the contradictions faced by them rather than learning / mastering the process though which the solution is arrived, ( they are afraid of death by million tools  ) so at least at this instance they are interested in FISH than in fishing.

These days companies expects an outsider to make them aware of the problems they are unable to identify by themselves, therefore “Systematic Problem Formulation” assumes slightly greater importance over “Systematic Solution Generation” because a well defined/ recognized problem is half solved.

My own experience says companies are outsourcing “creative thinking” to an outside partner, keeping with themselves the “doing” part which is relatively less creative as companies believe that they are primarily responsible for driving organizational efficiencies than creating product or process design all by themselves. The thinking therefore is:
“Thinking Creatively = Not So Good Utilization of Time (Waste of Time) = No Tangible Contribution towards Organizational Efficiency / Profit “(Sick Sigma Mentality)

People working with such organizations & having desire to use their creative prowess) are increasingly concerned because they are not able to effectively contribute to organizational transformation. (Here I assume they realize that they still have creative prowess and it is not yet destroyed by Sick Sigma and organizational inertia)

Darrell is working with an Australian organization which instituted a team of six, seven of their creative employees to start with, who possess an insatiable appetite for questioning, learning, knowing & applying, oriented them to Systematic Innovation view and now they are exploring world beyond their company’s domain. The team is looking at the world, not just as a market abstraction but as a collection of humans with needs worthy of attention.

To me with this model, a company gets an opportunity to know about the solutions that are satisfying a need in a different way & are currently not known as it lies outside their domain. Quite often disparate solutions are satisfying the same function, so understanding of a solution which is different from yours & is better, becomes necessary in order to innovate)

Secondly it also gives company a chance to know about the opportunities they are not cashing on as yet. To give an example if you are fuel pump Mfg Company then you may not be aware that an FMCG company needs your technology for shampoo dispensing.

I will stop here for now, Watch out for my next post “Organization’s Innovation Capability Trend”, this is written taking clue from Darrell’s latest e-zine article relating it with my own experience of starting with the first step and unfortunately leaving it there  hopefully will soon get an opportunity to take it forward from where I left.

In all, day was well spent with Darrell.

Me, Darrell & Prof. Apte. Thanks Pankaj for a lovely photograph, you made us look Handsome. 

TRIZ & Fuel Saving Winglet

2010-04-07T23:08:00.001+05:30

My article " TRIZ & Fuel Saving Winglets" is published in this month's issue of The TRIZ journal.

I talked about "Building Innovation Capability ; Process of Reverse Ideation" in my last blog post which incidently was my 100th blog post ( enclosing a pdf file of the post for your kind perusal) , wherein I said, see a solution addreesing a problem & then go back and find out what, why, when, where, how of the problem to learn more about it. I found this as the best way to improve my own innovation quotient. By this way I also validate TRIZ research findings to gain confidence.

The story behind this paper goes something like this " I came across less than a quarter page news last year talking about blended winglets developed by M/S Aviation Partners an aviation research company in the US. Using my white spaces I mined through some of the aeronautics literature to know more about the phenomenon that leads to the problem. This has helped me simulate the research background,formulate a contradiction and use inventive principles to validate the elements of the solution.

This according to me is also the best way to capture the existing knowledge, develop an understanding about it & store it in a manner which is easily retrievable thus improving overall "innovation productivity"

I have two key insights drawn from this exercise

1. Don't optimise before the team sufficiently think through the problem, it could lead to watsting of resources.
2. It is better to formulate a TRILEMMA ( one parameter contradicting with two other) than a DILEMMA ( Two Parameters Contradicting with one another) then the resultant solutions lie at the intersections of the contradicting parameters.

Enjoy the article " TRIZ & Fuel Saving Winglets" and let me have your feedback.

http://www.triz-journal.com/

Celebrating 100th Blog Post : “Building Innovation Capability – Process of Reverse Ideation:”

2010-03-25T09:30:00.000+05:30

It gives me a pleasure to share 100th blog post of your blog “Innovation Nukkad”
It’s a blissful journey so far; it has become a passion, a reason, resulting in an urge to use this space to communicate with you even the smallest but smartest of the ideas. It’s all about looking at things unconventionally. Thanks for being my buddy and the love that you bestowed upon me during these first 100 steps.
Now something about the subject of today’s post “Reverse Ideation”, the term per se is not important here, it is the intent of the term I want to share with you.
We all are engaged sometime or the other in solving problems faced us either on a personal or professional front. To me problem is nothing but what Einstein has once described as the gap between “what we want and what we have”. We often get blank or are reactive when we have to quickly put up a solution to the problem in hand. Many times we put up a solution that can be best described as “Fix it” or “Jugaad” type which though addresses the problem immediately but at times does not provide a permanent solution & the problem continues to bleed. As the approach used only scratch the surface without reaching the core. Very rarely we have the luxury of time for getting our act together to find a solution that addresses the root of the problem.
Let us delve deeper as to why this happens. Our situation in the normal course of things (dwell period) can be best compared to a FROG swimming happily in the bowl, until it feels the heat of the boiling water. The moment it feels the heat it makes desperate attempt to jump out of the pot & occasionally survive by chance, otherwise becomes a soup for someone. Of course many times even after having known this we are unable to influence the course of things and we remain where we are.
What can be done to get ourselves best prepared for a situation where we have to address the problem in the shortest of the time by delivering the finest of the solution? How can we improve our innovation capability & productivity?
Realizing the gap I have at a personal level to tackle such situations, I decided to consciously observe things that I come across in day to day life, be it a news, an event, an advertisement, an artifact etc and then think about the problems they solve. I call this “Reverse Ideation” which is exactly opposite of the normal ideation process in which we begin with a problem and move towards a solution. In “Reverse Ideation” you journey back from the solution to the problem, simply put form a thought to recognize a problem, go back dipper into the problem, make a clear understanding of the phenomenon that caused it, as it is often said “The devil lies in the detail”.
As an offshoot of this practice and further relating it to the basic premise of TRIZ “Someone Somewhere Has Solved a Problem like Yours” I decided to put up a case study to externalize what I think is one of the best things to do to improve Innovation capability. I will share with you the case study in the following week, but before you read it I wanted to leave you with a thought of “Reverse Ideation”, so you will be in a better position to appreciate what I have said here
To sump up, “Reverse Ideate” when you are not solving a problem, look at the solutions in day to day life & think about the problems they are solving
• To shoot a bullet one needs to pull the trigger.
• To Sprint one has to move backwards
• To shoot an arrow, one needs to pull the string ….
• To Solve a Problem Pull the Solution back to the problem because “Someone Somewhere has Solved Problem like Yours” so next time you are solving a problem you will be able to relate your problem with the one, a solution that you have seen before solves.
Its joy sharing this 100th blog post. I hope you share the joy.
Stay Connected………Stay Motivated…… Lots of Love……

Our Future Air Travel & Principle 16

2010-01-19T21:03:00.002+05:30

Airline business makes its revenue and in turn profit per seat per mile flown. Naturally it is in their best interest to put more seats in the aircraft and the airline manufacturers have to oblige to see that its customers remain profitable. From 31 inch it may be reduced in future to 25 inch to accommodate more passengers.
I recollect Principle 16 Partial or Excessive Action which reads “ If exactly the right amount of action is hard to achieve , use “ slightly less” or “slightly more” of the action, to reduce or eliminate the problem”. Now seating ( Slightly Less) & standing ( Slightly More) what we consider as actions then the principle 16 perfectly fits in here.
The pictures below speak comparison, so will not be explicit. These days people take blogs and Tweets seriously, if only it’s politically correct for them, I hope you know what I mean.

Design For Tranquility

2010-01-11T22:52:00.004+05:30

Mumbai suburban trains are like Bhel Pots. They accommodate different ingredients of human personas making travelling as delicious as Mumbai Bhel. Some of the ingredients of this moving Bhel Pot are gamblers, readers, dozers, chanters, chatters, amateur singers & the grumblers (you can add your own to make it tastier).
There are many types of grumblers who spice up this Bhel; one of them is the one who is victim of the falling luggage (“Luggage Slide” similar to a “Landside”). His tranquility gets seriously disturbed by this sudden onslaught. The luggage rack perfectly represents the rest of the compartment as it is stuffed with baggages of fellow passengers. Bags Shuffle as passengers get out and get in the compartment. These bags are like Jack & Jill. First Jack is pulled down (the bag which needs to be pulled) and then Jill tumbles (the other bag which is wedged to the bag being pulled).
The reason for such an occurrence is bad rack design; a bag is pulled with a force applied parallel to the plane of the rack which also pulls the other bag as two bags as said before are wedged together. The other bag is simply pulled down by the gravity and falls over the passenger sitting below. What is the problem and what can be done?
The improved rack design seems to address this. In this design the bags needs to be lifted first before it is removed so the applied force is perpendicular to the plane of the rack (Lift), so even if the other wedged luggage gets moved a bit it rolls up and remain trapped inside.(It has to go up before it can go down, which of course it can’t, I got the picture in an empty train but readers who have travelled in the suburban trains of Mumbai can imagine what is being portrayed above.)
I coined a term for this Design “Design for Tranquility”. Now if you are under the old design then be careful, with new you can close your eyes and meditate 

My Experiements with New Year Gadgets

2010-01-01T09:22:00.001+05:30

Last week I was busy buying a New Year Calender and a Diary for myself. Every year, with a hope to be better organised in the coming year, I buy these gadgets, to soon realise how futile it is to plan ( Things to Do) and even worst to excute it. If I ever make one such plan others spoil it with their missionary zeal, embracing this brutal reality my diary soon gets deeply burried under the pile of papers. At the year end, it is weighed in KGS , the cycle is on for past several years.
Calender on the other hand is a better of the two, it has pictures to refresh you. Few of them also tempt you once again to plan, but these pages are used to record numbers you will never call and addresses you will probably never visit. so it is the place for the impermanent. 

While choosing a calender I look at the pictures it contains, it is always that I like few pictures from one and few from the other. Does this mean I need to buy two calenders, waste of money I feel, I compromise and go on with the one having pictures that I like the most ( I use socialist funda,all are equal but some are more equal than others ,….) Occassionaly I look at my collagues calender, but his calender most of the times is lousy as it is received as a free gift, so he has no choice but to accept what is destined to him.Soon my calender swaping idea is put to rest.

Customer in me do not know what he wants, but what I want can be vaguely described like this “ I want picture of my choice every month” Little deeper I think as a customer “I do not want to be happy with someone’s RIGID design which limits my choice”. 

I see a physical contradiction emerging both in space & time. I want pictures of my choice in the same calender for different months. I spotted one such calender this year and I connected the design with some of the inventive principles.

The Calender is Unit Trust of India’s Calender - 2010 ( This is not subjected to the Market Risk )

It is segmented making pictures separate from the calender( Principle 1Segmentation, 3 local quality, 13 other way round) Use of Principle 15 Dynamics; If the calender is rigid make it flexible, its parts movable relative to each other, so I can choose picture as per my choice anytime during the year. ( see how many options generated by a thoughtful design)

I have an idea to add to this ; can the user assemble her own calender by choosing pictures of her choice with a single theme or multiple themes ( Scenice Beauty, Architecture, Pictures of GODs and Goddesses etc). It is easy to take out & replace such pictures (Use folder mechanism). I can buy these individual pictures throughout the year. So during the year when I come across something of my choice I can pick up and insert in my calender, intially what I thought I want, is achievable (THODA WISH KARO, DISH KARO). Suddenly what a flexibility / convnience I have as a consumer.
Another TRIZ tool we can apply here is trends of evolution, if you apply all those trend rules to the calender you will have many ideas for designing a calender. I am sure some of them will click.

The Trend is Dynamisation

Immobile System – Jointed System – Fully Flexible System – Pnuematic and Hydraulic- Field Based System

The calender shown here is at the third stage of evolution, electronic calenders are field based so somewhere system has already evolved along the trend lines.You may try others & see for yourself what can be done.

TRIZ Ho!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!, TRIZ is everywhere from Pet, Jet & Calenders, the list is going to inifinity

Happy TRIZOVATIVE New Year 

Migration from Six Sigma and Lean to TRIZ

2009-12-29T22:13:00.001+05:30

Six Sigma and Lean were two of the world’s most practiced approaches, at least number of training programs and conferences that are held every year around the world makes us believe that. It is intended to for improve the bottom line by reducing variation in the processes and the products thus saving on rework and recall. Both these approaches were made popular by two of the world’s best companies General Electric & Toyota. The following discussion covers the integration of TRIZ with these approaches. By the way, these companies also use TRIZ, but there is no formal declaration, I think they want to keep it a secret & continue to be the leader and not a follower. There are many in the world (followers) who wait with what they say & practice & start cramming without understanding, most of the times what they practice is unknowable.

TRIZ and Six Sigma

Six Sigma is an extremely potent, system optimization toolkit. The significant contribution Systematic Innovation (TRIZ) can make to Six Sigma Methodology is in helping to distinguish between optimization and Innovation. Tools of Six Sigma Methodology can be best used while optimizing product or process deliverables during their development stage. What you do afterwards is something similar to squeezing the sugarcane stick the second and the third time wasting energy without getting much out of the effort. If you say you achieved significant result then either you have done shoddy work at the development stage or you have achieved a breakthrough by major system changes by doing things differently which are highly unlikely with tools of Six sigma. The Six Sigma is all about climbing the S-Curve to achieve the best possible output by reducing variation. (For e.g. optimizing washing machine’s input parameters like washing powder, electricity, water to improve the output washing performance). At one stage, system hits the fundamental limit refusing to improve any further. Now if your competitor comes with a machine that delivers the same function differently and you stay stuck in the optimization workout, expending useful energy of your teams.
On the other hand, Systematic Innovation (TRIZ) is all about jumping the S-Curve by identifying contradictions and resolving it by using various contradiction elimination tools. There are around 21 strategies of TRIZ with which one can innovate.
Six Sigma and TRIZ is converging, with some Six Sigma consultants including TRIZ tools in the Define and Improve phases of the methodology. But I think what needs to change is the way we think about these contemporary approaches. Some of us are not ready to move beyond Six Sigma and are deeply stuck there, so it will take some psychological efforts to embrace TRIZ.

TRIZ and Lean

The primary Lean Driver is the elimination of waste. Any waste reduction program at one point in time reaches a point where it has to tackle a contradiction or has to do re-thinking about the whole system design. In such cases we land up with a contradiction “To reduce waste “ X” needs to be improved but “ Y” prevents it from improving. In such cases various TRIZ strategies will be of immense help, first by making us think fundamentally about the problem and later by offering various solution strategies to solve that problem. To elaborate further it not only makes you think about the current system but will lead you to ask the basic question, do I need the system in the first place or is there anything better available or can be thought which can replace existing system so we don’t have to solve problems of current systems.

To conclude, I am not saying that TRIZ can replace the innate ability of creativity which every individual hold within him, what it can do is to unlock that hidden potential. TRIZ with several other approaches like TOC, Spiral Dynamics, NLP and Some other tools of Creativity can form the best armory an organization can have to stay ahead of competition. Good Knowledge Ecosystem (How we capture & use what we know) based on TRIZ will ably support the effort to innovate.
By having focus, such efforts will result into a well blended competency with which organizations can get into a habit of consistently attaining escape velocity & create an uncontested BLUE OCEAN instead of fighting in bloody RED OCEAN.

People Do Not Want TRIZ, They Need Joy of Innovation

2009-12-29T22:11:00.000+05:30

I received my friend’s SMS which read the heading. Hmm… I have nothing more to say but a simple analogy to quote. Let us take an example of a car steering; when we started driving a car, it was with improved mechanical steering, which later followed by hydraulic assisted & next by power assisted steering. Now, which one is more comfortable to drive & maneuver car with? The answer is a no brainer. TRIZ assists you like the power steering reducing your innovation efforts. If you are crowd sourcing (Open Innovation) coupled with TRIZ you are on your way to rule the future.

TRIZ Humour : Justice Malishka

2009-12-11T21:19:00.002+05:30

Some people consider ‘spitting’ as their birth right and a hobby revered by their spitting friends. The hobby is whole heartedly supported by “NUKKAD PANWALAS” serving all the animate (Like you &me) and inanimate things (walls etc) a “RED” ALERT 
The easiest and known solutions include policing to spot such defaults, increase the fine or punish the offender so that spitting becomes economically unviable for him. Now these look to be time tested and failed solutions.
What I saw was the best use of principle 35, change emotional parameters. The police in the picture is warning the offender that if he spits he will tell this to FM wali Malishka, who will announce to the whole world that you (offender) with your name, surname, company you work for were spitting at such and such place and spoling a public place. Smart Idea. This will also make spitting emotionally unviable for him. This is called MALISHKAGIRI. (Refer Picture on the following page)
Malishka ka !DEA number 9702000935 and she is available on RED FM 93.5

TRIZ Humour : Both Hand Drive

2009-12-11T21:17:00.002+05:30

Some countries have RIGHT HAND DRIVE while others have LEFT HAND. However all the countries have BOTH HAND DRIVE. ( Motorcycle ) Physical contradiction solved by principle of merging both LEFT and RIGHT. Quite Innovative, isn’t it. 

The Design of Everyday Things & TRIZ

2009-12-10T00:04:00.003+05:30

Hey this is my pot of observations and its possible connection with TRIZ. This, in my personal experience is the best way to learn TRIZ.

Observe things and solutions that surrounds them and look for the connection for the problem they solve. Best thing atleast for me to improve my ridiculous innovation quotient.

http://trizindia.org/forum/topics/the-design-of-everyday-things

TRIZ Humor : Keep Your Foot ( Wear) Down

2009-11-11T15:20:00.002+05:30

If you kept your foot down (determined I mean) and decided to put your footwear down below the lower railway birth then I suggest think twice, (Until you find some innovative solution). A year back, I lost my sandals as a result of that determination. This time I had the uppermost birth to slumber on, now where do I keep my footwear, I thought to myself. My co-passenger suggested me a so called innovative solution, impressed initially by its novelty, I desisted using it for the purpose I was trying to satisfy, I had no intention to harm anyone because of my footwear’s free fall on someone sleeping below the fan. (In our Indian Railways we have more space per spaces so place between the births is always occupied)
The co-passenger’s solution suggested principle 17, another dimension where you need to look for the dimensions outside of (Fan Top, Here) your current plane (Wagon Floor). I had still better solution in mind, keep footwear poles apart. Even if the thief spots your footwear he will not be interested in stealing a single one, as the other is laying polls apart and thief will have no time to search for it. (He is firefighting … ) What an IDEA Sirji

TRIZ Humor : Nesting Ideas

2009-11-11T15:18:00.001+05:30

If you want to improve volume of moving / stationary object being carried then best thing to do is to nest it. This is principle 7 Nesting, when you put things one inside the other. Architect  in here is really holding something to match the Eiffel Tower.  do we do such nesting in morning rush hrs where we have so many things to do and very less time at our disposal.

TRIZ Humor : Principles for Husbands

2009-11-11T15:15:00.002+05:30

Accompanying wife to the mall & looking after the kids while she shops and make you pay with plastic money, is not what most (can I say all) husbands enjoy. Innovation is all about understanding beyond what is being normally understood by the rest of the world. Here the mall has understood the need of the husband’s freedom and designed a trolley which can accommodate both kids and necessities & objects of desire 
My colleague Deepa with her little angel Yuvaan seems to be happy enjoying her shopping experience whilst her husband Santosh is shopping elsewhere for his new basket ball shoes & sports-wear (his joy is invisible here ).
I see Principle 3 Local Quality & 5 Merging being applied, where two functions are combined into an artifact, whilst satisfying two different needs optimally.

