Do you know how to Change

In the last article I wrote about IBM's report on enterprise of future. One of the point that was mentioned is that Organizations of future will be more flexible & will be more adaptable to change frequently.

Now keeping this point in mind I wanted to know what percentage of companies presently are good at changing.

In a recent survey(July 2008) by Mckinsey Quarterly of executives around the world, only a third said  that their organizations succeeded in transformation activities!!

So what we are seeing is that Change is important FOR companies and ability to change as well as managing change will be important in the upcoming years.

  

But the question still remains: How to Change succuessfully.....

I got this book...Change Management by V.Nilakant & S. Ramnarayan.

The book highlights that Change is all about Altering the mindsets of people. 

The book provides a new model for organizational change & lists four tasks that are crucial for success of any change initiative.

   The four tasks of change as described by authors that companies can utilize to change effectively are:

1. Appreciating Change

2. Mobilizing support

3. Executing Change

4. Building Change Capability

 

Appreciating Change: This step  is useful for planning for change. It aims at understanding the present mindsets of people within the organization. Appreciating change involves making people(stakeholders) mentally ready to change. It involves describing why one needs to change, consequences of changing & not changing and what are the options one has for undertaking change in the organization.

 Very often it has been noticed that change efforts are not successfully carried out, one of the main problems noticed is that there is too much resistance within the organization. So therefore it is advisable that managers should understand the mindsets of employees and other stakeholders and make efforts to make them ready for change so that they will appreciate change.

 

Mobilizing Support: After the people are mentally ready for change/innovative programs, the next step is to mobilize support for change. It has been noticed that change efforts are not successful because people do not support the change efforts. It has been mentioned that in large organizations one can expect 20% of people enthusiastic about change, another 20% are opposed to change & rest are indifferent. Now in such a scenario what should managers do in order to gather support for change. The authors have listed some issues, lessons & techniques along with relevant case studies which managers can utilize for gathering support for change.

 

Executing Change : It is very important that resources are made available for change/implementation of Innovative programs within the organization. This step deals with creating & putting structures in place for change to happen. Even if the above mentioned tasks are carefully thought through, it has been mentioned that execution task can pose various hurdles in change efforts of the organization. The authors lists that managers need to decide the type of change they wish to bring into the organization which will lead to how the change is to be executed (style of change) and also whether to have a ready made change program or design their own.

 

Building Change Capability: It has been mentioned that in order to successfully implement change efforts, people needs to be infused with certain qualities which will improve their capability for changing the organization successfully. The authors have listed three qualities which are Self Efficacy (people having the confidence in their ability to achieve challenging goals), Focus (clarity of goals to be attained among people), & energy (employees should be energized & fueled by personal commitment to change).

 

In addition to phases mentioned above, the authors support the above mentioned points with the roles that senior management & leaders needs to play in each of the phase  while initiating & implementing change.

Overall though it is difficult to change but organizations today & in future will have no choice but to change rapidly & be successful in implementing innovative efforts or perish.

Neeraj

 

Enterprise of the Future

Hi Everybody

A friend of mine gave me the recent report published by IBM on  THE ENTERPRISE OF THE FUTURE. The report is based on the survey done by IBM with more than 1000 CEO's & public Sector leaders worldwide. The survey was conducted by IBM teams, having face to face & telephonic conversations on how they think the enterprise of future will be. Here's a brief summary of the report

The report highlights five major points that are traits of tomorrow’s enterprises:

1. Hungry for change

2. Innovative beyond customer's imagination

3. Globally Integrated

4. Disruptive by Nature

5. Genuine, not just Generous

 

1. Hungry for change: the report highlights that the enterprises will be changing rapidly. Ability to change as well as change management will be the two ideal traits of organizations. Market Factors, people skills & technology will be the key factors forcing organizations to change. Inorder to change, the companies need to accept change as a state of being, hire & reward innovators who will be change agents, transform change programs for key business outcomes & have to operate like a Venture Capitalist.

