Focus on R&D key to success: Expert

The key for success of an organisation lies in its constant focus on research and development efforts coupled with its adaptability to the changing environment, taking into account customer satisfaction.

Addressing a seminar on 'Challenges of Organisational Transformation', organised by the Great Lakes Institute of Management (GLIM), Jitendra V Singh, a management professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said that an organisation's success lies in tracking the customer-trends and catering to their needs. In order to succeed, corporates should view business as a customer-satisfying process and not a goods selling process.

They have to keep a regular track on the changing demands from the customers, he added.

Answering a query on the need for frequent changes in strategic planning of companies, Singh said, "Firms must adapt themselves to the changing demands or else decline and eventually die."

He cited the examples of the US-based auto manufacturers Nummi and Saturn, that failed to understand the changes in the business environment and 'eventually lost'.

Elaborating on this, he said that firms typically change too little or too much in the wrong direction, resulting in a gap between where the firm is and where it ought to be. The bigger the gap, the stronger the possibility for the end of the firm.

"But in the case of non market organisations such as religious missionaries, there is much lower pressure to change and adapt. This may result in a loss of value in the society," he said.

Speaking on the occasion, Bala V Balachandran, founder of GLIM, said that firms should work to implement better services.