Food for Hungry Appetite; Ideas for Hungry Mind

2009-10-27T20:57:00.004+05:30

It is customary these days to eat out on a pre-diwali day with colleagues and this Diwali was no exception. This year we visited Delhi Durbar, a famous restaurant in Colaba, downtown Mumbai. The first impression of the restaurant was that of a cramped space (what can you expect in downtown Mumbai) but after inflowing inside I felt it was also roomy (Roomy, cramped are all relative terms so your opinion may differ). It was roomy at one place and cramped at the other. Owner successfully solved a physical contradiction & kept the visitors guessing  (Is it Roomy or Cramped ?)
The restaurant is best known for its Non Vegetarian Cuisine, so for a vegetarian like me only option was to relish the gourmet’s joy. I then started watching pretty things around me  and observed a unique idea which quenched my intellect more than food served there did with my appetite.
Let’s TRIZ it. The bigger problem the restaurant owner had to solve was that of a revenue growth, which forced him to put more tables in the limited space to increase the ratio of revenue earned per available square foot. The second way of doing this is to increase customer turnaround time. (Rate of revenue earned per unit time)
On a table of 6, dishes ordered at any time are more than double the number of people. Also there are empty plates kept on the table for serving the food. The table thus then represents the perfect picture of a crowded city. .Therefore normally in a restaurant, a side table is housed equidistance from all the main tables where the dishes are kept temporarily before and after they are served. The waiter keeps moving to & fro to serve the dishes, this wafer thin delay causes us irritation. We have already waited for 10-15 minutes to get us served, but are not going to wait fraction of a second to be served after the food has arrived, our state of mind.
The delay also affects restaurant’s turnaround time, as lead time from placing an order till paying the bill increases. The restaurant can best act on things that are under their control (the majority portion of the lead time is under restaurant’s control, viz. Cooking time, serving time, table clearing time etc leaving aside the customer’s own time in placing an order, eating and paying the bill).
Here we need to do some functional thinking Let me put down the menu of requirements and the contradictions associated with the solution
1. Requirement – We want waiter to serve at the same time without going to & fro
2. Problem / Constraint – Limitation of space on the table so can’t keep all the serving dishes on the table. Can’t increase the table length because of overall hotel space constraint
3. Solution : Can the hotel table be made long and short ( Physical Contradiction) which leads us to formulate a question When we want the serving table ( long while serving) when we do not want the serving table ( short after serving) this is a physical contradiction in time so we can look at those inventive principles that corresponds to such a situation.

I could correlate some of the ideas with TRIZ inventing principles (See the picture below before you read)

1. Table top is extracted from the table, the bigger plate that carries the dishes becomes the table top ( Principle of Segmentation, Extraction, see figure on the extreme right)
2. The tripod which has dynamic members (Principle of Dynamics: parts moving relative to each other), we use such stands while placing a carom board. Did we think anytime that idea can be used in restaurant?
3. The plate is supported at two points; there is a danger of plate falling down in between the space of the two supports. Since the tripod is dynamic, flexible links (canvas material) are used which are riveted on the side bars, like you bad straps. ( see the middle picture) These links will not allow the plate to fall down and also facilitate opening and closing of the dynamic stand
4. There are many such stands so other waiters can use them instead of using many side tables.

Other ideas

5. One can have the trolley nested under the table where the waiter can keep the dishes and serve them one by one. These dishes can be kept under the table which customer self can serve as he wishes.
6. For this table top need to be preferably made up of a glass to see through it.
7. We can have foldable edges of the table just like some of the dining tables have for them to be long & short at different times

Conclusion: Every object you see is solving some problem. We need to observe and think what the value behind that object is. I quote Darrell Mann’s Latest TWEET: Value (functional delivery) lays between the subjects (you) and the object (what you see)
Happy Idea Dining at Innovation Nukkad (http://prashantinnofuture.blogspot.com)

Remembering Genrich S. Althsuller - Father of TRIZ

2009-10-15T02:08:00.001+05:30

I was introduced to TRIZ 4 years back, when I attended Darrell Mann’s course at IIT Mumbai. It was a great feeling at the conclusion of a two day course and I had a great satisfaction to have been introduced to something different which seems to have disrupted my learning curve. I was fortunate that I have been asked to further develop on it by my seniors at Mahindra and I started voraciously mining the literature on the subject. Anyhow, more on this, little later.

TRIZ is a Russian acronym for “Theory of Inventive Problem Solving” (the original Russian version is “Teoriya Resheniya Izobreatatelskikh Zadatch”). The science has origin in erstwhile Soviet Union and is fathered by the Great Genrich Altshuller, a Russian of Jewish origin.

Altshuller was born on this day, 15th October in the year 1926. As a child he was very curious. He received his first author’s certificate for an underwater diving apparatus while a student in the 9th grade; in the 10th grade he built a boat having a rocket engine that used carbide as fuel. In the year 1946, he developed his first mature invention, a method for escaping from an immobile submarine without driving gear. This invention was immediately classified as military secret and he was soon employed with the navy in the patent’s department.

While reviewing the patents filed from various fields of invention, it was revealed to him that many inventors have solved the same problem using some common principles irrespective of the field of their invention. He wished, only if these inventors would have communicated with each other they would have arrived at the solution in the lesser time and with lesser number of trials. So the basic premise on which the whole science based was “Someone somewhere has solved problems like yours”. To move towards the possible solutions one needs to formulate his specific problem into a generic one to search for a generic solution to be converted later into a specific one.

He concluded that innovation & creativity can be learned, taught and eagerly decided to write a letter to Stalin. To his surprise he was arrested in the year1950 on the false charge of sabotaging inventor’s idea (By talking about TRIZ) and was sentenced for 25 years of imprisonment. During this period he was interrogated without allowing him of any sleep. He solved this problem by defining a physical contradiction as “I want to Sleep and I can not sleep” (Not allowed to sleep, but instead was allowed to sit on a chair), he made smart use of resource and used the paper of cigarette carton, tore it in two halves and with a charred match, drew a pupil on each one, further spitting on it & sticking it on to his closed eyes, so while he was asleep, the attendant would think otherwise. This way he could get some sleep during the day and was fresh for the trial at night. The judge running the trial used to get astonished to see him fresh during interrogation but has never known the real reason. 

While in the prison Altshuller used to discuss his ideas of TRIZ with fellow inmates’ who were scientist, academicians, and researchers. Soon after Stalin’s death he was released in the year 1956.

Central Theme of TRIZ Research

Altshuller was concerned about the trial and error methods of innovation, he argued that lot many resources are wasted in trials instead he suggested to have more mind trials by thinking systematically & working with tools to arrive at the successful innovative solutions, of course to be experimented later.

Any system evolves towards increasing IDEALITY (the central of concept of TRIZ, a solution having all the benefits with no cost and harm) and innovator while achieving this fate is faced with several contradictions. A technical contradiction is recognized when improvement in one parameter results in worsening of the other and a physical contradiction is recognized when system itself wants to have two different contradicting parameters in it. Solving a contradiction means rejecting a compromise and moving towards an IDEAL SOLUTION. The research has revealed several approaches towards solving a contradiction. I will briefly touch upon four areas of focus

Contradiction Matrix and Inventive Principles

Altshuller gathered team of researchers and started his work on TRIZ; the team mentored by him analyzed 200,000 patents to decode the common themes, known as 40 inventive principles which different innovators used to solve around 48 sets of different contradictions they encountered while aiming for an IDEAL solution. This provided a good level of abstraction hinting potential inventors towards possible solution directions. In practice, to solve a pair of contradiction, on an average 4 set of principles are used for further ideation.

Substance Field Analysis

His research further involved developing a substance field models. Some TRIZ evangelists use this tool extensively in their work. The model is based on a simple theory that for any system to be viable in order to deliver a function there needs to be minimum two substances and at least one interacting field between them. The solution strategies then are broadly classified into 4 parts .1) Solve the problem by completing an incomplete S-Field. 2) Solve the problem by modifying one or more of the existing substances or fields. 3) Solve the problem by adding new substances, fields or combination thereof or 4) Solve the problem by transitioning to super or sub-system.

The first step of representing a system is to draw a function attribute model and identify the harmful, effective, ineffective, excessive or missing functions. The set of 76 standard solutions developed by the TRIZ researchers then help the potential innovators to classify the problem at hand in one of the above situations and look at the solutions others innovators used solving similar problem. After successful application the new example can be tabled in one of these standards to enhance solutions data base.

The substance field analysis is also developed for psychological applications with emotions being the field acting between two substances ( humans ) it is amazing sometimes to find striking similarity between the technical system and a non-technical one.

Trends of Evolution

Another approach that he & his team developed was the trends of evolution wherein they observed technical system evolution more closely ( and more recently business system evolution) and captured them in the form of trend directions which can be applied to different levels of system hierarchy that exist in the product & system build up. Each of these trend lines solves a problem by offering a solution direction and moving a system towards increasing ideality. They are the best starting point to the know where the current system is and will possible head to.

Researchers also developed many psychological tools for a potential inventor to think and break the mental inertia to explore right innovative solutions in quick time.

Function & Knowledge Data Base

W. Brian Arthur in his book “The Nature of Technology” discusses evolution of technology. The first step in the evolution begins with understanding of the basic phenomenon which lay at the core of any technology. Functional and Knowledge Data Base of TRIZ identifies such a phenomenon (effects) . The data base has classified these effects in two categories first of which is relevant when we are trying to improve the function (for e.g. Absorb, Bend, Dries, Heat, Clean etc) better than it is being currently delivered. Second type concerns with improvement in the attribute delivery (e.g. Change in Pressure, Force. Density etc) associated with a part of the system. This systematic innovation tool quite often hints innovators to look at such a data base to solve the current problem.

TRIZ in the Globalised Business Word

It is a known fact that many successful western companies work with TRIZ but are not willing to share their experiences. What is good and beneficial is not generally shared in fear of losing the competitive edge. Science of TRIZ has been further enhanced by some of the western researchers like Darrell Mann to solve business problems in addition to their dedicated technical research and at present though the science seems to be growing in pockets but is surely growing as more & more companies have started realizing the importance of Innovation in order to survive in bad times & organically grow in favorable conditions. Only one company which openly admits use of TRIZ as its formula of success is SAMSUNG. It is known that companies like GE, Intel, Boeing, Dell and even TOYOTA have successfully applied TRIZ in their products, process and for reinventing their business models. In India attempts are made to learn and apply this science by companies like Infosys, Thermax, WIPRO, Mind tree & few others. There are many TRIZ enthusiasts in India and the community is steadily but surely growing.

TRIZ in Indian Context

India is a country where we think that we have billions of problems; instead we need to think that we have billion opportunities. India requires extreme innovations therefore TRIZ is very relevant IDEA for India. In the process our Great country can offer Indian TRIZ learners (I am not using the word researchers) solutions which can be catalogued in the existing data base to make Indian minds & solutions more enticing to the world.

Future Challenges with TRIZ

TRIZ is in a very nascent stage in India. Indian industry is still in Lean, Six Sigma Mindset while these two methods are the best for waste elimination and optimization; they seldom offer any solution strategies for systematic solution generation. In short there is no point in improving SLR camera when the world is already using a digital one. The pace with which the world is moving continuous improvement initiatives is the thing of the past and continuous innovation is the thing of the future.

TRIZ researchers, practitioners & enthusiasts need to propagate this science in a friendlier manner not tying any belts (Yellow, Green & Black) around the neck of the potential innovators thus drawing others away from this wonderful science. We all need to be recognizing the fact that every potential innovator will have a role to play in enriching this science making it “Theory of Everything”, in the unfolding future.

The best way to learn TRIZ is to reverse engineer the solutions and recognize a problem  Of course this is my view as a student, experts are welcome to correct us, guide us.

Relevance to the Indian Corporate World

Two simple points of relevance

1. Developing a common language of Innovation (Just like we Indians Communicate in HINDI irrespective of our mother tongue, innovators communicate with the world) solving contradictions and staying one contradiction ahead of competition.

2. Building Organizational Memory in order to capture, archive & retrieve ideas at faster rate to cross breed them.

Last Words

I conclude with a quote offering my tribute for the MASTER. I quote “The Soul & his theory we know now is very unique, not because he developed an amazing science, but he bestowed it upon the world & in return never asked “Give Me”, but said “Take It”.

On behalf of all the TRIZ students I bow before the MASTER and seek his blessings for each one of us to play our part in taking this wonderful innovation science to as many people and organizations as possible.

TRIZ HO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

TRIZ In Films - Ideas for Fooling “FILMI GHOST”

2009-09-09T00:01:00.000+05:30

Traveling 4 ½ hrs sitting on the last seat of a 25 seater bus, cramped & clamped is a nightmare. Some of you may empathize with me. My Mumbai- Nasik Return journey perfectly fits this case. In order to dampen this torture, smart transporters, like the one we have here, provide video facility & play latest hits. In TRIZ terms this is called innovation by transition to a super system (Video, films, latest hits etc). The smart innovator asks simple question, can I solve this problem by transition to super system and provides Video facility which acts like a pain killer, provided he plays good movies, otherwise, it results in pain multiplication, of course such incidences presents you with a chance to develop a robust, balanced mind, so consider them as blessings in disguise.

Recently on my return journey from Nasik, my torture subsided as the bus driver played Bollywood’s hit “Bhool Bhulaiyya”. The theme was not that great, but presentation was. (Something like….a good presentation on a lousy topic). I am not going into the details of the story, but to sum up in short, the story goes like this.

From America to his hometowns in the interiors of India, it was a long journey for Siddhartha. But nothing could match the mind boggling journey that now lay in front of him. For it was a journey into an astounding maze in which each step meant mystery, discovery, surprise, shock & revelation.

With open arms, his large extended family welcomes the US based Siddhartha & his newly wed Avani when they come home. But what family resists is Siddhartha’s insistence on staying in his royal ancestral mansion during his stay. The mansion as believed by many held a deadly secret that had repeatedly destroyed family of generations.

The scientifically inclined Siddhartha & his equally modern, archeological expert wife do not believe in such stories and decide to stay put there. Unforeseen happenings, mysterious elements, horrific indications and life threatening incidents swarm their path. Siddhartha calls his dynamic doctor friend Aditya to do root cause analysis & find a permanent solution.

The ancestral property is a haunted mansion. Years ago, a Bengali dancer Manjulica, had committed suicide in the palace, when an evil minded King not able to endure her love for her dance partner beheads him in front of her. Majolica not able to bear the shock commits suicide. Her ghosts (let us say some form of energy) stay in the mansion waiting to find a suitable instrument (someone’s mind & body) to occupy & take revenge abiding law of conservation of energy. So let us say a form of energy that stays locked (static) waiting to get converted into some form of actionable energy.

The story goes further with Avani, who had spent her childhood with her grandmother and away from her parents, who were settled in the US. She grows up listening fairly tales, ghost stories from her grandma. One day suddenly her father decides to take her to the US against her wishes, disturbing her own little world. She stays in a state of shock & helplessness, shrouding agony deep inside her.

The negative energy (extreme agony) of Manjulica fuses with the negative energy of Avani. Avani secretly starts playing Manjulica and nobody understands WHY? May be she finds the closest match to her anguish. Manjulica in her also assumes a long haired handsome man as her lost love in the past birth & considers Siddhartha, her husband in this birth, as the KING who beheaded her love and therefore wants to kill him to take her revenge.

Now you must be wondering why I have taken you so long, have I become a film columnist. No I am not at the moment, in future only knows. What I found at this stage was contradiction. The contradiction was that Manjulica in Avani wants to kill Siddhartha, after which she would leave Avni’s body. Although Avani will be normal afterwards, she would have lost her husband in the present birth. Therefore the contradiction is she wants to kill her husband and don’t want to kill her husband. In TRIZ this is called a physical contradiction in time and the general questions that one asks in formulating them are

When do I want condition (+ A ) ? and When I do not want condition (-A) ?

i.e. I want to kill Siddhartha the KING when I am Manjulica and don’t want to kill him when I am Avani.

The Inventive principles for such a situation are

Principle 15 : Dynamics: If an object or system is rigid or inflexible, make it movable or adaptable

Principle 10 : Preliminary Action : Pre-arrange objects or systems such that they can come into action at the most convenient time & place.

Principle 11 : Beforehand Cushioning: Introduce emergency backups to compensate for the potentially low reliability of an object. E.g. Air Bags or Back-up parachute.

Principle 26 : Copying : Use simple and inexpressible copies in place of expensive, possibly vulnerable objects or systems. e.g. Imitation Jewellery

The scene goes something like this the real Siddhartha is brought on a stretcher mounted on a drum. When Manjulica’s GHOST lifts the sword, the drum is rotated (Principle 15) and the effigy (Principle 26) which is mounted on the other side of the drum (Principle 10, 11) beforehand comes in front. Manjulica cuts the effigy with her sword with all her locked “REVENGE” energy and thus Ghost of Manjulica after taking revenge leaves Avani’s body forever.

TRIZ theory of everything. TRIZ HO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Homely Sustainable Innovations

2009-08-27T00:44:00.003+05:30

Ganesh festival was started by Respected Sh. Bal Gangadhar Tilak in the early part of the 20th century to awaken the people and unite them to fight against the BRITISH Rule. Since then, it is celebrated all over Maharashtra with great enthusiasm. Every Maharashtrian worships the GOD of Intellect with great devotion.
On home turf, this is the time when all your maids are on leave and you have lot of guests at home. It’s a tough time for you, especially being an obedient husband, as all the house hold cleaning is upon you & you need to execute it after you had a good feast of MODAK. This year there is an additional problem of water shortage, how do then one cope up with this situation.
My nephew Aditya used TRIZ Principle 27, Cheap Disposable Objects & suggested us these eco-friendly plates made from Palas Leaves. Food served on such plates tastes even better (Of course all the credit to the ladies of the house)
We had resource constraint, but we surmount it by a simple, all benefits no harm solution. In villages some of these leaves are disposed of by burning. But the city constraint is a business opportunity made out from an otherwise waste resource. Somebody’s constraint is an opportunity for someone.
Let LORD Ganesh show us the way to the nature and protect this wonderful planet from its habitants.
GANAPATI BAPPA MORAYA.

Analogical Chemistry - Learning Can Be Fun

2009-08-20T00:17:00.003+05:30

Chemistry can be boring, if one’s chemistry with it is poor. The option then is to accept without understanding what is written, memorize & score marks to have better career prospects. . After all atomic theory was not invented by us. We merely accepted it.

I was teaching my daughter a lesson in Chemistry and the topic was “Chemical BONDS”. Since I left school, the only BOND I thought I knew was James Bond; I was a Chemistry Scholar then and had scored good marks in my 12th & in pre- school. (Now a days the highest level of education is taken at a place called SCHOOL, therefore the term pre-school is for all the other schools starting with Play School)

Level of understanding many times is inversely proportional to the marks scored. . Therefore, those who do poorly in these subjects are in fact often more intelligent, only problem with them is that they are trying to comprehend “Chemistry” or for that matter any subject , in a manner, which would let them keep its learning for the life time.

But unfortunately these days the rate at which one needs to appear for the exam is far greater than the time available to study & comprehend the subject, so many times children are forced to memorize and score good marks. After all, tangible is what is liked. These children grow up as professionals & chase targets; habit of chasing begin in childhood & continues entire professional life (post retirement, they become a consultant, hate chasing targets and also advice people not to indulge in such a bad habit.)