Example of ABB is given as a case study

 

2. Innovative beyond customer's Imagination: The ever increasing knowledgeable consumers can be seen as Threat and opportunity as well. Many CEO's consider it as an opportunity to serve these informed & collaborative customers. Outperforming Companies are investing more to serve these sophisticated consumers inorder to delight them. Companies are Innovating by making their offering more relevant to new markets, connecting their resources to customer & having deep relationship with them & using technology to anticipate change faster than competition.(eg: Virtual World to gain insight & faster feedback)

Example of Nintendo is given as a case study.

 

3. Globally Integrated: The enterprises in the Future will be Globally Integrated with each other. Companies are also changing their business designs to facilitate faster & more extensive collaboration. The report highlights that Global integration will also be through mergers & acquisitions.

Example of Li & Fung Limited is given as a case study.

 

4. Disruptive by Nature: Report mentions that most CEO's are embarking on extensive business model innovation. The Outperforming companies are going one step ahead and pursuing Disruptive business model innovations. The report mentions that CEO's are largely focussing on business/enterprise model innovation with next focus on revenue model innovation followed by multiple types & industry model innovation. The enterprise of future will think like an outsider and will challenge every assumption about its business model, It will draw breakthrough Ideas from other industries, empower entrepreneurs, experiment creatively in market & not just in lab and will manage today's business while experimenting with tomorrow’s model.

Example: The case study of Eli Lilly and Company is given

 

5. Genuine, not just Generous: Report mentions that CSR activities are taking considerable amount of CEO's time as they affect companies image at the same time impact today's eco friendly consumer's purchase decision. Report also highlights that companies are viewing CSR initiatives as an opportunity to differentiate their company from others. Companies are increasing their investments in CSR initiatives and will gradually involve NGO's & other groups. So instead of being forced to do CSR activities, companies will genuinely be interested in taking these projects which will make world a better place at the same time make business sense.

Example of Marks & Spencer is given as a case study.

 

The IBM report throws interesting points about describing how the enterprises of Future will be. As pointed out Innovation, User & Environment focused will be the key focus areas of Enterprises of Future. 

 

Think About it

Neeraj

Image Source: IBM.com

Start Paying salary to your Boss!!!!

Just a thought came to my mind. Why the employer has to pay employee??

I mean can there be a model wherein instead of employer paying the employee, the employee pays to employer.

(Man this guy is totally nuts!!)

It works like this : The employer will be providing a pool of resources from which the employee will decide what to choose. If you look at it, this model can be a extension of present  focus of companies which are trying to infuse an element of entrepreneurability in employees and acting like resource providers.

The only difference is that instead of being paid by employer, the employee has to pay him (out of profit generated) for using resources.

(But we dont generate profit instantly???)

Well the intricacies of this model can be worked out but lets see what are the benefits.

  The benefit:

For Employer : Minimum wastage of Time & energy.

                             No need for HR function- only highly enthusiastic people will apply

                             Will act as resource provider

                            Will play a role of connecting other enthusiasts

              

For Employee: Chance to meet with other enthusiasts

                            No red tapism & bureaucracy

                            Fast learning

 

For Nation:  Productivity very high

                       Minimum Wastage

                       Innovative products & services generated

 

Think about it.

 

Neeraj 

image Source: (cartoonstock.com)

Design Thinking- Solving today's biggest problem

Hi Everybody

The philosophy of Design Thinking involves focusing on User's problem & finding innovative answers to solve them.

Oil is one of the biggest problem that nations face today. Both its usage & limited availability create problems (Global warming & only reliable source for energy).

Siddharth (former Classmate) informed me about Betterplace.com- An Innovative venture that aims to reduce global dependency on Oil through creation of a transportation model that supports use of electric vehicles. Launched in October 1997, the Venture involves developing an Infrastructure which will support use of electric vehicles as a personal transportation alternative. A perfect example of design thinking, the venture's Objective is to reduce the global dependence on Oil and aims to replace Cars having Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) with battery powered Vehicles.

Battery Powered Vehicles : Can they run for more than 200 miles?

                                          Once I run out of battery than what?

                                          Aren't they expensive?

