Creating culture of innovation, timely execution

Innovation management, the system of managing the thoughts-to-market process is the latest mantra in corporate circles. Companies big and small, are focusing on innovation to create long-term value for customers.

However, innovation is not just about ideas; it's about converting them into tangible benefits.

It's history that ideas pop out spontaneously. Today, using specific management techniques, such ideas can also be stimulated by the goals of the organisation or by studying situational needs. Naturally, there are a number of schools of thought on innovation management.

IBM's innovation equation is all about putting together market insights and technology know-how""applying technology to business needs and creating an elixir for the challenges facing the organisation.

An interesting example would be the use of Global Positioning System by car insurance companies to track driving skills. This helps them classify their risk category and assess the right insurance premium.

At Cognizant, for example, we follow the equation: innovation = idea + implementation + benefits where absence of any one of these entities in the equation will make innovation redundant.

Likewise, we firmly believe that anyone can generate ideas and in fact, our customers are our biggest source of continually-flowing ideas.

We have also created an "innovation quadrant" to qualify the ideas that need to be pursued. If the X-axis has current and future technologies and Y-axis current and future customer requirements, all our efforts are focused on the top quadrant""of future technologies, deployed to cater to future customer requirements.

Most organisations equate innovation with the dollar-spends in R&D. However, I believe it is important to create a culture of innovation within the system. Two key aspects that create this culture "" strong tolerance for failure and recognising and rewarding individuals.

One should create an ecosystem that's not fail safe but one where it's safe to fail. Further, one has to have a different set of reward and recognition mechanisms for innovation""it's critical to focus on motivating right-brained people from diverse backgrounds to innovate, within a left-brained environment.

The road to innovation is not paved with gold; but a well-thought out plan with timed execution excellence can effectively chart the growth trajectory.

(The author is Vice-Chairman, Nasscom and Vice-Chairman, Cognizant)