Habit of enquiry, playfulness soon dies in this mad race and those who score maximum marks are admitted to the best schools and are termed as SCHOLARS, who after many years write their memoirs which read something like this “I was born intelligent, expectation to be right in quick time ruined my intelligence”, These scholars are then employed by school drop outs like Bill Gates & Steve Jobs 

Oh!!! enough of preamble I will come to the point now … I have decided to use my taste for Systematic Innovation to change all this, staring with self first

It was a challenge to explain my daughter the concepts of chemical bonds. The only choice for me to add value was to be different, my customer had an unmet need therefore I started thinking in terms of analogies to be able to contribute meaningfully.
We started with IONIC BONDS. The bond is formed between metal and non metal when metal atoms donate electrons to complete the octet of the non metal. Example is NACL where Sodium atom donate electron to complete Chlorine octate. Thus the metals are like “resource-rich, wealthy, blessed and ever willing to help” population and the receiver (non metals) represents downtrodden, opportunity deprived, needy population who falls short of resources and are thus unstable. Once the donation is received the state of instability ceases. The bond between the donor and the receiver thus is very strong, solid like IONIC BOND developed by the force of gratitude & love.

Some of the real life examples are people donating huge sum of their earnings or property to a social cause, their personal time in educating, serving others ( even when their per day earning rate is lofty), few donate their body organs ( after death or while they are alive) like Kidney, eyes, blood to the needy. Imagine the strength of the bond thus created. Bond thus formed cannot be easily broken much the same way Ionic bonds cannot be broken due to its higher melting and boiling points.

Now let us turn to the COVALENT BONDS. The bond is formed between non metals (equal level people like you & me). Here the electrons are not donated but shared between equal atoms e.g. H2, Cl 2, O2 and Duplet or Octets are formed. These atoms are like self help groups. Real life Example of such bonds are

• Group of people sharing their lunch ( they are equal, do you ( non metal) share lunch with your BOSS ( metal), if you do then your boss is lucky)
• Pool Cars ( Maintaining own car is expensive, this year’s raise is not sufficient, may also get pink slip, therefore pooling is a better option)
• Shared Cabins ( I want a cabin but there are not many, so let us share and be happy)
• Common Balcony, Common Toilets, in Mumbai’s famous chawls etc
• Share a Cigarette, drink etc
• Exchange Notes if you are student ( & then fall in love in filmy style)

As they are circumstances based, these bonds can be easily broken taking few cases from above it means if you leave the company you no more share lunch with your friends, you are promoted and therefore you want to show status to your poor partners so you break the pool & join your equals, you migrate to a “tower” or “new housing complex” so no sharing of toilets, balcony with neighbors. We continued till my daughter said she is bonded with bonds and that she never imagined that bond theory was that interesting. I think I had disruption creating a market for chemistry for a non consumer. 

Bond with the best, bond with Analogical Chemistry. 

Fruitful Ideas & Immortal Inventive Principles

2009-08-12T00:12:00.002+05:30

Principle 25 Self Service
i) Enable an object or system to perform functions by itself or organize itself
ii) Make use of waste resources, energy, or substances

Nature is the greatest innovator; if you are prepared to OBSERVE & Think then you will appreciate its innovativeness.

I like PAPAYA; it’s known to be the poor cousin of KING ALFANSO. It is rich in vitamins, fibrous, helps digestion and has minimum calories. Few slice for the breakfast and you are on your way to a healthy day. Some people like to separate its pulp from the skin, take it in a bowl and eat. If someone is going to wash your bowl after you finish then it is ok. Most of the times these jobs are done by HUSBANDS, so if you are a wife of that husband then NO PRBLEM bowl is for you. But if you are going to wash that yourself, then look for some different options. Eat directly by cutting it into half and using each half as a bowl. Problems you solve: Efforts in Washing the Bowl, Save Water and Detergent. Nature has solved three problems for you. Now look at the principles stated above do you find any resemblance, yes you do. You may also look at me enjoying PAPAYA. 

Principle 5 Merging

i) Physically join or merge identical or related objects, operations or functions
ii) Join or merge objects, operations or functions so that they act together in time

Most of the days in a week, I prefer fruit plate for my morning breakfast. The thing I don’t like is to wait for 10 minutes to be served. Canteen boy who serve fruit plate does multi tasking (makes Juices, Sandwiches, and Cut Fruits etc). Cutting fruits must be his last priority. It being laborious must be reducing profit per man employed per unit time, While waiting for my plate to arrive, I saw his cutting table and I whispered “ Hey Its Merging” Waste basket merged with the fruit cutting bench, so skins can be pushed from the table straight into the waste bin. Are you trying something like this to improve productivity on your shop floor?

Open Secret Wardrobe

2009-08-04T23:58:00.001+05:30

India is a country of Mansioners and Homeless, (sadly, but in inverse proportion) everything here is at the extreme of the OMEGA curve. You have few people occupying thousands of square feet and other thousand left with virtually no space. We call it their fate & move ahead with our own lives. Sad but true.
Homeless are in search of a home till they find the nearest railway station, which houses few thousands of them (with nominal rent, a sober word for HAFTA collected by whom I don’t know and don’t want to know, this is my middleclass, law abiding stand. I am happy to know that at least these homeless are getting a roof to take a shelter).
On one end where we have big WARDROBES loaded with clothes to stuff all our BRANDED CLOTHES bought at the Mega Sale satisfying our insatiable appetite, where these poor people must be keeping their belongings, their bedding, clothes and other stuff which they can’t carry, I often wondered till I found this.
On the station I found their secret wardrobes, it’s bigger than yours & mine (I am not sure whether it is bigger than your wife’s)
Nothing to describe further, picture says it all. Behind the advertisement there are admen & behind their hoardings are the wardrobes of the BOPs. Smart use of available resources.
Ad-Boards are inclined towards you to see the product they exhibit and towards BOPs to house their secret wardrobe. Win-Win isn’t it ?
I am reminded of a quote by Darrell Mann “Burning Need is the Mother of Innovation & Crisis is the father” 

Discovering Ideas & Opportunities observing everyday events

2009-07-09T22:53:00.001+05:30

Those who own a pet, especially a dog will appreciate with what I am saying. It’s a demanding job to take your pet out for his routine every morning. He may be feeling relieved watering few electric poles but his “street” smart buddies do not take pleasure in his act & consider it an offense committed in their own terrain. They envy cozy life your pet enjoys and therefore start barking endlessly at him and indirectly at you; after all, you are the reason for his comfort. (Much the same way, you abhor your colleague who according to you is a blue eyed boy of your boss )
On my jogging track, I have this gentleman who strolls with his pet quite comfortably. Initially he must have had two choices when encountered with such a difficult circumstance either fight or flight. He did neither of these things but still tamed them. I see TRIZ connection is his act. 
In terms of Contradiction Matrix parameter, the problem he is facing can be categorized as “Harmful Factors (Barking Street Dogs) Affecting the System ( his pet, he himself & other joggers )” As per TRIZ inventive principles this factor is improved ( reduced I mean) by using three Inventive Principles ( Ideas) : 2 – Taking Out or Extraction, 10 – Prior Action, 35 – Change of Parameters
These principles can be applied to own dog, street dogs, he himself and many other system elements (Such elements can be found by going up and down the problem hierarchy explorer)
Let us apply these principles and see what solutions we can generate to find a solution to this problem.
Principle 2 Extraction: Separate interfering part or property from a system or object, or single out the only necessary part
Ideas: Take the street dogs out from the place by informing municipality (Too Ideal Solution)
Have a separate toilet for your dog. (Everybody likes the dog, but not his toilet, there are lots of public places so why to have a separate toilet inside Hmmm……)
What you really want a dog or his ability to bark & scare thieves, extract that ability and get a doorbell that has a barking sound.
Make the dog comfortable with his routine by taking him around in your (un) co-operative society premises. ( Where are there no street dogs) Of course, you will very soon will be thrown out of the society … Neighbors consider your dog as a headache. ( Neighbors headache owner’s pride ).
Leave the dog alone on the street while you extract yourself and sit in a car watching the dog show 
Use your prowess and get the zone declared as “NO STREET DOG ZONE” (Difficult for the street dogs to follow, they can’t read. Hmmmm…)
Think some more & list ….
Principle 10: Prior Action
• Perform the required change of a system or object ( either fully or partially) before it is needed
• Pre-arrange elements such that they can come into action from the most convenient place and without losing time for their delivery
Ideas
Take the stick or stone to scare the dog and drive them out (Easy to imagine difficult to execute)
Take the spray that defunct the street dogs temporarily (Be aware of some animal lovers they will defunct you, they love animals more than they love human beings.)
Take something that changes emotional parameters (Read the idea under the principle 35 parameter changes)
Make the dog infertile
Principle 35: Parameter Changes
• Change object’s physical state ( e.g. from physical to virtual)
• Change the concentration
• Change the degree of flexibility
• Change emotional and other parameters
Ideas:
Why you want a real dog get a virtual dog that keeps you busy with everything as the real dog except the harmful things. Nintendo has such toys where the user take care of this virtual dog much the same way you take care of the real dog. (http://www.lucylearns.com/nintendo-dog.html) In case you don’t follow his routine it dies. ( electronic circuit cease to function after a set number of defaults)
Shut the street dog’s mouth by a mask so they cannot bite and bark, here you are reducing the noise decibels (concentration) by introducing a silencer (Difficult, who will bell the cat? Dog I mean…)
You & your dog wear a mask or a suite so that street dogs can only bark which you will able to ignore, the danger is they will think you & your dog are extra-terrestrial and may bark even more
Change the emotional parameters; if you always thought that stick, stone are the best ways to keep the street dogs away then I am sure in reality you haven’t found this to be the best way. Can you then feed them with some food? Just reverse the emotions from hatred to compassion, love. Yes, this seems to be a better option. This is precisely the idea this gentleman uses. Study has shown that street dogs become violent / bark because they are hungry and therefore can be dangerous.
This man gathers all the dogs in one corner & feeds them with biscuits, all the other dog lovers also synchronies their timing with his so they and their dog escape the wrath and enjoy their peaceful routine Uncle is doing a great social service
Now, let’s get serious and ponder on few things
There is a business opportunity hidden in every problem. It can be unearthed by careful questioning thus going beyond the present solution and problem.
In this case by asking a question “Why Do I Want To Solve This Problem”? Leads us to think whether “taking the dog out “is a right problem or “having a dog itself” is a problem. Both these questions lead us to problems of household security or one’s emotional engagement beyond human associations. (Sometime we are comfortable with any living thing except the human, it’s all because of our complex neo-cortex you see) These clear or subtle needs sprouts business ideas like burglar alarms, home security systems or need for a virtual pet (toy) which can be accompanied anywhere ( without being literally carried I mean) and can be cared during moments of loneliness. Nintendo may have picked up business opportunity for its virtual toys with such insights.
The morale
1. All our social innovations need to address inclusiveness. What applies to dogs applies to human also.

2. Observe carefully and you will find many business opportunities. Your product may not still stop people having a pet, but will provide solutions to those thinking of owning one because of an unmet need.

Book Review: Breakthrough Indian Innovations – A Book by Porus Munshi

2009-06-24T00:19:00.000+05:30

In our childhood, we retired each night by listening to grandma stories. These stories proffered us with invaluable words of wisdom so much so that even today we summon up those words / lessons while dealing with many real life situations. All these stories are of the Indian soil and many of them date back to thousands years and are truly eternal.

“Making Breakthrough Innovation Happen” a book by Porus Munshi achieves this rare fate by bestowing upon its readers golden nuggets of Indian passion and wisdom. It covers, in equal proportion, the hard (ideas) and soft part (attitude. Culture etc) of innovation, making it an amazing read. Frankly I wouldn’t have lifted this book at the first instance, had I not spotted Sh. Ratan Tata’s and Dr. Mashelkar’s admiration of it. The approach of story telling itself is quite Innovative which improves reader’s inspiration quotient and triggers fresh flow of adrenalin to take on with the challenges at hand.

To most of us innovation is product, process, service and technologically related which is expected to beef up top as well as bottom line. We have never quite understood the importance of innovation beyond this customary envelope and see how other areas / domains can be transformed for social good, making those who are part of it appreciate that they have a job to do and their job can make a great difference to lives of many people. Innovation efforts do not always result only into tangible benefits, on the contrary when it touches lives it attains perfect immortal state.

The book takes snapshots of 11 Indians who made a difference through their breakthrough innovations making a permanent dent in the memory of those associated with it and those who were/ are benefited from it. I was inspired by all the case studies, but few of them touched me the most.

“Shantha Biotech which was inspired by Sh. Varaprasad Reddy was taken up by a cause of making Hepatitis B vaccine available & affordable to the common man at Rs. 50 first (Rs. 15 now) as compared to its then prevailing price of Rs. 2250 (as it is imported), which kept poor Indians stay away from it and as a result succumbing to an avoidable death.

It’s never too late to work for a cause if you are inspired which is what Dr. Venkatswamy did after retiring as a surgeon from the government hospital and founded “Arvind Netralaya” with virtually no funds. Many technical and human innovations have gone in building Arvind Movement. It’s a perfect case of functional innovations under the resource starved circumstances. It works on a mission statement “Eradicate Avoidable Blindness” and in its pursuit have become the world’s best “eye care” institute.

The Surat Transformation led by its commissioner Sh. Rao turned it from a city victimized by plague to the second cleanest cities in India. The feeling of oneness, empowering the powerless and a common goal of cleanliness achieved this magical transformation.

The Trichy police department under its head Sh. Tripathy started an innovative approach of community policing turning it from a city of violence into a city where people live in piece & harmony. This was achieved without increasing the security infrastructure in terms of manpower and equipments. It altered the image of the police in the minds of themselves first and then the society. So, police rather than acting after the crime has ensued started taking proactive steps to change the circumstances that led to the crime. This was achieved by them by being a friend, troubleshooter & becoming part of the community than merely a standing in the middle as a regulator.

I will soon share many such nuggets ( in detail) in my upcoming posts correlating it with language of innovation (TRIZ or Systematic Innovation, I mean)

I conclude by summarizing important take away from this book

1. Innovation is all about aspirations first, people next and finally about ideas.

2. You don’t need special projects in order to innovate instead you can innovate and make a difference with the job in hand.

3. Many times we dig dipper into a problem realizing later that our efforts have gone in vain. We therefore need to look into detail and at the bigger picture in order to innovate. Remember devil lies in the detail and in the bigger picture

4. Every one of us is the leader, irrespective of his/ her organizational hierarchy, once we shoulder responsibility for change to make a difference. However we also need to keep in mind that the greatest dilution point is in a space 6 inches between our ears, so avoid dilution, dream and let your team dream with you. It’s your collective dream that will achieve the ideal result. Be honest with what you do even in the face of an adversity.

5. Inclusive innovations will win over a long run and will have sustaining benefits. ITC IBD case proves this point, wherein middle men who went out of job after implementation of e-chaupal were given a new role where they look after logistic, packaging, transportation, paperwork and handling job. The lesson: Nobody has to loose for someone to win.

6. Orbit shifters are ordinary people like you and me. Question Everything around you, unleash, unlearn to Innovate

7. Innovation cut across disciplines and need a cause in the first place; rest all will fall in place. Sh. Varaprasad Reddy of Shantha biotech is an electronics engineer. Dream & passion override many other things including your professional training. So TRIZY.

Read the book and also encourage others to do the same. Let us get inspired to innovate and announce to the world that I in India is not for inhibition and Imitation but it stands for INNOVATION.

My perfect 10 for this book .

Context, Job to be done and different ways of doing it

2009-06-03T23:12:00.005+05:30

I spent last week end at a cool place 150 kms from Mumbai at Sasawane, a coastal village near Alibagh. Beautiful seashores and lush green surroundings refreshed me ahead of a taxing week. I have a habit of taking a long walk through such villages and try & converse with the local people there and understand the way they live their life. It’s something I must say I love to do.
This time while on one such exploration, my attention was drawn to bathing beauties; don’t get excited, I am talking of bunch of buffaloes,  getting them bathed at the hands of an old man. He had a job on his hand to get them bath quickly so that he can proceed with his next tasks and RELAX. The quantity of water to wash a buffalo is at least 5-6 times more than what you & I require (if at all we are serious about taking a bath, while on such a leisure jaunt) and if you have 25 such buffaloes then you have 150 buckets to be pulled out of a well. The job the old man was trying to do was to take out water from the well in the quickest possible time. What is a better option to do it. Simple, you may say, put an electric pump. Well that’s a good option, but continuous electric supply is a distant dream in such villages and certainly not acceptable to the frugal rural mind (and rightly so, this region is resource conscious and the word ‘abundance’ is missing from their dictionary, therefore here we stand a good chance to capture many innovations , because innovation means resource minimum result maximum)
I saw an idea whether I can reverse engineer it & see whether contradiction matrix can work for this problem. (Reverse engineering is a good way to learn TRIZ application). The Contradiction here is that the old man wants to take out the water speedily, but in so doing need to put lot of hard work if he uses conventional water wheel. Let us see whether we can formulate a contradiction.
If we map this problem in a problem hierarchy explorer then the initial problem seems to be of productivity (number of buckets filled up in a unit time), what’s stopping us from achieving the productivity is the speed with which the water is removed, therefore the parameter to be improved is speed, what’s limiting him to achieve the desired speed, is the force he need to apply or can apply. Therefore the contradiction is
Improving Parameter: Speed ( 14) Worsening Parameter: Force (15)
The inventive principles used by the other inventors when faced with similar problems are
• 19 - Periodic action
• 13- The Other Way Round
• 15 – Dynamics
• 28 – Mechanical Substitution
• 29 – Pneumatics and Hydraulics
• 03 – Local Quality
• 18 – Mechanical Vibration
• 05 – Merging
• 17- The another dimension

The conventional arrangement is as shown in figure 1. Figure 2 shows the use of lever principle which uses principles like other way round (instead of pulling the bucket push the bucket, less effort required easy to do, dead weight at the other end gets the filled bucket up), Dynamics ( Fixed Part, Movable Part), the action is periodic instead of continuous ( principle 19), the return speed is fast as the dead weight ( tied at the other end) lifts the water filled bucket speedily. (Did you experience a jolt when the person at the opposite end suddenly took himself off from the sea-saw). The dead weight has natural stopper (ground) you must have yourself experienced this stopper after having landed on the ground.

One can use electric pump (Mechanical Substitution Principle 28, use of electric field, further use of solar energy to power your pump). But I am thinking of Ideality, can buffaloes bath themselves, may be Persian wheel looks to be a good option, they get themselves bathed while they rotate the wheel. . Can you think how we can make design such an arrangement? Let us help the old man & let bathing beauties help themselves. (Photo next page) 

Unconventional Brand Communication

2009-05-25T21:34:00.001+05:30

Even movies face danger of getting commoditized, when all “MEN” SUPERMAN, SPIDERMAN, BATMAN trying to cleave to your imagination to have pie of your wallet.

How one would catch the attention then? It’s through unconventional brand communication and is shown in the picture below. I see art director using two TRIZ principles to communicate

Principle 13: The Other Way Round

You dream of being a Spiderman, now that’s normal, but can you dream Spiderman be like you. If you observe any of his traits are like yours then you associate with the brand more closely than you would normally have.

Principle 17: Another Dimension

The urinal is in a different plane after all he is a Spiderman and does not want to crowd your space.