                                          Do they have enough power?   

Better Place will work like this: The consumer purchases an electric car that comes with a battery that can be replaced/swapped easily. In order to recharge, the consumer will go to any of the Recharge Stations where they can get the recharge (supplied by Electric Recharge Grid) or swap the battery with another one(the company owns the batteries). The business model is similar to that of wireless network operators in mobile phone business. The phone is being replaced by Electric Car, the recharge/battery is similar to the airtime you pay as per usage at the end of the month (you get a bill similar to the mobile bill) & Electric Recharge Grid is similar to network towers put in place to ensure connectivity at all times.,

But do we have people taking notice of this Venture and what's the benefit.

The company has tied up with Renault and two countries (ISRAEL & DENMARK) have partnered for this venture. Right now the company is developing infrastructure for Electric recharge grid in these countries.

The benefit:

For User: Cost of Car Usage goes down Significantly

For Government: Less Dependence on Oil hence significantly lower costs.

For Planet: Less Greenhouse gases & thus less global warming

 

Started by Shai Agassi (formerly President of Products & Technology group -SAP AG) this venture is a perfect example of solving problems and providing benefit to all (people, government, planet) with the help of Design Thinking. Better Place also sets an appropriate example for implementation as Shai also helped the Israeli government to set the regulations that enforce these changes. It is said that the policies and regulations were designed so well that most countries want to learn and emulate them.

For more Information on the Venture Check Out  http://www.betterplace.com/  & Shai Aggasi’s Blog  http://shaiagassi.typepad.com/ you can also search for videos on youtube.com

 

Siddharth & Neeraj

(Image Source: Betterplace.com )

 

YOUR VIEWS MATTER - But Mode to Express Them Also Matter

Alright everybody - this is a picture of a feedback collection box that I saw near Spencer's. We all have seen lots of similar boxes kept  at various places in offices, retail stores, colleges (ya mine had that!!)...

These could be of different names....Some call it Feedback boxes, Idea boxes, Suggestion boxes, etc, but the sole purpose of all these is to get a response from  people (consumer, employee, etc).

 OK we are in democratic country and everyone can  express & must express themselves.                  But I wonder how many of us really do give feedback or have dropped our suggestions, feedbacks, ideas in these boxes even if we want to.

mmm.... Why is it....time constraint???

I think the problem lies in the fact that the way in which feedback is obtained seems to cumbersome (considering there are other lazy people like me). I mean even If I have to give a feedback, i find it way to cumbersome to write & drop.

So (Mr. LAZy what do you suggest)

I guess there has to be a technique through which

 1. People are excited to give feedback

2. People are given Incentives for their feedback

3. Others can comment on their feedback & discuss

and

(let me scratch my head more...)

4. People can actually see how their feedback are being actually taken by companies & implemented 

 

Some of the Innovation in feedback channel that have clicked are Starbucks mystarbucksidea.com, IBM JAM’s.

I am not saying that websites are the only channel through which people like to give feedback but can we take the same convenience & fun of that channel & implement in normal real life scenario.

Consider this Everybody likes to be heard & often suggestions are free which you & your company can take & improve at the same time making the person who gave suggestions feel great thus improving morale, trust , loyalty!!.

 Till Next time

Take care

Express Yourself

 

Neeraj 

Sub- Prime & Mortgage bonds: What went wrong with these Innovative Instruments ??

Bear sterns, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers &  AIG just being saved from going bankrupt.

Why is it so and why there is so much news about Sub Prime crisis for couple of months now.

Well to start with I decided to understand from the very basic of what is causing trouble to America & World’s financial sector.

 

Sub prime crisis is related to home loan default. Well to start with, let’s see how a person got a loan in America previously. As you can see from the diagram below, the Bank after doing Home & income check used to assign loan to borrower. The borrower used to repay in installments. The banks used to finance other lending through repayments & deposits they got from borrowers.

 

Now the problem with this model was that Loans were given to people who had relatively good credit record and strong documentation of Income. The other thing was that the banks were also not able to provide loans to new borrowers as they used deposits from its existing customers to give fresh loans.

