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Driver for Adoption of an Innovation: Technology or Market?

  
  
  
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What is the driver for new innovations? Does technology drive new innovations or does the Market dictate need for new innovation? 

In many ways we are speaking about the two sides of a coin. So the question is, what is the coin made of? (sorry to get too philosophical, but allow me to please).

Technology is something that gets created by technologists because:
1) It is Human Nature to Create and Solve - the passion and desire to solve something far greater then one’s self (Human Spirit as the driver). There are many who simply create because they want to serve. There is nothing in it for them, but to experiment and create.

2) Motivated by raw Discovery and Inquiry – just to see what can happen (Academic Personal Brand as the driver – in most cases). Of course academia is far removed in many cases so piles of patents/technologies are created without a home for applications. 

3) Marketers ‘tells’ the technologist what the market demands are and they go off and innovate (Market Driven). Of course we know how often the product actually generates the indented impact – not very good (and both the marketer and the technologist gets ‘restructured’…lol). 

4) As the recent new Hollywood movie “Wall Street” depicts and as the Mortgage Crises occurred here in USA, we also see Financial Performance as the driver for new innovation at the cost of societal damage (Greed as the driver) 

5) I also think technologist stay busy because of fear. Either they or someone else in their organization is fearful of losing to competition, losing their job, losing their reputation or losing their personal belongings. (Fear Driven) 

I believe that Market Driven has two definitions: 1) There is an unmet Market need in the current market and 2) There is a new market being developed that is un-harvested. 

If we assume the Fortune 1000s or Global 2000s as the context, I think that most innovation is driven (funding) by the “Current Market Conditions” and the “Adjacent(near future) Market Conditions” of those markets.

-Jatin

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Part-4: For CEOs, what are the FOUR critical innovation barriers that must be addressed?(Part 4 of 4)

  
  
  
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In this four part series, I mentioned that every CEO and business executives who intends to lead innovation as a strategic agenda will need to address four critical barriers to innovation. 

First barrier is the mindset to harvest ideas and manage those ideas as Venture Capitalists does not exist, second barrier is the inability to recognize how to align the abundance of resources available to large organizations for investment in innovation, the third barrier is to recognize the sheer size of the human capital assets that are under-utilized and disengaged from an organization’s creative capacity. The opportunity for most organizations is to dedicate talented “New Game Teams”, focused on harvesting the creative ideas and leadership competencies, to build new top-line growth capacity. 

The fourth and final barrier relates to the broad product and delivery capabilities that large-scale organizations possess. 

For example, since the mid-1980’s in the financial services industry, the typical company has gone from handful of delivery channels (Branches, Relationship Managers) to literally 15-20 channels (Branches, Direct Mail, Internet, National Sales Force, Business ATMs, Corporate Cards, Affinity Marketing, Wireless, etc.); all the while expanding its product offerings by ten-fold.  “Anytime, Anywhere” banking has become the price of entry across the industry as providers strive to meet the need of large and diverse customer bases. 

This has created a huge challenge, since those dedicated assets to serve the wide variety of customers are not fully leveraged for new innovation. The complexity of providing the right product to the right customer through the right delivery channel in real-time – in a way that doesn’t destroy the economics of the company – becomes a monumental challenge with each new innovation.  Add to this, the overwhelming issue of tying the employment brand to the product brand in the marketplace and the various components of talent acquisition. 

The bottom line: the accomplishment of end-to-end alignment between products, channels, and talent acquisition (employment offers) is the single largest challenge facing large companies today. The best organizations that can create smaller more nimble organizations while retaining to leverage strength of larger institution will be in the best position to out-compete in the future, enter emerging markets quickly, and adjust to external fast-pace factors. 

For complete details, please download full 23 page whitepaper on “Mastering Innovation –  Roadmap to Sustainable Value Creation by Mr. Jatin DeSai

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Part-3: For CEOs, what are the FOUR critical innovation barriers that must be addressed?(Part 3 of 4)

  
  
  
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In my last post, I mentioned that every CEO and business executives who intends to lead innovation as a strategic agenda will need to address four critical barriers to innovation.

First barrier is the mindset to harvest ideas and manage those ideas as Venture Capitalists does not exist. This requires demonstrated confidence to consciously fail, experiment often, and win occasionally. Goal is to do more of it, so you can out-compete the markets. 

Second barrier I mentioned in the previous post was the inability to recognize how to align the abundance of resources available to large organizations for investment in innovation. Smaller and less nimble competition cannot, physically, out-compete you if you can leverage the resources you have.  This is the primary reason for new entrants who win big against existing mature businesses; example: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Skype, etc. 

The third barrier is to recognize the sheer size of the human capital assets that are under-utilized and disengaged from an organization’s creative capacity.  The opportunity for most organizations is to dedicate talented “New Game Teams”, focused on harvesting the creative ideas and leadership competencies, to build new top-line growth capacity.  Proctor and Gamble’s global research and development organization back in 2008, employed over 7,500 scientists; GE used to train 10,000 managers every year and performed over 5,000 detail performance reviews of its senior-most employees; and Cisco increased its engineering workforce by 300% since 2000 to 2008. 

The bottom line: developing a holistic and integrated human capital strategy for innovation is critical so it promotes “value creators” and rewards them to continue to create value while staying in workable compensation systems. Remember, innovation comes from ideas, ideas come from engaged employees, partners, and suppliers. 

For complete details, please download full 23 page whitepaper on “Mastering Innovation –  Roadmap to Sustainable Value Creation by Mr. Jatin DeSai

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