Innovation at the Bottom of a TRUCK

2009-05-10T00:50:00.003+05:30

Case of a TRUCK DRIVER – A day in his hectic life ……

Waiting at the OCTROI naka day & night and then in traffic jams, but still have to drive to reach the destination……Otherwise your JIT will get fired …. Away from home…. for weeks & months. Breakfast at CHAI tapari, lunch at roadside DHABA. No budget, therefore no lodging…… I take a nap when others bestow me that freedom…

My MALIK says he stays in GINGER, a Low Budget Hotel…Therefore he is cost conscious.....I cannot even afford Ginger for me it is my “SWINGER”, a zero budget hotel…… If this is innovation so be it, I only have to find out solutions to my problems, there is no one I can look up to for help…., I am not as intelligent, as educated as you all are….I have to help myself……..Pressing Necessity is the mother of all INNOVATIONS……

Are you helping yourself & Innovating…………Take small steps… but kick off……

The Road Ahead: Celebrating 75th Post

2009-04-23T22:10:00.002+05:30

A year & half back, I made humble beginning with my own space of expression, my blog. I never imagined I would come so far. In the past I started with something and discontinued in between blaming on time scarcity owing to the so called busy schedule pledged for an (un) planned work or for upholding conjugal bliss (in other words, bad time management, wrong work prioritization or fearful respect for wife’s priorities). I had no reason this time as I was taken on by something, joy of sharing, connection may be. I kept scoring each day like JAVED MIANDAD and here I am with my 75th post.

When I started I had doubt in my ability to put forward my thoughts in seamless manner for erudite like you to appreciate or feel worth going through at the cost of your scarce & therefore precious time, today I make no claims that I am better, but I sense with your responses that I am improving by each passing day and have already started adding value.

Now, something about my future journey. My blog is devoted to ideas, it covers / will cover ideas from all human and planetary endeavors, thinking about them and decoding them. There is no categorization here, according to me every idea is important and wombs tomorrows innovation. Ideas are ubiquitous and simply jumping in front of us for our attention. Obvious is not so obvious, so if we make an attempt to observe the obvious we are getting ready for discovering unobvious.

One question always occupied my mind and I believe so also your mind; “What we mean when we say we want to innovate?” Simply put, to innovate is to solve problems not by thinking merely out of box but by looking inside several boxes (knowledge domains, ideas around us I mean), according to me, any problem is classified into two broad categories: recognized (known, today’s ) problems and unrecognized (unknown, tomorrow’s ) problems. Recognized problems are related to failures or performance gaps that we have on our hand. Most of our time is spent in solving the former, therefore fully or partially ignoring the later.

Recognized problem need to be defined in such a manner and till such time we discover an unrecognized one, we need to question everything even if it does not appear to be today’s problem. Unrecognized one can be best defined by defining ideality or Ideal Final Result and by asking questions that lead us to identifying contradictions that are stopping us reach our IDEAL (Most Desired) Goal. In other words, It is always better to be focused and chase ideality with rigor in order to innovate. As an organization, we need to ensure that we never reach equilibrium state. Only such paranoid attitude coupled with inclination to learning (new knowledge) will keep us way ahead of our competition.

A well architectured innovation road map will help us begin with our journey. I see a central role for an innovation facilitator ( navigator), who in his extended role work as a Knowledge Officer help top management create, nurture and blossom innovation & knowledge culture. To me facilitator has a role of a rocket launcher helping people attain their escape velocity so as to migrate them into higher orbit.

The road map has many destinations on its way to excellence, some of them are

• Developing innovation capability of organizational heart counts
• Building a solid foundation of Knowledge Management Systems, structures, processes & infrastructure which enable organization achieve its IDEAL KNOWLEDGE GOAL “Everyone Knows Everything”,
• Organization is able to create environment where expert and not experts are in unison and speak a common language of Innovation.
• All the above efforts will eventually turn a company into a KNOWLEDGE CREATING COMPANY that has knowledge as one of its business vertical

Theory of TRIZ will be at the epicenter of all this efforts. To me it is the only Innovation theory that subsists at present. TRIZ develops an innovation capability which helps people recognize similarity between household problems and those that are technical in nature. It helps us recognize similarity of problems faced by wine bars, ice cream parlors and news papers and further surprises us with the similarity of solutions that are used to solve them. Therefore learning of this science is a must if we are thinking of developing innovation capability and expecting a blessing of a third eye, an Innovative eye.

The challenge is how to take this innovation science to more number of people with contemporary context so that everybody participates in its exploration and contributes towards its advancement. (Not taking it SIX S (T) IGMA route) What I am fully aware today, is its capability in blossoming innovation and its ability to be an INNOVATION language. In future my blog will present my own understanding of TRIZ. You are welcome to offer your critical views.

I close this post with three wonderful quotes which best describes the journey into the future……..

“We cannot depend on our eyes, if our imagination is out of focus”
“In a time of drastic change, the future belongs to paranoids and learners”
“Knowledge is a baobab tree; therefore no single individual can embrace it”

Tie knot with Innovation Nukkad & stay put.

Faraday's Lines of Forces and Problem Visualisation in TRIZ

2009-04-14T23:37:00.006+05:30

The post you are reading is energized by Faraday’s theory of electromagnetism. The five senses, which are instruments of our desire, follow theory of electromagnetism. (Unless, you are practicing equanimity, as elucidated, by the GREAT GAUTAMA BUDDHA). 

The key to Faraday’s greatest discoveries was the “force fields”, if one places iron filings over a magnet, one finds that the iron filings create a spider web like pattern that fills up all the space. Empty space to Faraday was not at all empty but was filled up with lines of force that could move distance object. (Invisible field are just like future solutions which are invisible when we begin solving a problem) Because of Faraday’s poverty stricken youth, he was illiterate in mathematics, and as a consequence his notebooks were not full of equations but hand drawn diagrams of these lines of force. Ironically, his lack of mathematical training led him to create the beautiful diagrams that now can be found in any physics textbook.

In science a physical picture is often more important than the mathematics used to describe it. The science is thus best explained by figures. Also it has been said that picture is worth thousand words and equations (later one is my own addition)
.
The point I am trying to make here is not only to convey the way the FARADAY did his work with force fields but to gravitate your attention towards importance of representing a system and thus hidden & unhidden problem associated with it in a diagrammatic form.

In Systematic Innovation (TRIZ - an Innovation Science), system is broken into individual component level describing their functional relationship & along with their individual attributes. This way the complex system is outspread into visual form. Functions are then classified into useful, harmful, excessive, inadequate & missing. Mind works better in search of an Innovative solution with such a diagrammatic representation many times washing away cobwebs of description.

While solving personal problems common man like us prefer to have a picture of GOD in front, isn’t it sensible then to have a picture of a problem we are trying to solve.

To conclude it is better to first represent the system in its visual form than in mathematical form. (Mathematician will later explain it, just as Maxwell explained FARADAY’s work) Qualitative thinking needs to precede quantitative one. (If you have lot of time then spend it data collection & analysis). At least using the former you will not dose off while sitting in that much hyped reactive brain storming sessions.

Architectural Confluence & My French Beard

2009-03-11T21:08:00.002+05:30

Everyday, on my way to jogging track, I pass by several heritage dwellings in my area. The tranquil ambience that surrounds them refreshes and prepares me for the long day ahead. One of the dwellings gravitate my attention the most. For days I was holding a desire to have it photographed. You may ask “What’s so special in it?” There must be a story behind the way it was built.

The story must have gone like this.

Father & son must have locked their heads on whether to demolish the old house and construct a multistoried sprawling apartment. According to son, the plan would earn them colossal treasure even after holding an outsized space in the new edifice.

Father would have resisted this idea, as demolishing old house means disrespecting ancestors and loosing one’s pride. The situation would have turned to “EITHER OR - TYPE”, sprouting itself into a physical contradiction. “I want our old House (Father’s Stand), I don’t want old house (I want modern apartment, Son’s Stand)”.

Whenever there is EITHER OR situation in the real life the answer usually is usually BOTH. Inventive principle of Local Quality seems to have solved the problem. One of its sub-principle states: “Where an Object or System is uniform or homogenous, make it non-uniform.”

Solution: Heritage front end and modern back end. What an IDEA SIR JI?

I had similar problem “To have full beard or be clean shaved”, Local Quality helped me once again.

Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation By Being A Knowledge Creating Company

2009-03-01T23:23:00.000+05:30

If an investor is careful about the rightfulness of the script he puts his money on, then the reader does the same when it comes to the book he chooses to read, as for a reader time is money.

My investment in “KNOWLEDGE CREATING COMPANY” a pioneering work by two Knowledge Management Specialists Nonaka and Takeuchi , an output of 12 years of research studying various companies for their approaches to knowledge and its management, was worth my time. (My ROI). Around three years back, I had a glance at this book and my first impression was that it is a sort of a heavy book laden with too much of a theory and only reason one should read it is to conquer her sleeping tribulations by trying to comprehend the heavy stuff the book intends to bequeath.

I only decided to put my hands on it while reading Sh. R.Gopalkrishnan’s, “The Case of The Bonsai Manager”, in which he has several times made reference of the book while making a point on Knowledge Management. I am presenting a bird’s eye view of the book and key take-away.

In its introductory chapters the authors touch upon “The Theory of Knowledge” its various elements and general approaches to it. The next chapters are dedicated to foundation elements of Knowledge Management such as, Knowledge Conversion Process (Socialization, Externalization, Combination and Internalization) Management Style to manage knowledge processes (Middle Up-Down Management Style) and Organizational Structures (Concept of Hypertext Organizations). As today’s age is of global organizations with diversified workforce, the process of Global Knowledge Creation assumes primary importance, the approach to such process is also discussed further making comparison between Western Style of Knowledge Creation (Everything explicit and the military style) Vs. Japanese Style of Knowledge Creation (Implicit and Ubiquitous). Author concludes the book by discussing the practical and theoretical implications for managers engaged in knowledge creation, which is a fantastic effort to summarize everything that was discussed in preceding chapters.

I liked the book for three reasons…. A) it lays strong emphasis on process of IDEALITY formulation, Recognition of Contradictions and generating solutions by way of analogy, metaphor and pattern recognitions. The science of TRIZ helps innovator to precisely do this, through its problem formulation and solution generation methods.

B), Being an evangelist of TRIZ, I also recognize usefulness of peripheral support, structures, organizational processes and approaches for creation of new knowledge which is nothing but Innovation. All this is discussed in this book touching upon elements like Facilitation Methods, Enabling Structures, and Knowledge conversion process etc. Thus by embracing the theory discussed here organization can aspire to be a Knowledge Creating Company with its heart count becoming the member of its knowledge crew. (Let us bury the word HEADCOUNT, where HEAD is only used for counting)

C) The books presents example after examples explaining every single word of the theory. It reinforced my conviction that a sound theory has an important role to create the best practices of any business domain. The only thing which may fall short of your expectation is the examples of the companies discussed here, these companies are not the SONY’s and TOYOTA’s of the world. They are Matsushita, Sharp, Kao, and Nissan.
But nonetheless, if you are starting Innovation Movement in your company, this book is a must read for those who has responsibility of driving that movement. I propose to share all my learning of this book, in my forthcoming posts.

TEAM INNOVATION

2009-02-25T22:14:00.001+05:30

Is it possible for us to notify which part of our body is more important than the other? If one has to answer, one would say; for a perfect healthy person all the body parts are equally important. A healthy organization recognizes this analogy & carefully builds and nurtures Team innovation. The TEAM INNOVATION has four important constituents.

The Idea Generator:

A person, who is a non-linear thinker, loves to make connections, is passionate all forms of knowledge, full of energy, is happy in groups, act as a neuron connecting cells (teams) and has insatiable appetite for KNOWING. Someone who sees those connections and patterns that are not obvious. Idea generators are impatient with constraints and unafraid to say what they think. She looks at everything with a fresh eye. She is an idea blotter who blots ideas from the world around her using every possible channel of communication. She makes connection between these ideas, plays a role of innovation coach, facilitator. The idea generator helps her organization net ideas from its heart counts and act as a bridge to the outside world. She helps her organization nurture & grow culture of Innovation. (More on this in my earlier post Role of an Innovation Facilitator).

The Project Manager:

Think type A person with a sense of humor. They need to be disciplined, attentive to detail, and able to organize complexity. A project manager who lacks social skills will be seen as a nag, not a leader and provoke guerrilla resistance.

The Executor:

People who make things happen, come what may. If you don’t execute, the stakeholders don’t care what the strategy was. Execution is the only strategy they see.

The Leader:

The leader needs to create culture where members can express their ideas freely. Leaders need not be a leading expert; they need to understand both the product and market. They should able to attract people with diverse backgrounds culturally & professionally. The most important part is, leaders must always think of IDEAL.ITY and relentlessly pursue all the actions to overcome problems that act as impediments in achieving it.

Ideal Final Result – Begin with “IDEAL” End in Mind

2009-02-19T21:38:00.001+05:30

Ideal Final Result is a central theme of Systematic Innovation Philosophy. It is also one of the psychological inertia tools which help innovator imagine the ideal state of her improvement endeavor. Organizational transformation/s mainly aim at improving products/ processes to make them faster, better, cheaper & newer, therefore IFR thinking must lie at the epicenter of all the product / process improvement initiatives s that it has espoused to achieve its desired goal. IFR enables Innovator to think about the value delivery which means embracing more benefits at less cost with less harm. So in nutshell all the product / process improvement efforts must result in more of good things and less of bad things for customer / consumer and business alike.

It is a common belief that IFR is the final goal to achieve, therefore improvement teams’ start implementing actions, they feel best at any given point in time, (as a result of re active brainstorming & to demonstrate to its leaders that action is on. less of Planning or wrong planning and more of DOING….) with a hope to reach IFR at some point in time during their improvement journey. On the contrary, IFR or Ideality suggests innovator to begin with end in mind and write down all the impediments that are likely to be faced by him/ her in achieving her desired IFR. This is very difficult to imagine at first as it means, at times, eliminating the incumbent process or a product that is being improved upon. At this stage we need to work on our psychological inertia and keep focusing on IFR as the quality of Innovation depends on how closer solution is to IFR.

IFR is also function of a time i.e. it changes with time. Google offers free searches to its users, its main source of revenue is/ was advertisements, but the revenue is/ will shrink further, which is then compensated by selling knowledge & insights it gathers by way of its blog traffic.

To sum up, IDEALITY is First Station on your Innovation Journey …….

Bre(e)ad(ing) Ideas

2009-02-17T00:06:00.004+05:30

I like sandwiches (not the one that comes pre-packed, they look tired); it is the one of the best and reasonably healthy brunches (provided you are not buttering it lavishly, just like you do it to impress your boss) and available at any time of the day. One of the main reasons of its popularity is shorter preparation time and therefore serving time. It is more instant than many other instant options available to us. The bread, which is the main constituent, is also available in different sizes and types.

I always have a tough time cutting sandwiches after they have been stuffed like Hardy. Almost in every attempt, the knife slips over the bread and the stuff inside pops out. Therefore, I prefer to heat the preparation to make it stiff and then cut it. Every time I cut sandwiches along its diagonal, I strike a cord with Pythagoras theorem which notifies me the gospel truth that diagonal is longer than its two sides, so I have that much more labor to put.  Why the sandwiches are cut diagonally may be because it is very easy to bite them from their softer diagonals.

As per Prof. Clayton Christensen’s theory (see how sandwiches suddenly becomes serious stuff ) people like me are undershot customers & are living with our frustration and as he puts his theory the entrant company like the one discussed here, can tap existing market or its segment by addressing the unmet need.

The bread in the picture is available already in pre-cut form, (Inventive Principle 10 Preliminary Action) thus addresses my frustration, and for hoteliers it saves lot of labor, deskills cutting operation & improves productivity.

When probed little further I have been told that major customers of this bread are hoteliers. Why so I thought? We eat sandwiches either at home or at the corner shops and in hotels. In first two places, we are conscious about the brand used as we can catch the sight of it. Whereas in hotel we cannot do such eye winking, Quality is a given now-a-days so companies competes on better product IDEAS than on quality. These sandwiches are excellent for preparing bread pakodas also.

This company must try this for retail customers like me. I assure them of my loyalty. After all for me it is Pythagoras packed. 

Tea Time Contradictions

2009-02-11T00:03:00.011+05:30

There are two moments of truths in any product or a service lifecycle, the first is when consumer actually buys a product or a service and the second is when he uses it, so while designing a product a manufacturer has to keep both these moments of truth in mind.

Our day starts with a dip of tea bag in a hot mug. When I pick up a tea bag (most casually) many times it's tag falls down and string gets unwound getting it further entangled with strings of other bags standing / semi standing in the box, especially when the box is half empty and tea bags are lying flat on their back in a messed up manner this phenomenon is bound to occur. Why so, I was not interested to find out an answer till I saw some other design, which I don’t mess up with. I carefully observed & compared both the designs and got the answer.

The holding tag which I messed up with was not held / supported and therefore it dropped many times entangling its string with other loosely lying strings. As a customer I did not exercise caution while picking it up (why should I, product is for me, I am not for the product).

Second design have addressed this concern, it held the tag in position but with what??

They used principle of Ideality. Tags hold itself. How is that possible? Designer has done some resource thinking and used string to hold the tag.

As we said Ideality or IDEAL FINAL RESULT is TAG hold itself. There is a slit in the tag through which a string is passed this way both tag and string are held firmly against each other.So tag houses string and tensioned string holds tag. In another design there is a v groove above the slit,which must be facilitating the assembly of string with tag. ( The same primciple of V groove is used in manufacturing for ease of assembly of mating parts).

I have a very positive image of the company who manufacturers this tea bag. I think if company can think of my problems during its product usage, then it must be using the same developmental zeal while designing and delivering its content (tea I mean)

We all want to think & appear smart & neat, so we expect from products we use.

Cloakroom TRIZ - Using Inventive Principles in Cloakroom

2009-01-27T23:50:00.004+05:30

If someone wants to have a personal cloakroom, in a space starved downtown office, what is the way out????

Let’s delve into detail , by looking at the problem first. The problem here is someone wants to have his own personal space (in the cloakroom of course) where it is impossible to get one. But if that someone ever wish for it he will be booted out and will be asked to get LOST. So the problem is “Someone want to have his personal space but he cannot. In TRIZ, this problem is categorized as “ Physical Contradiction In Space”, The Inventive Principles used to solve problem such problems are Segmentation, Taking Out, Local Quality, Another Dimension, Other Way Round, Curvature, Nested Doll, Flexible Shells thin films, Asymmetry, Intermediary, Copying

Let’s play with some principles and generate an ingenious idea

Other Way Round: Make the operational / working space as non-operational. How is that’s possible? Use Nestle Doll and Local Quality to make this impossible, possible

Nestle Doll: Put one object inside the other (Hang “ UNDER MAINTAINANCE” board around the flush tap)

Local Quality: Make the system around the object from uniform to non-uniform. Make others believe that the space is non-operational, by hanging “ UNDER MAINTAINANCE” board, thus making the available information content from uniform to non-uniform, which means while that someone knows the space is operational, others think it isn’t.

Now an honest confession to end this post…. that someone is not me. .

My school Bag – A burden of Wisdom

2009-01-19T23:51:00.001+05:30

Every night I ask my mother to apply balm to my paining back. My frail shoulders are not able to carry the weight of the books, notebooks that I need to carry everyday to school. I know we need to shoulder more & more responsibilities as we grow, but allow our shoulders to get fully developed not stressing them before they are ready to carry tons of expectations of tomorrow. What can be done to solve my problem, I thought of some of the options? Sharing with you some of our ideas.