 

So we had two problems

- Loan given to people with strong creditworthiness

- Limited amount to finance new loans

 

In-order to address these issues some concepts were introduced:

1. Sub- prime loans

2. Mortgage Bond

 

Sub prime lending: It refers to lending to borrowers with not too strong credit histories and documentation of Income. These were the borrowers who were shunned away from Prime lenders like government sponsored Freddie Mac.

 

Mortgage Bonds: Now mortgage bonds were used as an instrument to raise money from bond market which was used by banks to finance loans to new borrowers.

  

 So what do we have here

 1^st,  the problem of giving loans to only selected borrowers (those with good creditworthiness) was dealt by sub prime lending. This opened up a whole new market and brought in new customer group (those with relatively low creditworthiness- People at Bottom of pyramid if we can say).

  2^nd, Now In order to fund loans for these new borrowers,  the mortgage bonds were used.  

 It seems that the banking industry had innovated with these instruments and added new customers to its portfolio. 

 The wave of sub prime loans was so high that for many years cities like Cleveland was termed as Sub prime capital of America. By 2005 one in five mortgages were sub-prime. As a result housing prices across America increased rapidly.

 

SO WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM?

 

The problem was increase in interest rates to be paid by borrowers on their loans taken.

According to the rule the new sub prime mortgages were fixed for 2 years and after that would become higher & dependent according to FED reserve rates.

 

The FED increased the interest rates(around 17 times) which raised the cost. As a result people were not able to pay which led to increase in foreclosures. There was a wave of repossessions by Banks acting on behalf of bond holders. This resulted in huge supply of houses due to which the housing prices dropped significantly.

As a result the related industries like White goods, Construction, etc saw a drop in demand. Overall which resulted in economy going into recession.

 

Now the Big question here is that no doubt Sub prime and mortgage bonds were innovative instruments which were successful in providing people who didn't had strong creditworthiness and stable income for a house, but is it because ecosystem in which they existed were not supporting them properly, led these innovative instruments of growth and prosperity  turn into instruments of destruction ??

 SO in short Is it that Innovation cannot happen as a standalone thing rather the ecosystem in which it happens should support it. 

You decide !!

 

Neeraj with Inputs from Rohan S.

(Image Source: BBC news, zimbio.com)

20 Irresistible Gadgets You would love to own

FUNDOO STUFF

HI guys

CreativeCloseup.com has a list of 20 irrestible Gadgets you would like to have.

From toaster printer(photo), Disc printer to Latte decorating machine. 

Check them at 

http://www.creativecloseup.com/20-irresistible-gadgets-youd-love-to-own

Imagination at its Best 

Thanks 

Neeraj 

 

Post Its - Fundoo Stuff

FUNDOO STUFF- This is a new section where we will showcase video links, photos, etc regarding any creative stuff noticed .

hi there 

A colleague forwarded this video link of a Spectacular Sticky- Note Experiment. 

Check out what these guys have done with simple post its.

Amazing

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1rZqw5bXb4

You Tube link

http://vimeo.com/1700732?pg=embed&sec=1700732

Hi defination Video on Vimeo

Neeraj

 

Innovative way to donate for a social cause

Hi Guys

A friend of mine suggested this great site 

http://helpbihar.in/

which is based on the concept of helping Victims of flood in Bihar. 

Now the site does not ask the user to donate money, Rather it has some questions which the user has to answer and for each correct answer a biscuit, candle or soap will be donated by partenering sponsor (godrej, Chevrolet,etc). 

The initiative is by Plan India- an organisation working 'With & for' children & communities.

Check out 

http://helpbihar.in/   for this unique concept. Ask people to be part of this social cause

For Information about Plan India

http://www.planindia.org/

Thanks 

Neeraj

( Image Source  :http://www.planindia.org/about.aspx) 

Context is Crucial

Ever wondered, why dish washers failed in India? And why top loading washing machines were suddenly popular in Punjab? The answer lies in the selection of context in either case. Dish washers don’t match Indian lifestyle. Middle class and lower middle class Indians will not like to spend on an expensive product which consumes lot of detergent and electricity.


