Prahalad then told the stunned audience that the discussions on losing market share can wait, as this issue was more urgent. He then divided the team into two groups and asked them to come up with actionable solutions to the crisis. A couple of hours later, both the groups came up with radical restructuring suggestions. At the end of it all, the professor said he had made the article up. |
This ability to shake you out of your comfort zone through breakthrough thinking has perhaps made Prahalad one of the most innovative management thinkers of all times. So when he writes, the world sits up and listens. After all, he was the one who coined the term "core competence" way back in 1989.
The first feeling while reading Prahalad's latest offering "" The New Age of Innovation (co-written with M S Krishnan) "" is to marvel at his consistent ability to articulate leading-edge ideas. That was also the main reason for the stupendous success of his earlier books like Competing for the Future, The Future of Competition and The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid.
The New Age of Innovation, which will be launched in India today "" a month ahead of its distribution in the US "" is much more than just a scholarly, well-researched presentation and easily passes what Prahalad himself calls the managerial test. For, all the ideas presented in the book are actionable.
The thesis of the book is that the future of business is this: N = 1; R = G. Companies will need to interact with their customers so closely that they actually "co-create" value with them on an individual basis (N = 1). At the same time, companies will resource the goods and services needed to develop new offerings from anywhere in the world (R =G), not for exporting jobs but for "importing competitiveness".
The book makes a riveting read as it offers some striking examples of such new-age innovations in progress. Take for example, iGoogle. While Google provides the platform, individual customers decide how to use it (personalise it) to suit their particular needs "" that is, for fun or learning. So too is skin care personalised by the Ponds Institute at Unilever.
The examples (a large number of Indian companies figure in them) show a new paradigm for business in the 21st century, which is personalised globalisation. This means even if a company is dealing with a hundred million consumers, each manager must focus on one consumer experience at a time.
Sounds impossible? The New Age of Innovation tells you why it is not. The authors say the industrial system, which has been morphing for some time, may have already reached an inflection point. Ubiquitous connectivity (e.g. cell phones and PCs), digitisation, convergence of technology and industry boundaries (e.g. consumer electronics, computing, communications), and the emergence of social networks have collectively put a turbo charge on this transformation that is affecting all industries.
This transformation has already changed the way firms create value and it will only accelerate.
The other main highlight of the book is its stress on a technical architecture for innovation that can connect business processes and analytics to data and applications. There are many examples how great companies have done this.
Consider the case of ING, a global financial services company, whose 5,000 agents worldwide had to wait 10 days for a policy to be processed and approved. ING's internal business processes were embedded in legacy IT systems that were not integrated, and it was difficult to change these processes. To address the problem, the company worked with Unisys to build a system that has allowed ING to bring down the processing time from 10 days to 30 seconds!
Some readers may find the language and presentation a bit too daunting, but take your time to absorb it carefully. For, The New Age of Innovation is sure to spark a global conversation on technology and business, and you would surely want to be a part of it.
THE NEW AGE OF INNOVATION
CK Prahalad & MS Krishnan
McGraw Hill
Rs 695, 278 pages