1. If we have two subjects per day then I will have to carry two notebooks and books each day
2. If text books are divided into parts covering mid-term portion & mid-term to final exam portion then I will have to carry half the load
3. I saw Daddy’s old worksheets when he was appearing for JEE, can we have worksheets, which we can carry, depending on the day’s study schedule. I promise I will keep all of them in order & neatly filed in a ring folder
4. If I write in one notebook and flag them with post-it notes identifying the topic covered, then I need to carry only one note book everyday
5. If my school can keep my books then I do not have to carry them home and back, may be I will have to maintain two set of books, its ok.
6. My father was telling me about Amazon’s e-reader where you can download the book in that e-reader. I can store all my books from 1st to 10th standard and further till, I complete my education. I will then have to carry only one e-reader, which weighs less than 200 grams.
7. Similarly, I can use the electronic writing pad, where I can write in the same way I write in my notebook and then store those files in my home computer
8. We can have similar readers/ writers installed on our school desk. Morning and afternoon class students can open their books saved in the reader. I can read and write using them and at the end of the day can take the day’s work in a pen drive.
9. I really feel bad when our beloved teacher has to inhale the chalk dust while writing on the board. So in addition to black board or may be in place of black board we can have electronic board installed in each class, half portion of it can display the text pages and on half portion teacher can write with electronic pen.
10. All the books can be downloaded from the government data bank; it will save lot of money spent in printing also protecting environmental damage. We can a SIM card, which can be loaded every year after paying for the books.
11. The new technology of digital ink which is used in AMAZON KINDLE can be used in all those readers and screens, not adversely affecting our precious eyes
12. Now if you are thinking that this is all ok for urban children and not so for my rural mates then you are wrong, they understand the value of technology more than any of us and they will be the first to embrace it.

Can we take first steps? Can the leaders of today, think for the leader’s of tomorrow?

Shoulder our responsibility today for us to shoulder it tomorrow.

Habit of Changing Habits: Tricks to break the brain patterns …

2009-01-11T20:36:00.000+05:30

Our cities are not as planned as our brains are. A good town planning is a necessity for the cities we live in, but not so for our brain. Our brain forms definitive patterns with the information it receives and processes; these patterns are then called as our experience. With these patterns, it therefore becomes that much more difficult to make / see new connections.

We exhibit caution (unconsciously) when it comes to chaning lanes of our thinking much the same way we desist changing lanes on a highway. While it is a good practice of not changing lanes on highway , it’s not so good when it comes to changing our thinking lanes, as it is perilous to innovation. (Seeing things in new way)

The word HABIT is interesting combination of letters, remove H, A BIT remains, remove A, still BIT remains, remove B, IT remains. What it is does, is that it make our thinking linear and predictable. So the truth is it is very difficult to change habits, not withstanding our best efforts and resolutions.

I found simple ways of changing habits by practicing a change in our day-to-day routine, sharing some of those tricks with you.

Use different toothpastes (one brand for morning & another for the bed time), shaving cream (use shave foams & tubes ), and razor, bathing soaps
Change your drink (tea, coffee, juice & different variety every time)
Change your mobile ring tones as frequently as possible
Change Screen Savers on your mobile / laptop/ home PC
Put up a different dressing combination each time
Don’t stick to one brand of clothing, have range spanning from up-market apparels to street smart clothing (Clothes from fashion streets)
If you read only fiction, read not-fiction, comics, story books
If you have IDLI for your breakfast everyday try having something different, (sometimes other than south Indian cuisine….I mean)
Try some different cuisine than you had last time when you visited the restaurant
Try & change the restaurant you had last dined.
If you like action movies, see a love story, fiction or vice a versa
Change jogging tracks; change your everyday walking / jogging route
If you like STRAWBERRY ICE-CREAM, try other flavors too; try different fruit juices or fruits
Try different routes for going to office by taking different modes of transportation
Try & surprise your boss by sitting late or coming early (don’t forget to put up a mail to him, it helps, at least in some places & saves you from getting a pink slip, HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA….)
Try & Talk to at least one person everyday, make a new connection
Change password every week and puzzle the system even at the cost of puzzling yourself
Change your CAFÉ COFEE DAY partner (of course if you are a bachelor, it applies to both genders equally…. HAHAHAHAHAHA…)

And last but not the least by taking inspirations from all the above

For GOD SAKE, DON”T CHANGE YOUR SPOUSE (HAHAHAHAHA….)

I have started practicing all this since about a year now (leaving the last two of course), when are you starting??????

TOMATOES ARE STILL GREEN

2009-01-02T23:35:00.004+05:30

Wishing you and your family a very Happy New Year.

Year 2008 has gone leaving shades of good & bad memories. For the corporate world across globe it was one of the worst years, with all businesses grappling with economic slowdown. There were many factors, which were not in our direct control, but it goes on to show that how interconnected, interdependent we are with the world. With this preamble I don’t want to go any further as I am least competent to talk about it.

Japanese survived major crises and every time came out as winner. They believed in a statement, which was said to be true, more for TOYOTA, it reads, “ Tomatoes are still green” the statement reflects their belief & state of mind in the crisis. They continued working / thinking on their time-honored customer, product, business, process contradictions marching towards the state of Ideality and reaped benefits organically when the situation improved.

I think, today we need to make best use of GOD gifted precious, yet free (and therefore unfortunately not valued) resources like our brain, eyes, and ears to ideate and experiment wherever physical resources allow us to do so and be ready with innovative plan for tomorrow. Afterall it is all conceived in mind first. We need to improve connections; network & partner alike with outside, inside world, exchange knowledge, ideas, prepare a fertile ground and expect a flourishing harvest. In short, we need to do all those things that we would not have done had this situation was not forced on us.

Let us start the year with a thought “ TOMATOES ARE STILL GREEN”

Wishing you INNOVATIVE year ahead.

Identify, Prune Excessive Function, Attribute & Innovate

2008-12-31T21:23:00.001+05:30

We hardly question the elements of existing system & their functionality & attribute when everything is going fine. Many times there are excessive functions performed by the elements of the existing systems and opportunity for innovation lay hidden in that excess. Jack Welch narrates a story in his famous book “Winning” which further explains the thought presented here. The product was scanning equipment used for medical diagnosis. He always felt that the bore of the machine is bit small, which causes inconvenience to patients who remain inside it for a considerable time. He knew his competitor HITACHI is coming up with machine with a larger bore. He suggested his business team to consider increasing it but they differed time and again saying it will affect the image quality. He finally gave up to those experts

The business team remained so focused on their immediate customers “Doctors” and assumed their requirement of more & more clearer image for better diagnosis. In the process they ignored patient’s (customer’s customer) implied need of more comfort while under scanning.

They simply forgot to ask Doctors whether they could comprise on image quality, without affecting their diagnosis. When Hitachi launched the machine, it sold well on this one parameter of larger bore diameter.

Later on eventually when they checked with Doctors they said they are fine with the lower image quality. It is a good lesson for all of us to remember and start asking “ Do I want less of this function or attribute?” OR “ Do I want more of this function or attribute?”

Let us say GOOD BYE to 2008 and move in 2009 taking these questions with us.

Out off Sight, Out of Mind : Don’t let old ideas rest in grave

2008-12-25T22:57:00.005+05:30

We cherish memories of writing & reading in-land letters. These letters were pre-glued upholding confidentiality unlike postcard, which was open for anyone’s scrutiny.

Email era has taken away those inland letters from us and most of us have not dealt with them in last many years. Now we communicate in a way that reflects our “Free, Perfect, Now” outlook. Email has moved system of personal communications on to the next S- curve putting inland letters in the realm of historians; at least this is true with most of the urban and many Ural (urban + rural) communicators.

Corporate world communicates (if at all it needs to) with letters rested in sealed envelopes; they don’t have to be frugal in good times, in bad times they behave like a miser. Most of these communications are to their investors and customers. Let us look at the cost of such communication, which includes cost of letter, Pre-glued envelopes, cost of labor engaged for skillful folding, (Inland letter, which has a pre-printed line outside it guides the user to the exact fold location therefore de-skilling the operation to a large extent) putting letter in envelop and courier cost

According to law of system evolution, every system evolves towards increasing IDEALITY. (System does not require any component to perform a function, but does it all by itself) what it means is that the system has all the benefits at less cost and less harm. In this case someone asked a question, “ Why can’t letter seal itself & pay for it”, which has given existence to prepaid, pre-glued inland letters.

Recently I received my account statement from Reliance Mutual Fund, which came in the form of inland letter; I also receive premium intimations from LIC in the similar form. At the next instant I started analyzing the value proposition ( Voice of Business) of this small idea only to realize later its significant impact.

World lends its ear to breakthrough innovations of products, process, technology and business models, these biggies camouflage such small ingenious ideas which affects our bottom line in quick time. If you have 10 million investors and if you save even half of your existing cost (let us say Rs.2-3) it has a significant impact on bottom line isn’t it? More so, when this ritual is performed 4 times a year. Are we awake to latch on to such small ideas or ignore it only chasing the BIG BANG promise?

Investors can see account statement on company’s web site. If now the company gives investors an option to opt for e-statement and offers them share of savings by way of lucky prices drawn at random or putting some portion of the savings in its CSR, sustainability initiatives and the remaining to swell it’s bottom line, it can turn out to be a win-win situation for both. What you say?

Conclusion

1. Look at all the resources, existing as well as past. Don’t let past ideas rest in grave.
2. Question everything. Pluck the low hanging fruits, first.
3. No Ideality, No Innovation, Know Ideality, Know Innovation

Downside and Upside of Perfect

2008-12-15T20:31:00.001+05:30

In a typical six sigma regime, the word perfect is defined negatively; no mistakes. To achieve this goal, the whole focus then gets on to the continual improvement, developing ever most sophisticated quality control tools, in a quest for statistically error free work, but that’s not the route to innovation. Incremental improvement, as necessary as it is becomes a dead end. The real opportunity lie on prefect’s upside, with the creation of better solutions to your customer’s problems. (Internal, external or as Mr.Subroto Bagchi says for customer’s customer). New features and benefits that enhance their experience of your partnership. The last one I think is “innovation” which has the highest impact.

Let us understand this with an example. A perfect soup (downside) isn’t a meal without a fly in the soup, after all. No flies is merely a zero defect meal. The perfect meal (Upside), on the other hand, encompasses an evening’s total experience: food, company, music, atmosphere, wine, conversation. The more it exceeds it creates a WOW factor, therefore reaching the perfect peak.

Conquering Innovation Everest

2008-12-11T22:23:00.005+05:30

When Sir Edmond Hillary was asked what did he take along with him when he conquered the Mount Everest. He said he didn’t have anything, not even his camera, which he left at the last base camp. He wanted to enjoy the road to the top without any burden.

The significance of Hillary’s statement holds good while we are on with our Innovation Journey. It is the baggage of impossibility, unfeasibility, impracticality that the innovation team needs to leave behind in order to reach to the new heights of thinking. This will build an insatiable appetite for innovative thinking and help us conquer our Innovation Everest.

INNOJAMATION - Squeezing Out JAMMY Ideas

2008-12-08T20:46:00.003+05:30

Mothers are quite wary about handing over the charge of JAM bottle to their kids with a fear of them breaking it. Jam bottles, plates and kids (grown up as well) are always on the edge of the table. Plunging the spoon in, scraping the inside of the bottle and taking the spoonful of JAM require skillful hands and tolerant stomach, But this is an IDEAL situation

Can we think of some innovative solution for mother’s anxiety? Simple ones are metal cans, or plastic bottles, cups, tetra pack? Metal cans are usually used for packaging food for one time consumption and plastic bottles may not be able to keep jam imperishable for a longer time.

The InnoJAMation pictorially shown above was adopted from already existing packaging concept used for shaving creams, toothpastes, and face wash etc. This is just an alternative application of the concept to the JAMS storage. Kids can now squeeze the tube and the jam is on its way on to the bread.

This sort of packaging also opens up a new capability to draw, write,by squeezing so kids can draw to reflect their mood, write birthday messages, draw pictures, this may then require a larger size of slice, bread manufacturer’s will have to make a change in the bread size. Both JAMS as well Bread manufacturer can use this theme for their own brand building.

Mothers now have new fear, of their husband using JAMS as shaving cream or as a toothpaste, if kids decide to have fun of their fathers.

What can be done with this???????

Salute to Our Real Heros

2008-12-03T22:55:00.004+05:30

Salute to our real heros who fought bravely against the devil who has no face, no religion and no identity.

Mind is so sad to see deaths of innocent people like you & me, many of them may not have even fought in their entire life.They had nothing to do with the terror, but jobs to satisfy and life to live. They are the victims of cravings of our political system, politicians and their bug like followers. Can these politicians, hive off their security cover to realise, how does a common man on the street feels like.

Let us exercise our voting rights to bring about the change. Let the system feel the pressure, that is all we can do. Lets us bring about the change we want to see. It will be a real tribute to our Heros.

Two minutes silence...................................................

INNOVATIONS FOR “TAXING” CONTRADICTIONS

2008-11-23T00:08:00.007+05:30

When I lost my mobile in the taxi, I was upset not only due to grief experienced by that valuable loss, but by the fact that I did not note the taxi number. If you are in a hurry then sometimes it becomes a reason for “worry” The next question when are we in hurry? let us say in this case, at the time of catching the cab and when we are getting out of it. The only time when we are not in hurry is when we are inside it (don’t have an option really).

The cab manufacturer ( in this case “Mahindra Logan” ) have rightly understood the voice of customer’s customer (passenger) and provided a space to display the number and having done that the service provider (first customer, here is Cab Company “MERU”) has put up a vehicle number inside it. Have look at the following picture. The positioning of this display is also well thought as it is on the right hand side door. When a passenger crawls inside the cab the first thing he notices is the taxi number, which alerts him at that instant and keeps him reminding & finally forcing him to note it . At least he has ample time equal to his travel time to do that, unlike our regular experience where we hardly get any time and visibility of the vehicle number after we pay the fare and rush off.

I would like to have two more things added to this one, display driver’s name on the back of his uniform and provide him with a stylish cap, it will add to customer experience which will have a change in his status as a traveler. He will feel like a VIP in chauffer driven vehicle.

See the value it creates as compared to the cost it incurs. Observe, Note, Express, this is one of the important steps in innovation process, EXTERNALISATION. More about the knowledge conversion process in the coming posts.

IFRing all cylinders – A good end to start innovating

2008-11-19T00:34:00.001+05:30

What do one mean by word innovation? This simple question seems to puzzle many of us and we start weaving our own definition. For TRIZ lovers innovation means Ideal Final Result, which means more benefits from a product or a service (Unique Value Enhancement to the customer and to the business) at overall less cost (Unnecessary Locking/ Consumption of Resources) and virtually with no harm (Value negation, Undesirable effects of products or service). I came across more simpler definition of innovation which states “Innovation is nothing but simplicity at the other side of complexity” Another one which is more of business type “Learning + Observing + Ideas + Action + Implementation = Ideal Value = Innovation

After having got some clarity on definition of Innovation the next step where and how to make a beginning. With history of continuous improvements initiatives many times teams are unable to go beyond a predictable improvement. There the role of top management becomes important. I will sight TOYOTA example here

Toyota’s President Mr.Watanabe instilled paranoia across the company by announcing his dream list of expectations during his term. They included a car that can make the air cleaner as it runs; a car that will not hurt drivers and pedestrians and never get into an accident; a car that can make drivers healthier the longer they drive it, a fuel efficient car that can go from one coast of the United States to the other on one tank of gas and eventually around the world.

Isn’t it a good reason to start innovating?

Anecdote of tacit knowledge – A story of a Shepherd & Brilliant Minds….

2008-11-07T23:14:00.002+05:30

There is an interesting anecdote of a contradiction faced by the most brilliant engineers engaged in laying cables through a long pipe at a Greenfield site. The pipe was too long for them to put the cable from one end and take it out from the other. They were doing brainstorming and finding out technogical solutions to get this job done, but no solution was seem to be getting into sight.

A shepherd supervising his grazing animals was silently observing them came up & said whether he can be of any help. All those brilliant minds laughed at him. Saddened by their gestures he disappeared the next moment and came back after a while with a caged mouse in one hand and some “bhajias” in the other. He tied the cable to the mouse’s tail and kept the bhajias at the other end and pushed the mouse from one end. Mouse ran from one end chasing the smell of the “Bhajias”.

Mouse got the bhajias and engineers got ingenious solution to their problem. All those brilliant minds were dumb folded with the ingenuity of the poor, illiterate shepherd.

Few Questions to ponder……

Do we value tacit knowledge and how do we explore & capture it?

Are we mentally ready to listen to a shepherd for solving our problem?

And Take away ….

Everyone need to be invited and is important for innovation, because most of the times ingenious solutions lie outside your domain.

Role of an Innovation Facilitator

2008-11-02T21:08:00.001+05:30

I came across some interesting facts about cells and neurons. In biological history, one of the biggest turning points occurred when neurons evolved. Neurons are biological connectors that help cells to communicate. Before birth of neurons cells had to be very close to each other, in little blobs, to coordinate their functions. Neurons helped cells to communicate from the distance, which allowed an infinite variety of life forms to emerge. Thanks to neurons, cells were rearranged and assigned different functions. Cells thus collected into all sorts of different shapes, from fish to flowers, hummingbirds to humpbacked whales.

Now you may wonder what is the connection of the subject heading with all this. Let us examine this connection. Role of an innovation facilitator is like neuron that connects cells (innovation teams assigned with task of quantum improvements). Organizations have several such teams, sometimes geographically dispersed and all of them are very busy in their own activities & working on several projects, so hardly having any time to interact with each other. In such circumstances, Innovation facilitator plays a three-way role; of a connector, of a maven and that of a sagacious businessman.

Let us understand the facets of each one of them. In his role as a connector he moves in with several teams helping them think out of box with structured systematic innovation methods. In his enhanced role as a connector he can be a program manager micro- managing various innovation projects. His scope as a connector also goes beyond organizational boundaries by he establishing, nurturing, leveraging external connections. The more connections that are made, the greater the influence and reach of the network, the more intelligent it becomes.

After having settled in his role as a connector his next job is that of a maven who keeps a very detailed information of various ideas that are evolving or have evolved, emerging, technogies, alternative application of technologies, Teams look up to him for such information to progress in their work. Information fuels intelligence and sparks innovation.

Both these roles help him become a wise businessman, where he constantly thinks how he might use other’s ideas into his business and /or how he can sell his ideas to others and profit from it.

I will conclude this post with an analogy; innovation facilitator is like a shared electron, which helps atoms (innovating teams) form a strong / stable innovation bond.

Let me have your views on this.

Diwali Innovation

2008-10-25T23:04:00.003+05:30

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder, so is Innovation and Creativity.

Many times we come across unique artefacts, incidences, appreciate innovativeness of it at that very moment, but loose it like sea sand afterwards, not capturing its essence. Such incidences many times serve as “Innovation Boosters”, but they lay hidden deep in our pattern oriented brain and require external stimulus to bring it to the surface again. TRIZ provides a good external stimulus by way of analogy to excavate this hidden treasure.

I may have come across many such artefacts, incidences but I could capture essence of only few, usually such sparks are as natural as our breath, sometimes we don’t even notice them. While I was shopping for Diwali, I came across one such artefact.

I decorate door & window frames with hanging lanterns during Diwali, so I buy at least dozen of them every year. When I enquired its price it was Rs.8, I thought it was just the right price and was about to buy, but my wife bargained hard for Rs. 5, the vendor of course did not agree. I thought Rs. 5 was too much to ask for, so I kept myself away from their bargaining session. If you are holding branded shirt bag in your hand, which costs Rs.1500 + then why to waste time & energy for such a small amount, I thought. But bargaining wherever you can is a favourite past time & ingrained quality of a woman. The discussion of course failed. I was bit unhappy as it means I will not able to decorate the way I planned.