Rich Indians can afford a home help who can do the cleaning for them. Thus the product doesn’t find a space in their life and hence failed. Where as use of washing machine to churn lassi and curd is an example of customer innovation where they discovered an equally appropriate context for the washing machine and hence triggered a new change. Now there are people in Punjab who sell the lassi making version of washing machine at a friction of its cost.

Introducing a product or service in an appropriate context is very crucial. Especially in India where there is so much diversity and change in customer behaviour moving from city to city one needs to set the context right. In the previous article where Neeraj is talking about free gifts being used to attract customers is another example of getting right context. There are few behavioural contexts around customer buying behaviour which have a direct impact on performance of a product or service in the market. Giving free gifts is capturing the human tendency to always look for an incentive whether it is ‘Sale’ or ‘Free gift’ or ‘20% extra’. But one has to be careful as the idea of ‘Free gift’ might entice a few customers and at the same time might put few others in doubt –“why are they giving a free gift? May be the product is not that good?” So a company needs to careful while contextualizing a particular target audience.
Few other phenomena are ‘Competition’, ‘Exclusivity’ or ‘Personalization’.


Onida TV’s marketing strategy capitalized on the feeling of competition in human beings; where as I-Pod succeeded because of exclusivity Inappropriate context is the reason why Kellogg’s breakfast products took more than a decade to find its way in to the Indian Kitchens and appropriate context helped Nokia mobile phone succeeded very rapidly. Another good example is of ‘Kaya’ chain of skin clinics which was not doing well when initially launched. The reason nehind their failure was that they started as a clinic for people with problem skin. If I will ask you how many around you have a problem skin or how many people consider they have a problem skin. Your answer will be 1 or 2 out of every hundred. Now when Kaya shifted there positioning from problem to “Enhanced skin”, that was when they succeeded and are now an asp rational experience amongst customers. With the idea of enhanced skin every person converted to their target audience where with problem skin it was merely 1-2 %. The reason why “Teach India” is successful because they Indianised “Teach for America” and same goes for ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ inspired from ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ But one should not forget the failure like ‘Kamjor kadi kaun’ inspired from ‘The Weakest Link’ and innumerable Bollywood films inspired from Hollywood movies.
All these examples show how versatile Indian market is and why lot of contextualization is required while making successful businesses in India. With booming economy the stage is all set for many companies to tap Indian potential but they need to understand the dynamic context of Indians and Indian mindset…

FREE PRIZE INSIDE

Hi  Guys

Its been long since I have not posted anything. So what i was busy doing .Well just got my hands on SETH GODIN"S FREE PRIZE INSIDE.

To start with, this is based on Soft INNOVATION.

 

SOFT INNOVATION --- WHAT'S THAT (come on don’t throw another JARGON??)

 

Well if you look at Innovation people normally think innovation to be a process which includes huge planning, massive investment, huge R&D efforts to find that unique IDEA that your competitors cannot even dream of……………

 

Well One thing is that in this fast (& i really mean fast) changing world, do we the time to invest, if not billion but millions  into ideas, have years of R&D efforts & still not sure about the probability of getting success. Don’t get me wrong---- companies like heavy engineering, IT, etc employing great scientists & professionals do need that kind of effort for national prosperity but other companies specially those which are in service areas....how can they innovate FAST & with little money to spend.

 

WELL, they can do that by giving FREE PRIZES as mentioned by SETH GODIN in this book.

Free Prize according to book refers to thing which makes the product remarkable & induces the customers to buy your product. Why do you think calcium Sandoz comes in bottle that looks like dog, why do u think kellogs has choclate cornflakes in shapes of PLANET & STARS

or even better why do you think Mc.D happy meal offers toys. The reason is that these soft innovation make these products remarkable, they induce their Target customers to buy them and more importantly they make these products stand out from rest & create a buzz.

The book discusses that we should make efforts to make our products, services, our careers remarkable by offering many of these free prizes.

