Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish! That is the mantra of most innovators – consciously or otherwise. Steve Jobs, the ex-CEO and co-founder of Apple Inc. certainly knew it and practised it throughout his corporate life.

Author: Zaf Gandhi, Managing Consultant & Partner

In today’s hyper-dynamic business environment most organisations – private and public – are faced with huge challenges and multiple waves of change. Yet many of these organisations often overlook the fundamental aspects of their operations and organisational DNA, preferring to stick to the usual set of measures around re-organisation, downsizing, etc. By not fully harnessing the innovators within their organisations they could be missing out on significant commercial opportunities for growth and new ventures.

Harnessing the Innovation Potential

Time and again, we have seen that a single individual or a small team of people with the optimum chemistry, innovation potential, and the right amount of nurturing or support from their senior management often turn the tide of fortune for their companies, colleagues and sometimes even their countries.

The most recent case in point would be the Nobel Prize winner – Dr Daniel Shechtman – who finally succeeded against all odds and lack of support (even from his own manager and peers) to his ideas in scientifically proving his breakthrough discovery of quasicrystals, almost 30 years after his initial observation.

Innovation vs. R&D + Marketing

Many companies associate innovation with research and development (R&D). In fact, while innovation (and the process of innovation) can be either a by-product or instigator for R&D, it is NOT the same as R&D. One of the key aspect of innovation is the people – the innovators – themselves, and not the communication platform, software solution, test rigs, infrastructure, tools or the reward schemes many companies offer. These are mere facilitators, but not the executors or sowers of innovation.

Although a company’s workforce is traditionally organised around managerial, technical and administrative disciplines, very few actually formally recognise innovation as a discipline in its own right.

And yet this is the rare breed of an organisation’s DNA that can often synergise and synthesise between multiple disciplines and industry sectors, and help attain the prerequisite level of cross-over between business, operational and technical domains.

Such individuals are often also able to combine their unique skill-set to leverage their peers and colleagues, and utilise operational analytics (insights) together with predictive analytics (quasi-foresight †). Hence, they are able to create the catalysis and essence for innovation to rapidly flourish in an organisation.

Many companies continue to rely on their marketing departments to get a sense of the customer pulse or the market ebb. Though they (marketing) too have an important role to play, in the words of late Steve Jobs: "You can't just ask customers what they want and then try to give that to them. By the time you get it built, they'll want something new."

Innovating your Success

Therefore, the message for CEOs and their organisations looking to stay relevant and thrive in the 21st century is simple, yet blunt: if you can’t grow your own innovators, borrow or hire them, before your competitors at home and abroad do.

† The term quasi-foresight was originally coined by Zaf Gandhi to delineate the process by which organisations could leverage current and historical data pertaining to their own organisation and industry (or a given benchmark industry sector), and utilise mathematical models and computer-based neural networks to predict relevant future outcomes or prescriptive actions.



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