After a while, we went on to another street for shopping and saw two boys selling same lanterns. I was in no mood to enquire the price as I thought it would be Rs. 8 which means futile bargaining again. To my surprise, the price was Rs. 5; I was really taken a back. I thought the vendor must be in SALE SALE SALE Mode……

But no he was not, why was this difference, the decorative paper was the same, the size of the lantern was the same (may be little bigger) everything was the same, then where he was accounting his price differential?. After I carefully saw the lantern, I spotted a very smart idea, innovation. The vendor has used plastic tea, coffee cups from inside, around which he had decorated with a paper to make an attractive lantern. I saluted the vendor for his idea. He used cheap, easily available resource and has also done good functional thinking while designing his lantern.

In a labour intensive activity like lantern making in this case, substitution by way of a cheaper, already available material can improve productivity and reduce labour cost.(Which is a dominant factor in such cases), therefore I think the innovation needs applause.

Market conditions and frugal, value seeking customers (like my wife and in general women) put innovators to task and then innovative mind blossoms with SMART Innovations. The vendor must have sold such lanterns in numbers and have made good overall profit.

I had double benefit as a customer; I saved some money and also got an idea for my TRIZ , Creativity workshop.

I conclude with three points

1. I feel innovator in every one of us needs to be like foam, which can absorb ideas & retain them, not like a hard stone (expert syndrome) which never absorbs anything in it.

2. If CK Prahalada says Future Lies at the Bottom of the Pyramid, what I think he means is Innovations lies at the bottom of the Pyramid, because Innovation is Future.

3. Let us be like a honeybee in spotting innovations and share that honey & its sweetness with everyone, like the way I did.

TRIZ Humour - Principle 13 Other Way Round

2008-10-22T21:29:00.003+05:30

Two chainsmoker friends went to church. One of them asked father " Father, can I smoke while I pray". Father said " Ofourse not, my child". Wiser by the incidence the seond one asked " Father, Can I pray while I smoke" Father said " Ofourse, You Can, my child."

Good way of using Principle 13 of TRIZ " The Other Way Round" .

TRIZ - Systematic Innovation, Simple, Systematic & For Everyone.....

Mr. & Mrs. Frugal

2008-10-13T22:42:00.001+05:30

Rama Bijapurkar in her brilliant book “We are like that only” takes a good snap shot of consumer India. She dissects consumer segments on numerous attributes and correlates it with buying psychology (let us say “BUYOLOGY”). She remarks wittily by referring to Sunil Khilnani’s book “Idea of India” wherein India is compared to a DHOTI than a PANT. Pant is uniform from the waist till the toe while Dhoti has many folds below the waist. With larger demographics India is difficult to predict as a market and therefore going at a micro level to understand its demand structures is important for the manufacturers who want to run a successful venture in India.

She has commented about the hybrid consumption model that exists in India. The consuming class uses two different things at two different times. So Mr. Frugal (my connotation) will have a small car as well a scooter. At one time he wants to show his status at the other time same he is worried about the fuel economy so he uses both car & scooter as per the occasion. If you think expensive washing powders are not for consuming class then let us look at Mrs. Frugal. She uses expensive powder for the office, school & party clothes and uses a cheaper detergent for bed sheets & home clothes. Therefore if the company thinks of launching a product based on the income data alone then their estimates of demand can go wrong.

I can quote similar examples like; we take our children to McDonalds very well knowing that it is an expensive way to spend an evening, but there are many many many like us so McDonalds still makes a good business. This happens even when we go to multiplexes knowing well it is expensive. What we are doing is not satisfying eating and viewing function, but going beyond and having an experience.

This connects me to TRIZ principle 3: Local Quality, which talks making things from uniform to non uniform.

Anyway if you want to prepare yourself for Indian Innovations (especially retail) the book is must read for you as it will prepare you build innovative mind.

Celebrating 1st Anniversary of my Blog with 50th Post

2008-09-17T08:35:00.000+05:30

Why we celebrate anything that is 1st, 50th, 75th or 100th etc? I really don’t know, to me these numbers represent (s) mile stones. Today my blog completed one year in the wireless world and my joy is no different from parents who see their child taking her first steps.

I truly believe in the power of networking and my blog is a result of that power. It all started when I was introduced to Prakash by Dr. Darrell Mann sometime in 2006, our association began with a common interest in TRIZ, Systematic Innovation its application & propagation. He encouraged me to start my own blog and here I am for one year now. Thanks Prakash.

Prakash introduced me to Navneet Bhushan, Karthik Iyer. They all are constant source of encouragement and the circle kept expanding is expanding.

My instinct for writing is a result of unvarying encouragement by my friend Manoj Nabar; it took me sometime before I believed in me & started. Google is a great idea and its encouraging blogger theme “Express Yourself” helped me pull my socks further.

Friends I am committed to pass on my intrinsic energy gathered while observing, thinking, decoding & communicating even the smallest incidence of innovation. I truly believe Innovation is ubiquitous therefore let us share our experiences, thoughts and invigorate each other to make a difference in our personal & professional lives.

On this Innovation journey, let us be like a Honey bee whose insatiable appetite for the nectar keeps it reeling around the flower. Let us make our own IDEA HONEY COMB by learning from the nature & the world around us and spread its sweetness all around.

The journey has just begun; it’s not the destination but the exciting paths we take will help us stay on the course.

I conclude this post with a quote by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger (1887-1961) shared by my friend Shrikant Deo, which resembled and will resemble my journey so far & forward….I quote…

"The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees" So TRIZZZYYYYY…..

Connecting Hearts, Connecting Minds… Happy Blogging….Happy Reading….

NINE DOTS: Are we stuck “OUTSIDE ( IN) THE BOX”?

2008-09-14T13:10:00.006+05:30

Around 10 years back when I used to conduct TQM sessions in my organization, I used to play a game of nine dots, most of the participants used to struggle connecting these dots by passing a line through them without lifting the pencil off the paper. As a participant even I struggled when I took the exercise for the first time during our training. As a trainer I was smart as I knew the solution. The take away of that exercise used to be “Go out of Box, Think and Join the Dots”, participants in their feedbacks used to appreciate the learning, after the program. But I thought now the box has expanded and “OUTSIDE THE BOX” then, is very much “INSIDE THE BOX SOLUTION” now.

Frankly I was not convinced even then that we are helping people to think out of box. There was only one solution given the constraints posed on to the problem solver, nobody used to challenge the constraints and look for different solutions. In the real life situation, we have constraints attached to the problem and we are given a task to find a solution within those constraints, this makes problem solving teams task more difficult and they may do convergent thinking and than a divergent one. The real task of Innovator is also to challenge the constraints and evaporate the clouds surrounding them to see a clearer picture. Following figures illustrate my above statement. When I told my daughter to join the nine dots she just took the wider paint brush and joined the nine dots with a single stroke. I think she has successfully challenged the constraints and achieve the functional goal of joining the dots

Let us challenge the constraints & evaporate clouds, we will comp up with more than one successful solutions.

Overcoming Everyday Office Contradictions

2008-09-12T21:59:00.002+05:30

In today’s Corporate world, after our brain (I suppose) & laptops the next thing that is widely used is whiteboard maker. These markers help us scribble our thoughts on the whiteboard making us feel “BUSY” & involved.

After we use these pens, many times in the heat of our intellectual outburst, we keep it anywhere, thus keeping them scattered. The next intellectual worker finds it difficult to trace it when he is at his peak & want to download his intellectual sprinkler. This problem most of us think need to be solved by the pen manufacturer but on the contrary it is a problem to be solved by board manufacturer as well as pen manufacturer. Solution… …..Board surfaces are made of magnetic material and Smart pen manufacturers have provided a magnetic cap which can slide over the clip fitted on the pen cap.

SMART solutions always have next contradiction, these white board markers however need to be stored horizontally else the ink clog up making them unusable. Normally this improved version of pen & board does not solve the problem as pen is still need to be stored in the vertical position due to weight Imbalance. See first figure. Soon the ink dries out & you buy one more pen (Intellectual outburst can’t stop). This means more business for the pen manufacturer which makes them happy.

Here the user has to innovate to cave in his loss by applying resource thinking & asking a question “what resource/s I can use to solve this problem”. As shown in the second figure a duster (which is also magnetic) can be used to store the pen on top of it. Some board manufacturers have less expensive solutions; they provide a fixture / stand where pens can be stored, what’s the benefit? You may ask; they need not have to use expensive magnetic material for the board giving a better pricing proposition for the user. The manufacturer can add some useful functionality in the money saved.

In conclusion I would say, in our daily life we are facing so many contradictions & therefore it is prudent to make a list of all such contradictions and then think about ways in solving them. This will be a good daily innovation workout which will help us keep our mind agile & fit. We don’t have to find the right solution every time, but by accepting the givens (constraints I mean) we need to find out a solution path much the same way a football or hockey player finds by dodging other players (constraint I mean) while taking the ball to the goal.

My today’s definition of innovation: Arrange ideas, people and objects in a right manner to create a RIGHT VALUE. Let us work like an ant & innovate everyday.

The Great Peter Drucker On Innovation

2008-09-10T23:57:00.000+05:30

Entrepreneurs innovate. Innovation is the specific instrument of entrepreneurship. It is the act that endows resources with a new capacity to create wealth. Innovation, in deed, creates a resource. There is no such thing as a ‘resource’ until man finds a use for something in nature and thus endows it with economic value. Until then, every plant is a weed and every mineral is just another rock. Not much more than a century ago, neither mineral oil seeping out of the ground nor bauxite, the ore of aluminum, were resources. They were nuisances; both render the soil infertile. The penicillin mould was a pest, not a resource. Bacteriologist went to great lengths to protect their bacterial cultures against contamination by it. Then in the 1920’s , a London doctor, Alexander Fleming, realized that this pest was exactly the bacterial killer bacteriologists had been looking for- and the penicillin became a valuable resource.

The same holds just as true in the social and economic spheres. There is no greater resource in an economy than ‘purchasing power’. Bur purchasing power is the creation of the innovating entrepreneur.

The American farmer had virtually no purchasing power in the early nineteenth century; he therefore could not buy farm machinery. There were dozens of harvesting machines on the market, but however he might have wanted them, the farmer could not pay for them. The one of the many harvesting machine inventors, Cyrus McCormick, invented installment buying. This enabled farmer to pay for a harvesting out of his future earnings rather than out of past savings- and suddenly farmer had ‘purchasing power’ to buy farm equipment.

Equally, whatever changes the wealth-producing potential of already existing resources constitutes innovation.

There was not much new technology involved in the idea of moving a truck body off its wheels and onto a cargo vessel. This ‘innovation’, the container, did not grow out of technology at all but out of a new perception of a “cargo vessel” as a material handling device rather than a ‘ ship’ which meant that what really mattered was to make the time in port as short as possible,. But this humdrum innovation roughly quadrupled the productivity of the ocean going freighter and probably saved shipping business. Without it, the tremendous expansion of world trade in the last sixty years- the fastest growth in any major economic activity ever recorded-could not possibly have taken place.

And last but most important thought that touched me the most was “Entrepreneurs will have to learn to practice systematic innovation.” Let us find an entrepreneur in everyone of us who wants to innovate systematically.

For your health Only – SIM BOND 256 KB

2008-09-09T00:47:00.000+05:30

Imagine your parents are at home alone & need urgent medical attention. They do not have time to call a doctor.What can be done. Call neighbour & then ask him to call the doctor, sometime you don't have that much luxary of time. What should be the IDEAL FINAL RESULT in this situation. " Doctor knows that his patient needs help and he send an ambulence. Somebody has already thought about this IFR and is ready to help you.

Next time in case some one is sick and needs attention,medical care may just be on your palm, one can press the key and the doctors will get a message and can also call for ambulance. In such cases Doctor can access the patient’s medical records. The SIM will store information like Doctor’s diagnosis, to prescription and also subsequent payment of your medical bills. This will require high memory SIM cards (256KB)

SMS can also be sent for reminding the time of dosage, appointment with the Doctors etc. Mother’s will also get reminders for vaccine schedules for their babies.

Birthday SMS also will be send to all those who are born in TECH SAVY hospitals. The born children will be bonded for lifetime and when it is their turn to become Father / Mother they may choose the same hospital to deliver their babies in which they themselves were born.

Are there better ways to achieve this IFR? If yes, please post a comment.

Function & Attribute Analysis – E(I)nsure Ideal Final Result

2008-09-07T11:21:00.000+05:30

My insurance agent was getting into my head while explaining the (ir) relevance of his new product. He was trying to sell me what he had rather than what I needed. Somehow I could escape from his clutches and am right on my blog to pen down what I think anyone would need from the insurance product.

Let us analyze this situation by first defining the function of the insurance policy. “To provide assured monitory support equal to the sum insured to the insurant’s family member/s after his / her death” Now this is no brainier. Let us think this in some different way “To provide peace of mind by reducing one’s anxiety of unforeseen events which can put his family in financial trouble”. Isn’t this the reason we buy insurance product/s for? , now the contradiction here is “Peace of mind comes at some cost; and we have several other priorities where we need to put money for e.g., to buy house, to buy a car, to invest for own and family’s future etc” The attributes therefore are cost, convenience, priorities, wellness etc,

Some of the new business models that satisfy the function as well as attributes are

Insurance Companies – Term Insurance (Min Premium, Max Coverage, ofcourse you don’t get your money back, but still you achieve what you want , I mean peace of mind)

Housing Loan: Insurant’s family will require money to repay the loan. Most of the housing companies combine loan and insurance together.

Mutual Fund Investment: Systematic Plan comes with Insurance Coverage

Employers offer group insurance policy, so that at a low premium they can cover employees as this is perceived as additional perquisite. Most of the companies have accident policies.

Credit card also offers accident policy

Medical Insurance: Now- a- days with the cost of the medical treatment (under the heading northwards, one needs to have medical insurance than Life Insurance. This also poses a financial risk to insurance companies to pay for such highly priced world class medical treatments, to cover this, they ask their clients to do regular medical check up and subsequent premium depends on the results of such check ups. This is a WIN WIN situation for both as clients remain healthy thus keeping insurer’s risk to a minimum.

In all the above cases both the client and service provider are trying to reach their IDEAL FINAL RESULT (Benefit maximization at less cost and with less harm) with Innovative Ideas. The discussion is more for molding IFR thought process than to educate on the insurance products. ))))

Is my insurance agent listening?

Indian Innovations –Crowd Management at Kumbha Mela

2008-09-01T23:24:00.000+05:30

Much was talked about the recently concluded Beijing Olympics & the way it was organized. Olympics was discussed everywhere in the buses, crowded trains, on the airport, in the plane. There was a word of praise for Chinese organizers, which was truly deserved. While the praises were being showered over Chinese authorities, I remembered one mega event of the century which happened in 2001 in India and that was Kumbha Mela.

In the book “The Ideas That Have Worked” there is a story about the mountainous efforts that had gone in organizing 2001 Kumbha Mela. There was total influx of 20 million people during this mela. As per the Guinness Book of World Records, the sangam mela becomes the largest township on earth. Some of the innovations in actions were

• There were 70, 000 health workers working to ensure that area is free of mosquitoes & flies. Telemedicine was introduced, where the health professionals could consult the specialist located elsewhere.
• The motorable 90 chuker plate road was built for vehicles along with kaccha road where people could walk but could not drive.
• Policemen were trained with a specially designed training program. This made them feel that it is there event. This motivation was enough for them to conduct the proceedings of the mela.
• There were high Profile Sadhus who could call any VIP at anytime. Gandhigiri was used to handle these Sadhus. The constables used to fold their hands and say “Maharaj we are here to serve you” it worked like a magic.
• How to handle the crowd traffic in space & time , there was both time and space contradictions which was tackled by letting the crowd take a longer looped route to reach the sangam
• There was 700 meters free space kept from the water lane. This circulation area could hold 50 lakh people at a time.
• There were no shopkeepers allowed on the entry and exit roads, there was a separate shopping complex which would drive the crowd away after their holy bath which prevented clogging
• People used to hang around after take bath. There were pontoon bridges built to take people to Sangam. These bridges had to be closed at intervals to alleviate the pressures at Sangam. Lead group theory was used to control the crowd, some policemen were dressed as pilgrims, so when authorities wanted to close the bridge this group would move away and the rest would follow, and thus stampede was avoided.
• Mela deployed an array of high technology like electronic display boards, computerized lost and found centers, high resolution closed circuit TVs, closed circuit television cameras, repeater stations to augment wireless communication, digital cameras, laptops, internet and mobile telephony

Mela proceeding went well without a single stampede incidence. Can we not take pride in this achievement? Salute to Mr. Alok Sharma and all the organizers of Melas and also to all the pilgrims. It is a classic case of Innovations & discipline which always go hand in hand.

Why Some Innovative Products Fail

2008-08-28T23:30:00.000+05:30

Shri. Gurucharandas (Ex CEO of P & G) in his book “INDIA UNBOUND” has narrated very interesting story of MNC launching an innovative product to take on VICKS VAPORUB. The company did everything right i.e. announced a product development team, carried out an exhaustive market survey, followed a product development process and backed by a very good distribution network.

Market survey was typically done in the up-market segment, says South Bombay and customers were asked a close ended question. “Whether, they would like to have a bam that has aromatic fragrance instead of having a medicated one as of VICKS VAPORUB”. Since the market research team had already decided the product features in their mind, they became slaves of their idea & concluded suitably. The product was launched with a big bang & a catchy name “SARDILAN”.

After a few months, company observed that sale is not picking up as expected, so they again went to the market and started enquiring with the up-market distributors and got very discouraging feedback. Although the up market sale was down there was some sale happening in & around the slum areas in the city. The company was curious to know the reasons, so they undertook a survey. When they contacted the distributors and shoppers in the slum area and enquired about the profile of the customers buying their products, they were shell shocked with the answers. The customers for this innovative product were none other than the barbers in the locality. Company then got really curious, as to why barber should use this balm which is meant for medical purposes. The survey finding was hilarious, barber used this product as an after shave (barbers were more innovative than the company I feel), the product with its aromatic fragrance has increased number of customers visiting their shops, barbers were also happy as their business soared and it was economical for them to use balm than after shave.

The end result: Company withdrew the product and fired the development team. After all company was MNC and they didn’t want market to make fun of them.

This story again brings out a glaring fact that to be successful in the market, companies need to go beyond capturing VOCs & creep into customer’s mind. When you have a cold & you sneeze, your real need is biological as well as emotional. VICKS with its medical formulation acts on biological need and with its medicated smell satisfies the emotional need by having a positive feeling of getting cured.

Ethnography is a science to understand all these mind issues. More about it in the coming posts.

Toyota’s Innovation DNA

2008-08-26T23:46:00.001+05:30

Past few weeks there was a flood of articles covering interviews of Lean Guru James Womack. The word Lean is synonymous with TOYOTA, so the interviews covered more on his studies of TOYOTA. He stressed few things that TOYOTA does, like Practicing Daily Lean Thinking, encouraging its employees to ask questions rather than finding an answer. However if an answer is found (quick hits I mean….) it does not stop an employee from asking further questions. Toyota’s management education begin by asking questions and ends with it. Instead of competitor challenging us let us challenge ourselves is how Toyota thinks.

Many of you will say it is easier to understand all this, but almost difficult to implement and have never seen before happening around us. The only time it happens when someone wants to genuinely harass someone, you may say.

There is an interesting observation by James Utterback in his all time classic “Mastering the Dynamics of Innovation”, which is based on his research of history of innovations. He says to sustain its success firms must innovate and focus not on the products but on the people involved, he further adds saying “much depends on the habits of mind, commitments, strategy and patterns of behavior of the organization’s elite”. Because Eiji Toyoda had such right things, so did Taichi Ohno and therefore the rest of the Toyota.

To sum up I will conclude Toyota’s Innovation DNA as I understood it, Think Ideality and question everything that stops you from reaching there, like a PARANOID.