The book also has sections on how to SELL your Ideas & has tricks that can be used that can be used to sell the ideas. After all many people may have great ideas but normally when they tell these to their managers they are turned down and thus the whole creativity goes down the drain and the individual looses hope.

The book also has a motivational element to it by forcing the reader to take initiatives.

 

Book also give some Ideas on creating these free prizes.

 

Overall enjoyed reading this book. Teaches you a lot and takes a different perspective on Innovation which is worth noticing.

 

Till next time

Post in how you are making your Job, product, service or Yourself Remarkable

Bye

Neeraj

(image source: images.barnesandnoble.com)

Article Published

Hi guys
Our article has been published on real innovation.com, a weekely email newsletter on innovation read by managers & business professionals in top corporations around the world.
Link to the article is:
http://www.realinnovation.com/content/c080825a.asp

Keep reading & post your comments or articles

Neeraj

Solving Problems, Discovering & Selling Ideas Using Pictures

The Back Of the Napkin

Excellent book for learning how to Solve problems, discover & Sell Ideas using Pictures

They Say a Picture is worth Thousand words. After reading this book(The Back of the Napkin- by Dan Roam), I truly believe a picture is worth thousand words and should be extensively used in corporate boardrooms for explaining everything instead of those boring bulleted power point presentations.
The book gives a methodology regarding how we can solve problems, discover new ideas & sell these using just pictures.
To give you a Jist of the book, the book starts with describing four steps of visual thinking process which are LOOK, SEE, IMAGINE & SHOW.
LOOK means collecting & screening of Information, SEEING means analyzing the information, IMAGINING means imagining ways in which information/ideas to be shared can be, SHOW means displaying the information.
Inorder to analyze/solve the problem efficiently, The author has given Important tool- the 6W's of seeing which include Who/what, How much, Where, when, how & why. Using this tool one looks at any problem from WHO/WHAT, HOW, WHEN, HOW MUCH, WHERE & WHY angle and thus can solve any problem.The author has given examples of how to use this tool efficiently using pictures.
After look & see section, the next section is Imagine which includes one more tool, SQVID which stands for Simplicity, Quality, Visual, Individual & Delta. With the help of this tool one learns to imagine ways to represent ideas depending upon the Target audience he/she is dealing with. This tool works as a graphic equalizer to help visually displaying ideas based on TG which may be number crunchers MBA's or imaginative designers.
But whenever one is solving problem or giving Idea, how much detail pictures should be used and whether they should be give qualitative or quantitative information. Well Combining both tools mentioned above the author gives a codex which helps to know what kind of pictures to select and what is the nature of information to be shown using pictures (Simple/elaborate, Qualitative/Quantitative, Vision/Execution, etc)
In the last section, the author informs about selling ideas using pictures.
By solving real life business problem and dozens of example along with which pictures to be used, this is an excellent book for managers as well as designers who wants to Simplify the whole process of solving problems, discovering & selling Ideas using Pictures.

Till next time

Keep Imagining

NeErAj

image source: www.idea-sandbox.com/.../back_of_napkin_book.jpg

Connect with people,Seek Insight, Always Innovate

Ok everybody,
I got this photo of a book cover published by Elephant Design. Interesting points mentioned there:

Connect with people
Seek insight
Always innovate

I guess these three lines sums it up all when one needs to innovate.

Connect with people: Business should connect with people. One of the ways to do that is Co-Creating. Manish made an Interesting point in the last article which mentions Co-Creation with customers. I guess companies connecting with people and involving them into the pdt./service developing processes have a distinct advantage of not only knowing what customers want but also generating sense of loyalty from customers and developing trust. Intangibles like Trust, Loyalty, admire, etc., are the only things left which are helping companies charge extra premium for their product/services without consumers sulking. Eg: Starbucks charges around $4 for a normal cup of coffee but consumers are mad about Starbucks cause it is able to connect with its consumers who ultimately turn into PR agents propoganding about brand.
Within Indian consumers how many companies/brands/products do we really connect with and are willing to pay extra for them. Are we extreme loyal to any company/brand/product.
I guess there is a huge opportunity for Indian companies to connect with people and create extraordinary products which consumers feel attached to.
The other thing is about CEO....i m not sure, but do we have CEO's connecting with people, like Richard Branson does.........I was watching Bosses day out and head of Dabur, Amit burman during the show hopped on to a bike as a pillion out of his luxury car & went to a distributor in a busy market area. I guess more CEO's needs to be willing to get his/her hands dirty and connect with real people.

