Innovation Thy Name
Suresh Perugu
Operations lead delivering quality work for customers. Grooming and developing High Performing teams. Being a coach and mentor for many of our alumni both from work & Education. Managing GoI relationships.
Picture from goggle images courtesy www.foodmanufacture.co.uk
Face Book used right way is next best thing of loads of information. I saw a small video on “Breakthrough Innovations of 2015” on FB. I went to check authenticity and found the list is from MIT (https://www.technologyreview.com/lists/technologies/2015/). If you read the top 10 list: Magic Leap, Nano-Architecture, Car to car Communication, Project Loon, Liquid Biopsy, Mega scale Desalination, Apple Pay, Brain Organoids, Supercharged Photosynthesis, and internet of DNA. I saw a small video of these and also read about them. This is true innovation as I feel the word innovation is a misused and abused word that I can think of.
I will share a couple of examples why I think Innovation is a misused and abused word by people. When cloud computing was just around the corner and a couple of players like Amazon and VMWare were ahead of the game, there was a US leadership team visit to our company. One Development Manager put up a cloud web page as Innovation. Every one is the room were going gaga over that while fresh from US, I was thinking to myself what is innovation in this. Of course the guy got promotion and moved to US in same company, but the point is Innovation is abused in this case, as per my standard.
Day today I see a lot of start-ups in last one year when I attend any event in Hyderabad. Most of them are in retail on line or food delivery and some what IT related. I heard many that have no clear idea of what they are trying to solve and I feel many are wantrepreneurs (wanna be entrepreneurs- very happy to see a word coined by a friend long time back in t-Hub). I wish and hope at least some of these 10 key areas of breakthrough and related innovations come to t-Hub soon. Then we can expect a next whatsapp or anything coming out of Hyderabad or India. With NALSAR, ISB, IITH and IITH as main backers of t-Hub, the CEO and COO will decide to bring right people into t-hub to bring value to the catalyst t-Hub that are working in real breakthrough technologies from various industries: Bio, Agri, manufacturing, hardware etc than simple IT based.
My request to all the so called “eco-system builders” in any city is:
- Don’t abuse word Innovation else Einstein might come back crying. Don’t encourage start-up people that come with bad ideas that are copycat types or not really an innovation – tell them openly without hesitation that their idea has no innovation. You are doing them a favour. You don’t need a cult to be an eco-system builder but you need to foster growth.
- Send anyone thinking of innovative ways to right places to look for information or examples. We have great research institutes and talent pool, guide them right. Don’t stop them as you do not understand what they are building but accept you do not understand that and send them to right people or ask for help where you can point them.
- True innovators are amongst us; some were there at Innofest that happened recently in t-Hub. Encourage them. Support them to get into global markets and lead them to reach top of the world.
- Finally foster and grow open thinking in your own kids; listen to their thoughts as we could get our next big thing from youngsters.
Director Key Accounts (APAC) at Coursera | Ex-Entrepreneur | Ex-Google | Alumnus IIM
9 年Good one.....I believe innovation can be forced. Some of the best inventions happened when there was no choice.....in the present startup forums we should encourage interaction, debate.....create a few avenues for conflict and arguments all within the realms of intellect and logic. The only missing element right now is open communication for world class innovation to hit the broader channels available.
Entrepreneur, Startup Mentor, IT Business & Technology Leader, Digital Transformation Leader, Edupreneur, Keynote Speaker, Adjunct Professor
9 年Nice article. I will agree with you.
Startup Mentor, Incubator setup, helping startups succeed, coaching entrepreneurs and future leaders, teaches entrepreneurship and design thinking
9 年Very true Suresh! The trend seems to be more of value aggregation rather than value creation. While the aggregation creates some value in its own way, people tend to forget that someone needs to create the base value which can then be aggregated.