POLY DROP BOX ……. Universality + Segmentation

2008-08-24T20:16:00.000+05:30

I used pay my credit card dues by putting a cheque in the bank’s drop box, my utility bills through my society’s watchman, and my insurance bills by standing in a queue in the insurance office. (Where was my insurance agent , most of the times he disappears once he hooks you for your life?) Every month I used to remember all these dates or write it down on the calendar so that I will not forget and attract penalty. There was a fear as well as pain for so called convenience. Ideality was low. My IFR1 then was “Why can’t I put all my bills at once place? “

Now, I seemed to have jumped one step over my earlier IFR1 to IFR 2 , now my bank does all this and debit my account, my calendar and grey cells have more space for other things (just like hard disks gains more space when you delete unnecessary files :)).

But I was glad to see my IFR1 was heard & acted upon by some one, when I saw a large POLY drop box at Byculla Station. The drop box can gulp credit card payments, insurance premiums, utility bills, police complaints, Matrimonal & also professional CVs, Loan Payments, Contest replies, Donations & Subscriptions etc.

India with its large demographics will have different IFRs at any given time with corresponding solutions. The POLY Drop box idea is combination of two inventive principles, no. 1 segmentation & principle 6 universality.

Thank you BOSS!!!!!!!!!! (BOX I mean…… )

Linking Ideas – A Story and A Product

2008-08-17T22:27:00.000+05:30

I used to readout a story to my daughter, of a farmer who was always worried for his five sons, as they were not united and used to fight against each other. He would always wonder as to how he would make his sons understand the message of unity. One day he pulls out 5 sticks and gives one each to his son asking them to break it. It was an easy job & they do it in fraction of a second. After a while he ties all the five sticks together and asks them to repeat the action once again. This time it was a difficult job and they don’t succeed the second time. They get the message and stand united thereafter.

Farmer’s idea being used by a straw manufacturer. Individual straw is weak and can only be used for sipping. But he combined three straws making them stronger. This added strength has given that straw additional functionality and ability to stir the liquid (to dissolve sugar or anything in it) and afterwards the drink can be sipped with the same straw. Advantage of this small innovation: eliminate the need to have spoon for stirring. (Additional spoon means increased cost, Low Ideality) In TRIZ this is Principle 6 Universality which reads “make an object or structure performs multiple functions; eliminate the need for other parts”.

In the picture, my friend Suresh is happily sipping his drink….

Morale of the Post: Ideas can come from anywhere. Innovations are boundary less.

Celebrating Knowledge Independence – Learning through Sharing –Lessons from Two English Birds

2008-08-15T21:56:00.000+05:30

WISHING YOU A VERY HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

There is a charming story in Arie de Geus’s book “The Living Company” about two English garden birds, blue tits and the robin. Both these birds were summertime bird. The milk distribution system in the UK delivered milk bootles at the door step. These bottles did not have caps on it, so the thick cream would rise and float. Both these species of birds picked this rich source of food from the bottle top. After few years, due to technology progress these bootles had aluminum seal; blue tits learned how to pierce the seal and also passed on the knowledge to its fellow birds, however, robins never figured out how to pierce the cap. Occasionally a lone robin would master the art but would never ever pass it on to the fellow robin.

What we want to be " Blue Tits or Robin" much will depend on whether we want to survive or extinguish.

Let us make a resolution on this auspicious day, " I will share my knowledge" Let us dream making India Knowledge Capital of the world

Are you with me?

Transformational Initiatives and Innovation

2008-08-14T21:52:00.000+05:30

C.K.Prahalad in his recent book “The New Age of Innovation” reserved one chapter for organizational legacies that affect flexibility. As per his research transformational initiatives are not new to the companies, many of them have adopted many such initiatives in their transformation endeavor, few of them succeeded and many of them were terminated prematurely.

He says as reported in the wall street journal leading U.S. firms have voiced their concerns on diminishing returns from a process focus – be it TQM or Six Sigma. We believe such disappointments in managing processes are not surprising. What is missing in adopting most of these initiatives is a perspective that includes innovation and value creation, not just cost reduction. Some of these process-focused initiatives are blindly adopted across the organization and miss the critical need for balancing demands of innovation and efficiency.

I feel it is a high time, companies must have TIMT (Total Innovation Management Teams) whose team members like a honey bee absorb, store and arrange, rearrange knowledge to create new value, spread and share it all across organizations. The knowledge infrastructure they build should resemble like a honeycomb.

Problem Definition and Game of Dumb Charades

2008-08-04T22:01:00.000+05:30

I was watching two groups of children playing dumb charades. I always enjoyed this game even when I am not part of it. Each group had its own style. Let us call this group A & group B. Group A was enthusiastic, bubbling, self confident, “finish it fast” type and Group B another was observant, silent, non reactive.

When group A was given a word, the team members started enactment in a flash. Their partner was finding it difficult to guess the word and finally they were loosing points in each round adding to their frustration. After all they were bright and fast in their own mind.

The other group, team B was discussing the word amongst them and was carefully dissecting it and followed by a planned enactment. They were not in hurry by their body language, but were determined to help their partner crack the word.

Isn’t this a familiar situation? We encounter many such situations where teams have members who behave in typical “I Know It All” fashion and the solution appears farther than what really it is. But when teams, like team B here, take some time & effort to understand what the real problem is, the solution appears as soon as they finish problem definition. They, at times, may appear bit slow but are eventual winners, just as team B was.

Practice Equanimity while defining a problem, which what Taichi Ohno did. Dumb charades has lot to teach problem solving teams.

Lean & Systematic Innovation

2008-08-03T01:07:00.000+05:30

Lean expert Jim Womack is visiting India after a gap of nearly six years for two engagements one in Mumbai and other at Chennai wherein he is going to talk about the Lean Management. Recently, The Economic Times has published his interview which made an interesting read. Womack authored famous books like “The Machine That Changed The World “, “Lean Thinking” and “Seeing the Whole” is an evangelist of Lean Thinking. Interestingly in this interview Womack spoke about few Systematic Innovation concepts like S-Curve & Trade off analysis with knowledge capture while explaining his ideas of Lean Management.

Let us look at Lean and Systematic Innovation together. Lean in simple terms means much more with much less and Systematic Innovation’s central theme is Ideality or IFR which means more benefits with less cost and harm. In that sense Lean and SI are congruent. Lean starts with Value and then follows steps like Value Stream Mapping ( VSM), Flow, Pull & Perfection. As we all know that Value is constantly defined/ redefined at the market place and the value at any instant is nothing but ideality of that instant. Both value and ideality are dynamic in nature.

Application of Lean can be best started at the concept stage when Idea about the product / service is conceived, then it follows the route of various Business Processes deployed to deliver the value. So application of Lean must start with a concept & not with the process per se. For e.g., if a company is working with Lean Concepts on the delivery processes of SLR camera then it is better to ask at the first instant whether it’s product context is right or should the company be thinking of a digital camera instead to apply Lean and then start applying the same to its delivery processes.

Lean application can be best done at the design stage itself be it a product or service and their processes, so when we say we are applying Lean what we mean is we are rethinking the product or service life cycle. While so doing, we may come across many contradictions or opportunity situations where we can apply knowledge of systematic Innovation to overcome them.

Lean can be applied in recessionary as well as in economically sound condition. After all you don’t want to put flab just because you are rich. 

IDEAS - Innovation Babies

2008-07-28T20:00:00.000+05:30

My daughter gave me this poem by Robert Schuller

Treat Ideas like New Born Baby
Treat Them Tenderly,
They Can Get Killed Pretty Quickly,
Treat Them Gently

They Can Be bruised in Infancy
Treat Them Respectfully
They could be the most valuable things
That ever came into real life

Treat them protectively
Don’t let them get away
Treat them nutritionally
Feed them well

Treat them antiseptically
Don’t get them infected
With the germs of negative thoughts
Treat them responsibly

- Robert Schuller

Only Paranoid Will Survive

2008-07-23T01:08:00.000+05:30

World of business is full of stories of turn-around heroes & how they won the lost battle. Many times these battles are won with more blood sheds. There are hardly any stories ( except Andrew Grove's Intel Story) where a CEO foresaw the danger to his business & with his proactive thinking taken several key steps in the form of various change management initiatives to keep his company way ahead of competition in the dynamic world of business.

World’s attitude always has been “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” This is an approach where a false optimism is used like a skate to flee from pessimism. I recently read a book “Free Perfect & Now” – By Robert Rodin CEO of Marshall Industries an electronic components distributor in the US which blow away this type of thinking. ( “I am an optimist, but I still carry an umbrella”) Rodin terms Free, Perfect & Now as three insatiable customer demands and tell us how the company needs to connect itself to this, redefining the value constantly, keeping in mind the present & future value landscape. While reading this book I always connected these three words “Free Perfect Now” with the TRIZ definition of Ideality. (All benefits, with no harms and no cost), sometimes it is dangerous to be complacent by comparing one's business with the competition, because there are good chances that you will be put out of business not by your direct competitors but by someone outside of your business domain by redefining the value you provide to your customer.

The change management is based on the same principle CK Prahlada has put forth in his recent classic “The New Age of Innovation” He describes the new model of Innovation as N=1; R= G which means every company that wants to succeed in its innovation efforts needs to treat every customer separately and for doing that needs to collaborate with the world’s resources, co creating a unique value with the customer. Rodin has taken three steps to do this First Changing the Performance Management Structure, Second Creeping into Customer’s Mind to not only provide him/ her the electronic components/ parts (the way the world understands Marshall’s Business but the business solutions which he / she will not get from any other supplier, the third one, of course an important one, is to create ICT (Information and Communication Technology) architecture to support N=1 & R=G.

At the end of each chapter learning have been summarized through “Manager’s Workbook”, these workbooks will be useful when you are tackling the challenges faced by your business.

Let us challenge our assumptions and constantly define/ redefine IFR of anything that we do with one GURUMANTRA in our MIND i.e. CUSTOMER WORLD WANTS EVERYTHING FREE, PERFECT and NOW.

Innovation Barriers

2008-07-12T22:32:00.000+05:30

Vijay Govindrajan – Innovation Guru identified 5 major barriers to Innovation. The main barriers & my own understanding of these barriers are illustrated here….

1. Too much focus on current operations – Google has a CEO to manage day to day operations while its founders Larry Page & Sergey Brin focus on creativity & innovations to create – recreate Google year on year. Google is an idea at heart & business at brain . Even task master Jack Welch had his team who worked on future, not only focusing on SIX SIGMA & quarter results.

2. Lack of a “tolerance for failure” culture – We want success from the first day and therefore desist venturing unknown.

3. Not embedding innovation as an organizational capability – We want few heroes & think we can run successful organizations. In a talent starved world this is a dangerous approach. Instead organizations should see how they can make everyone innovative and help them with systematic innovation tools like TRIZ, Six Thinking Hats.

4. Too much of a silo mentality – There is famous saying “Our right hand does not know what left is doing” we need to have boundary less innovation organisation & network. Remember AIRTEL ad when two children enemy countries start playing football, they become friends. The message was simple “ If you Talk to Each Other, & you can make impossible possible”

5. Lack of a Global Mindset: Let us respect each other’s job, this is what we can learn from the global organisations and build a global mindset.

Continuous Improvement Paradox – Is it worth squeezing the sugarcane juice third or fourth time

2008-07-11T21:38:00.000+05:30

Why there is so much hype about innovation these days. Is it a new fad or evolution of a new world order? To find an answer we need to go 10 years back & look at the changes that have take place in & around us. Three revolutionary things that changed the world quite dramatically are mobile phones, Internet & Google. Our whole lifestyle changed, the way we bank, shop, seek information, listen music, communicate & organize ourselves, everything changed. These three things also had a significant impact on the way the business is conducted today. The world is changing to a new order of “Free Perfect Now”.

All these changes also had a significant impact on the way we solved the problems. The decade of 80’s and the early 90s were the days of “Continuous Improvement Philosophy”. I always compare this with the process of extracting the sugarcane juice. In the subsequent passes we employ more power (effort) and hardly get any quantity of juice. In problem solving process we adopt the same approach and achieve same results (if at all we achieve anything) which are inversely proportional to the efforts. To change this, we need to overcome the psychological inertia and solve our problems with a new equation

3U (Unleash, Unlearn, Unwind) = I (Innovate) = Three insatiable customer / business demand: .Free Perfect Now

Don’t Waive Farm Loans; Weave Farm Fresh Innovations,

2008-07-08T20:38:00.000+05:30

Farmer getting wireless connectivity is a welcome change (Was it Abhishek’s Idea) as it is helping them know prevailing market prices of their produce. This naturally gives them an edge in bargaining with the middleman and helps them get a better price for their produce. An IDEAL solution, I thought before I read further & found some thorns in the rose. Farmers are still not able to sell their produce at a market rate and price is still dictated by the middlemen. The reason: middlemen are money lenders who threaten with prohibition of the next loan. Solution: Micro financing these farmers.

Thought: Why mobile companies can’t microfinance these farmers or partner with microfinance companies to set the situation right. This could be a new business model for them and a route to philanthropy. This means more money in the hands of farmers, thus broadening India Inc customer’s base. More money in more hands means evolving markets for many companies.

Ways to Remember – Small Innovations…. Big Relief

2008-07-08T00:26:00.000+05:30

During our school days we had to remember so many things to write an accurate answer. It was difficult for our tiny brain to remember so much, but we used to find innovative ways to remember, as there was no option with us. (We were not copycats)

Recently, I was helping my daughter (or helping myself) to learn parts of speech. While we were solving exercise I was not too sure whether she will able to remember all 8 parts. She said don’t worry I can remember all of them through a single word “PANICPAV”. Translated PANIC means Fear and PAV is a Marathi word for bread. In its expanded form it means Preposition, Adjective, Noun, Interjection, Conjunction, Pronoun, Adverb, and Verb. Small Innovations Big Relief……

Blind Folded Men, Elephant and 9 Windows of Systematic Innovation

2008-07-05T21:13:00.000+05:30

We all listened to a story of elephant and blind folded men. When asked to describe the elephant each one had his own version. (let us assume here that these men never saw an elephant before...) Nothing was wrong per se, as their answers paralleled to what they sensed. When their eyes were opened they saw the complete elephant, which was different than what they thought it was.

When we are on our way to find innovative solutions to our problem or hidden opportunity we need to keep our eyes open and observe the whole. It is essential for us to then see the current systems w.r.t. its components ( Sub-System) and the external systems ( Super System). For eg. If we are considering e-book as a systems to improve upon then we not only have to look at subsystems such as printing technology, evolution of paper as a product etc, but at also need to look at the super system elements such as entertainment systems, internets & its several tools, publishers, reader’s hidden desires etc. These systems need to be though w.r.t. time dimension going into its past, present and future. We may able to find our innovative solution w.r.t. some elements outside of our present window. In Systematic Innovation terms it is termed as 9 Windows of System Operator. Aren’t we then seeing the whole elephant than its individual parts? I conclude with a thought “ The Whole is always greater than sum of its parts”

Get ready to innovate – Rotate the Kaleidoscope

2008-07-05T21:09:00.000+05:30

We all played with Kaleidoscope in our childhood. Kaleidoscope is an optical toy consisting of a cylinder with mirrors and colored shapes inside that create shifting symmetrical patterns when the end is rotated.

Process of Systematic Innovation draws parallel with kaleidoscope, at every stage we see different patterns of a problem and / or an opportunity (Let us say shape of the pattern) which sparks in us several possibilities of a probable IDEAL Solution. Possibilities are like several bright glass pieces housed inside it. What is important is to rotate the Kaleidoscope and that is often being missed by problem solving teams (in a typical SIX SIGMA or problem solving approach) therefore they are blinded with the first pattern that they see, which is chased like a wild goose only to get entangled in an implementation mess later.

So next time in an ideation session, encourage your team to rotate the Kaleidoscope many times over and see what happens.

Innovation Workouts - Rekindle the Grey Matter

2008-06-27T23:56:00.000+05:30

We all appreciate and applaud Sachin Tendulkar’s brilliance and his records in all the forms of cricket. But we are unable to appreciate the hard work he has put in over the years in the nets. In the nets no runs are scored, but the net practice helps him score tons on the real battle field.

Similarly companies must allow its employees to have innovation workouts challenging them with an opportunity or a problem. Such workout may or may not yield immediate result but what it can definitely do is to help build the self confidence in the Ideation process. Such ideation can be done by individual employees in their own space and time. The result can be shared afterwards in a group workout. This will ensure that everyone gets a chance to think & present his own idea resulting into bountiful ideas.

Companies no more compete on products and services but on the grey matter sealed in their employees head and their inner voice to innovate.

Innovation Killers

2008-06-15T01:31:00.001+05:30

Praveen Gupta's commentory on the TRIZ journal is really very interesting. http://www.realinnovation.com/commentary/archive/seven_killers_of_innovation.html

I feel building organizational innovation capability will require patience of first time mango farmer and organisations need to realise this. Innovation capability, in addition to other efforts, needs to be built with the help of dedicated innovation facilitator/s who is a connector, maven, a good Salesman and a pollinator. His role is to arrange / rearrange the blocks of knowledge & appropriately cement them together to create a new value.

It is said that organisations can think of something long term if they survive in short term, I think the same holds true for individuals who are facilitating Innovation. Generally the value of such efforts is intangible to start with. Organisation's PMS needs to be ambidextrous to manage the paradox between tangible & intangible and should equally value intangibles. Organisation then only can craft a vision of having an Organizational Innovation DNA to be inherited by future generations.

Other factor that is killing Innovation is well established and marketed methods like SIX SIGMA. I am not saying Six Sigma is bad but it is over hyped. People know that nothing of this sort really works to achieve significant improvements, but they don’t want to appear backward so they keep driving such initiatives ignoring their heart count’s inner innovation voice.

Innovation Brokering - Tech Companies Future Business Model

2008-06-13T23:09:00.000+05:30

Few years back, I purchased my flat through a real estate broker and paid him a handsome amount . I then started thinking what I paid him for. I am sure he must have taken the same amount from the seller.He also explained me lot of advantages of buying this perticular property, I took his advice and went with the deal. Brokering looked attractive business. What was his USP? He knew the seller and what he had to sell and what buyer wanted. He benefitted both parties and had his share of labor.What was important was that he made a permanant connection, which may help him get repeat business or word to mouth publicity.

Every business is looking at new growth areas by having product, process & strategic Innovations.These firms also can trade and buy knowledge, technology from individuals, institutes, and from industries outside their bounds.( Blue Ocean Strategy). Two questions they need to constantly keep in mind How I can profitably sell my ideas and How I might profitably use other's idea in my business.

For this to become accepted practice they need to build Innovation Observatory, from where they can have a look at the world. This needs to be supplemented by two things one , by building innovation capability by adopting to Systematic Innovation Philosophy & Methods and further encouraging them to network wildely. Second,by building knowledge management system ( Bank) that decodes & stores the knowledge gained by everyone at every movement.

Blog, Collaborate & Innovate

2008-06-11T22:39:00.000+05:30

IT companies jump on the social networking bandwagon. Blogging and the ensuing online dialogue is fast emerging as an imprtant tool for learning and connection. It will certainly give people an opportunity to collaborate and Innovate.Companies in future company will show in their balance sheet the intangible assets they hold by way of their employees & their social connection. Blog is your own thought space.The future of Blogging community is bright & exciting

Wine Tavern, Ice Cream Parlor and News Paper

2008-06-11T01:33:00.000+05:30

You must be wondering what is the connection between these unrelated entities . Hold On & Read…..….