SEEK INSIGHT: The other step in path to innovation is one's ability to Seek Insight. Companies, I guess are too much focused on quantitative studies but I guess there has to be an element of qualitative aspect involved. Studies like behavioral patterns, Influencers, psychological mindset, etc should be there. Seeking Insight as to what students expects from educational institutes, what do shopper's do when they enter mall(guys at Pantaloons have already cracked this and have created a business), why do we have a congestion on roads, etc. In today's scenario whichever company is able to get insight and convert it into business model creates a new market & expands.

Always Innovate : We cannot argue that companies cannot survive just by fixing what they have created but have to keep on creating something every now and then. Innovation is not easy but I guess the above points can ease the process & make it enjoyable too.

So till next time
Keep Innovating
Neeraj

Outside Innovation - Best Mantra for Innovation

“Creating a customer” is the sole purpose of any business that exists globally. Customer and technology are evolving fast and companies are facing an environment of accelerated consolidation in current competitive landscape. Given, rising customer expectation, high pace of innovation, and emergence of new business models, main challenge for companies is strengthening their core business while rapidly scaling their new growth platforms, and developing new operational and organizational strengths for future success. The battle to stay alive in the attention of customers is becoming brutal with every passing day. In this process of evolution, companies need to assess what elements of their current offering need to strengthen and which need to depart. Their have been several ways but the latest addition to it is “Outside Innovation”; a book by Patricia Seybold, who defines outside Innovation as the process of co-designing with involvement of customer.

Though innovation has been always customer centric but today it is “Customer-Made” as well.

Today companies are leaving the whole idea of innovating there businesses to customer directly. Companies are looking forward to create Customer –centric culture that leads to Customer-Led innovation, Customer –Experience transformation and most importantly Customer prioritized Business/IT roadmaps, explains Patricia in her book. So, for instance the Harley Davidson example given below in an article on this blog is an example of Customer – Experience Transformation. The example shows how company is using customer liking of visiting museums to understand their liking and behaviour.

The Indian example of mobile banking is another good example where a bank is involving customer s in an area to define a new business road map for them. If the model of mobile banking tried by EKO India financial services succeeds with their smaller test group, they can then implement it nationally else drop it.

Retail industry is one of the booming industries in India and driving a lot on innovation driven by customer. Retail industry especially Pantaloon retail India Limited effectively benefits by understanding roles taken by customer. Pantaloon is testing a prototype of a convenience store called Big Bazaar Best Deals in Mumbai’s Kandivali suburb. If the pilot programme succeeds, it plans to open such stores nationwide. The store is based on customer insight that ‘people run for best deals’ available in stores. Thus the store will offer only best deals to the customers. If they effectively play around with five customer roles defined by Patricia Seybold in her book then the store can really succeed in very short span.

The idea is to engage so well with lead customers i.e. those who shop at the store that they become ‘Consultants’ to the store, ‘Guide’ people to benefit most from the store and thus act as ‘Contributor’ to sales and work as ‘Promoter’ of the store. Retailers have now started engaging with lead customers and they even reward them for providing these insights.

The diagram, by Patricia in her book, below defines exactly where to capture customer insights in the whole process of customer innovation.

The idea of Co-creation with customers has been very effectively used by internet websites and open source softwares. A classic example is Mozilla Fire fox which keeps updating their product with the help of plugins and add ons designed not only by customer feedback but designed by customer themselves.

There are many such success stories and the scope of creating such success stories is infinite; if Indian companies work with customers they can definitely succeed in this highly competitive environment with very dynamic Indian customer.