On my trip to Nasik, my friend took me to a winery. The site was absolutely fantastic, so was the winery. While I saw the processing of wine from the balcony, my gourmet friend was busy looking out for the best cases & he seemed to have lost in the gathering of those French appetizers. He wanted to have all of them, but was not too sure whether he would like each one of them & will consumer them completely. Physical Contradiction….. The server solved his problem; he said why you don’t take a small quantity of each wine that would make approximately one glass and then choose one out of them. We snatched the deal and made a memorable evening.

Gourmet meals are often concluded with Ice Creams. Visiting Fresh Ice Cream Parlors is an event by itself. Children always like variety and want to taste different flavor every time they visit the parlor. We have to get the best flavor of the lot, as we are not too sure of visiting the parlor soon. What it means, we want to have all 20 flavors that parlor keeps, but want to consume only one we like. Physical Contradiction again. Impossible, at max we can have different flavor and exchange smallest possible quantities with others. Ice cream parlors seem to have a solution, they give you a spoonful of each flavor to taste and choose one amid them.

News papers are our essential morning companions. We have little time to read the complete news paper. We want to read each & every news, but don’t have time to read them. Physical contradiction once again. Mint, the financial daily has a quick scan section giving essence of all the news on its second page. So reader gets all the news Coverage, & he can choose news topic of his interest and read the complete story.

What was common amongst all these cases; they had similar contradiction (problem) and had similar solution for their problem. TRIZ provides you with an answer in no time as it has already decoded the problem ( Contradictions) and associated corresponding ideas into its inventive principle. Here principle 2 Taking Out or Extraction was applied. . A small portion out of a bigger entity is extracted and then given to the consumer to enable him to make a choice.

Take Away: Someone Somewhere Has Solved Problem Like yours….Don’t brainstorm with your team members alone because you all belong to the same school. Brainstorm with the innovators of the world. TRIZ helps you to do that as it is not making you look out of box, but into several boxes which you have not seen as yet.

Don't be SANTUSHT....Benchmarking & Ideal Final Result

2008-06-09T21:24:00.000+05:30

“Don’t be Santusht, Thoda Wish Karo Dish Karo" Shaharukh Khan's puchline in the TV commercial connects me to IDEALITY or IDEAL FINAL RESULT. Many times companies spent lot of time, money & resources in carrying out benchmarking exercises with a view to beat the competition at their own game. I feel such an exercise limits their thinking and traps them at competition's thinking level and there I feel they miss the opportunity to Innovate.

Ideality in simple terms mean more of benefits, at less cost, with less harm (headaches, heartaches)

All systems, products, services eventually evolve towards increasing ideality. Take example of banking, we have experienced how it has changed over the years. Now we no more stand in the queue to get our cash, we can get cash at any time. We no more have to remember the monthly payout of our essential utilities, we can invest, transact on line, we can buy on credit or debit cards. Banking system therefore has definitely moved from less ideal system to more ideal system without any benchmarking.

Ideal Final Result can be scoped for every function & attribute of the consummate systems. These systems are designed by looking at the extreme requirements of a CRAZY consumer. (We have one in us…. It has to come out without any inhibitions) Once you design your offering taking care of this CRAZY FELLA, then all non crazy soon get glued to this CRAZY but extremely value seeking offerings. More discussion about IDEALITY in the next few posts.

The Point of Sale - Innovating Layouts

2008-06-08T21:45:00.000+05:30

Every FMCG and Apparel manufacturers try their best to catch the eye of the consumer. Product may be good, it may be displayed in the best of the departmental stores but at the wrong place, then it has less chance in getting into consumer's eye & then into his basket. You missed the first touch point and therefore pie of his wallet.

It is important to keep a track & catch consumer ‘movements throughout the shop and the pattern of his buying. Retailers must be carrying out this exercise to finalize the shelves for various products. The buying process is also dependent on the time he has already spent and the buying environment around him at the point of sale.

Recently I noticed smart thinking by a retailer on both these aspects.Children and women garments were placed just outside the eating area. In fact the smart shopper has used the restaurant’s partition type wall to hold & display garments. Just in front of the restaurant there was women’s shopping area.

Now imagine you & your family are in a restaurant, your children are as usual hungry and your wife is in no mood to feed them ( she already did that at home an hr ago), she notices very attractive sale of woman apparels going on in front of the restaurant. She requests you (order I mean) to take the children in the restaurant while she shops. While you are in the restaurant for half an hr she finishes her shopping and is now looking for children garments displayed outside. Children are also excited now and are ready for their shopping. Anyway, who cares for you, after all, you have to buy either plain or stripes, it can be quickly done as you all leave the store:(

Nirma - A Case of Disruption targeting non consumers

2008-06-07T22:28:00.000+05:30

Nirma was a case of disruption where the product targeted non consumers who wanted to use the detergent but could not afford it.

Nirma had a good amount of SODA Ash which was harsh on hands, but the contradiction was solved by the consumer themselves when they have used an intermediary in the form of a stick to stir the dipped clothes.They was an apprehension that the colour may fade, but who is anyway going to use the garment for more than ten years.

Nirma provided adequate quality at the affordable price.In a way Nirma was an innovation for the people who were climbing up from the Bottom of the Pyramid.

Can Innovation Be Taught & Learned

2008-06-05T22:43:00.000+05:30

Organisations often struggle to find an answer to this important question. They depend heavily on individual geniuses and not too bothered about building organisation capability to innovate. There is an interesting commentory by James Todhunter on the TRIZ journal.

http://www.realinnovation.com/commentary/archive/can_innovation_be_learned.html

James modeled process of innovation by comobining problem analysis and knowledge association.

My Comments :

Ability to innovate quicker and better will depend on the ability to catalogue knowledge ( some kind of knowledge 5 S ). We need to catalogue knowledge on day to day basis as we network with knowledge sources or with our day to day observations.

Knowledge is like rain water, . If we do not have enought catchment areas to arrest this water then sea is it's final destination. Similarly knowledge if not catalogued is as good as lost.

But most important thing in getting an innovative solution is problem definition. The problem definition means understanding the current situation and moving towards IDEALITY or IDEAL FINAL RESULT. Refer my earlier post of Dec 6 , 2007

Innovation at the Bottom of the Pyramid

2008-06-04T22:10:00.000+05:30

We all like taking a shot at the ballons in the fair or when we are on our holidays to a local hill station. This is our only chance to hold a weapon. All of us are doing this since our childhood and keeping our hopes alive of becoming Anjali Bhagwat one day.:)

Earlier I have seen metal balls being used to have a crack at the ballons. These metal balls were nothing but the shot blasting dust. Bursting the ballon with a metal particle is like shotting a cockroach with a bullet:} Excessive function, according to throery of functional analysis.These metal particles could harm the people around if they are misfired, also the metal dust could fall on the ground and can harm barefooted. What else can substitute these metal particles.The question sparks resource thinking. The answer is : to use pulses instead of metal particles. Pulses are hard enough to break the ballons. Pulses are safe & breaks open after it hits the ballon and the dashboard behind. I think vendor can keep a tray & can get grounded pulses.:)

Isn't it a Simple But Effective Innovation using cheaper & less harmful resources.

Innovation By Analogy

2008-06-02T23:54:00.000+05:30

After a long lay off I am back again. During this layoff I was not silent but was on on with my Innovation Learning & Research. I came across many Knowledge and Technology Management Web sites. One of them was Prof. Clayton Christensen;s web site INNOSIGHT and its blog. I read @ 10 entries and found them really interesting.
One of such posts was Innovation by Analogy.http://www.innosight.com/blog/archives/2008-04.html

TRIZ is based on the basic premise that someoner somewhere has solved problem like yours. You need to break the system in such a way that you get many ways to perform similar function. When we do this we jump start with creative alternatives with ease.

I had similar experiences wherein one of our TRIZ session concluded with a solution sparked from an analogy. Joint sealant was getting disintegrated after tightening of joint. Our brainstorming concluded that we need to stop the traces of the selant getting mixed with the lubricating oil. The analogus solution was a grass-floor mat, which is used in our home to prevent dirt getting inside our home. The problem for which lot of costliest solutions were explored was solved by a simple analogy.

Another example that I can site was that of an FMCG company which was creating a new market by selling sachet shampoo. The challenge was to control the quantity of shampoo filled in small pouches. Innovators asked themeselves what are the artifects that dispenses fluid precisely and the answer was auto engine fuel pump. The solution was implemented.

I conclude with a quote " If a picture is worth 1000 words then analogy is worth 1000 pictures"

TRIZ – Systematic Innovation;Don’t Pour One More Please…. Our Glass is Full…..

2007-12-17T17:13:00.001+05:30

Hello everybody, I am Prashant. I am trying my best to grasp TRIZ with a child’s inquisitiveness. These days everyone talks about WHY part of Innovation but no one really talks about HOW part of it. My conviction tells me that TRIZ provides an answer to that HOW part.

Taking TRIZ to people is not an easy task, as most people believe that creativity and Innovation capability belongs to genius individuals and therefore they have apprehensions about venturing into this territory. Many people whom world knows as genius were like you & me, the only quality they had in them was their ability to quickly unlearn & ask questions challenging the status-quo. (Ideal Final Result)

Another major risk that they perceive is systematic innovation may be a time consuming process and may not be congruent with the expectations of free, perfect & now world.

Every organization has proponents of various approaches like SIX SIGMA, Lean, TOC, TPM etc. They try their best to influence top management to bless them & their approach and recognize it as an Organizational approach. My tryst with such approaches made me realize that at one point in time, one requires applying his brain and needs to do some serious thinking to get real breakthrough solutions for quantum improvements. In my opinion all these approaches fell short in thinking part. Ground reality is that people are really tired to pursue these approaches as they don’t fully owe them and view them as someone else’s aspiration which they need to blindly follow & execute. Few organizations drag with these things as they don’t want to appear backward in this globalised world. On backdrop of all this if you approach people with TRIZ, their initial reaction is not very encouraging. We need to change this and adapt ingenious ways to propagate this wonderful Innovation Science.

I will conclude this discussion with a small story; when PARSIS came to India, they landed in the west coast & requested LOCAL king for a shelter. King was not willing as it meant an additional burden to his Kingdom and that too also of an outsider. To convey his decision he sent a glass full of milk indicating that he can not accommodate them. PARSIS put a spoonful of sugar in it and returned the glass to the king. The message was very clear that their community ( TRIZ approach in our case) will get well mixed with locals ( Existing Initiatives) adding value to their endeavours.( Much desired SWEETNESS). The moral of the story is that we need to integrate TRIZ with each of the contemporary approaches so well that it creates a unique value a TRIZ Value. I am sure TRIZ has power to enhance Innovation Quotient of an individual and also that of an organization. which is also the need of the hour.

Chak De......

Root Cause Analysis & Root Contradiction Analysis

2007-12-11T20:53:00.000+05:30

Many of us know what is mean by root cause analysis and all the related tools and techniques. We use them quite often to solve the problems that we have faced or are facing.

Simplest of the techniques is probably the “ask why five times’ idea. Why did the failure occur? Why did the system not prevent it? Why did the system not anticipate it?

The main underlying idea of root cause analysis is to ascertain why things went wrong so that we can both correct them and prevent them from happening again.

So much for the theory. When we actually get down to the mechanics of root cause analysis, on the other hand, things have a tendency to get out of hand very quickly. Quite simply root cause analysis requires data. Asking ‘why’ means we have to understand system. To understand the system requires data. Very often the cost and time involved in capturing the data can be prohibitive

The problem with root cause analysis in general, is that it only stops when the root cause has been found. If this takes a few hours, this is not a problem. But if it means a year of conducting surveys, doing experiments, running simulations and still no answer, we should start to ask whether there is a better way.

An even more serious concern of root cause analysis- one that is particularly evident in the business and management context- is that even though we are often able to find what we think is the root cause of our problem, it turns out there is nothing that we can do about it. What do we do then?? What do we do if the root cause of a problem is government legislation? Or bank interest rates? Or that solving our problem requires someone else change what they are doing when it is not in their interests to do it? Now we are in a situation where knowing the root cause is of no practical use to us at all.

Whether the situation involves not being able to find a root cause or not being able to do anything about a root cause that we can identify, the suggestion here is that there is indeed a better way. We call it root contradictions analysis. The key similarity between this method and root cause analysis is that both built on the question ‘why’. The first key difference is that, while root cause analysis has a voracious appetite for analysis and data, root contradiction analysis requires only that we gain a qualitative understanding of what is happening in a system.

The second key difference – one even more important than the first- is that root cause analysis is a method closely allied to optimization of processes, while root contradiction analysis is about recognizing systems hit fundamental limits, beyond which no amount of optimization will take them. In other words, you could spend an infinite amount of time gathering the data to help optimize something that refuses to optimize any further.

Experience of some of those working in the field of SYSTEMATIC INNOVATION shows that over 80 % of the problems that we see is that the system has been optimized to a fundamental limit. Our main job working for organization is to get maximum benefit out of the minimum amount of resource. Our job is to squeeze the last drop out of the systems we design and operate. If it may be true that over 80 % of the problem situation , then clearly we need a different approach that root cause analysis.

The conflict elimination part of the systematic innovation toolkit is the only systematic way in existence for helping us to jump from one optimized system to a better way of doing things. Root contradiction analysis is about helping us to find the key contradictions we need to solve if we are to make the jump to that new system.

This is not to say that root contradiction analysis works miracles. We still have to do lot of thinking- ‘why’ is often the most difficult of the 5 Ws is but at least we don’t have to accompany it with a warehouse full of expensive-to-acquire data, and we know that solving contradictions is fundamentally good direction to travel in any event.

The most important numbers are “unknown and unknowable” So said W.E. Deming. The quote is particularly relevant to traditional root cause analysis- which often has a seemingly never-ending appetite for the data. Finding out root contradictions is generally easier, cheaper and quicker than finding root causes. This is not to try & completely dismiss root-cause analysis, however, but merely to say that if you have spent more time than a week trying to ascertain root-causes and are not at the ‘answer’ yet, then maybe it is time to try looking out for root contradiction instead. At the very least, root contradiction analysis can be tried on a quick basis in a few hours.

Root cause analysis is sometimes great for optimizing systems. If the system has been optimized to the limits of its capability ( as manufacturing processes have – thanks to years of ‘ continuous improvement’ initiatives) no amount of additional optimization will improve the result. The only way to improve a fully optimized system is to change the system. Solving contradictions is a good way to achieve this. Root Contradiction Analysis is a good way to find right contradictions within a system and look for inventive principles to solve them.

TRIZ - Simple, Systematic & for everyone.

This is an excerpt from Darrell Mann's Book Hands On Systamatic Innovation. You can visit his site www.systematic-innovation.com

Problem Solving??? Or Problem Defining ???

2007-12-06T20:09:00.001+05:30

Problem definition might be 90 % of the problem, but typically ( in true pareto style ), we spend 10 % of the available time on it. From a psychological perspective we feel like we are making progress when we are generating solutions. Perhaps more importantly, we look like we are making a progress ( or at least we look busy) when we are generating solutions and trying things out. Problem definition often feels like we are traveling in the worn direction- we may be getting further from our solution, or we may turn up something that really sets us back. As a consequence we are all prone to convincing ourselves that we have gone far enough into the problem definition hole and can thus start thinking about ‘ making progress’ again.

The problem explorer part of the systematic innovation (TRIZ) process is probably the place where our brains feel the longing to switch to problem solving mode most acutely. You are strongly recommended to fight this urge. You may hate doing it, and your brain will do it that it can to convince you that you have done through enough, but all of our evidence clearly shows that those that are prepared to stick with the definition task even after they have uncovered things they really wish they hadn’t, that benefits are well worth the pain and frustration. If necessary, do the definition job in stages, or allocate different parts to different participants. Please stick with it. Think about all of the time you have spent through your career and try and balance that against spending another 15 mins trying to make sure you are working the ‘truly’ right problem.

A second common experience having reached the end of the problem explorer is that your brain (or collective brains are) is bursting with problem solving ideas. Its is usally pointless to ask people to ignore these ideas, and to get back to the process. The best strategy in this situation is to add another part to the proforma called “car park”. This is a place where all the initial ideas can be written down so that everyone knows they have been registered and can be returned to later. A short -10 minute-‘ idea jump’ session at the end of the problem explorer is highly recommended. If only to demonstrate how many more and how many better ideas will emerge when we do get back to the Systematic Innovation Process.

TRIZ – Systematic Innovation

Simple Systematic & for Everyone

The above text is an excerpt from Darrell Mann's book "Hands On Systematic Innovation". Darrell is a leading reasearcher in these methods. His clientale include GE, Proctor & Gamble, Intel,GM etc.Interested readers can visit his web site www.systematic-innovation.com and can Download a 15 minute video clip on TRIZ.

Trends - The Past and The Future

2007-11-25T12:34:00.000+05:30

Tom peter says “Trends worth Trillions”. Trends decide the innovation direction.

I read Kishore Biyani's book " It Happened In India", book is all about how to understand consumer's mind and how one need to weave business strategy around it. It gives more emphasis on consumer and business trends, than data, as in Mr.Biyani experience if you wait for business data to make your decision then may be it is too late, observing trends is what he considers a sagcious way to run a retail business. He believes in Brahma ( the creator) and the Shiva (the destroyer) and the business that he runs is the business of creation & self destruction cycles. The faster this cycle is, the more successful the retailer will be he observes. Lord Vishnu’s role (maintenance) may not suit the ever changing consumer needs. Of course what one should always maintain is one’s core values.

Anyway if you want to kill your lazy Sunday Afternoon then go & read this book, it may spark some new business ideas or some GYAN on different managenement thinking. All this at BIG BAZAR price of Rs.99/-, so go ahead and shop this along with your monthly grocery. Few emerging trends were summarized at the end of the book.

THE PAST / THE FUTURE
Stability & Consolidation/Speed & Imagination
Accounting Rules /Innovation Rules
Tangible Assets / Intangible Assets
Delegation / Abdication
TQM, SIX SIGMA / Design Management (Innovation Skill Development)
Hierarchy /Seamlessness
Mass Production/Personalization
Technology Support Change /Technology Drive Change
Case Studies/Scenario Planning
Product & Services /Experiences & Solutions
Power Point Presentations/Storytelling
Enforce Order/Thrive in Chaos
Transaction/Relationships
Competition /Collaboration
Only Men, Engineers /More Women, Ethnographers
MBAs /Designers (People with Creativity and Innovation Ability)
Zero Sum Game ( If I have to win you all have to loose) / WIN WIN WIN ( Grow)

Management's role is important in nurturing Creativity & Innovation Culture

2007-11-10T14:53:00.000+05:30

The business environment depends so heavily on circumstances, perceptions, anticipatory and competitive behavior, and feedback loops that predictions based on classic logic are very likely to be badly wrong.

Instead of classic verbal logic, which is fine for lawyers, we need to move more towards the non-Western Japanese style. We feed in a lot of information about the situation and gradually build up a sort of mental map or feeling. We then look at the terrain and make our decisions. This is what I called “water logic” as opposed to traditional “rock logic”. Water logic is fluid and flowing, gradually building up. It is not based on choices between permanent, hard-edged, rock-like alternatives.

One of the greatest dangers of traditional logic is the quick use of negative. As soon as an idea is suggested, there are people who rush to say that it won’t work, can’t be done, or is too expensive. They then proceed with those bland ideas which survived this instant negativity.

Imagine that there are two sorts of animals. The first might be a grazing animal with plenty of food around. This animal is programmed to react to every noise in the bush as if it might be potential danger (which it often is) . The second is a hunting animal. This animal is programmed to react to every noise in the bush as if it were potential prey and food- and is therefore interested in exploring rather than running away.

Too many executives are complacent grazing animals only too ready to shy away from new ideas.

Ref : "Sur-petition", Edward De Bono; Publisher : Harper Collins Business