Innovation’s Holy grail

This article brought up my original excitement for doing this masters course. I definitely believe there is great need to think differently, so many large corporations are even using this as their main goal, for example we are seeing it in brand campaigns more and more. Apple, would be the most obvious example to use here. This article did remind me of the desperate need for a new ways of thinking.

Affordability and sustain ability are replacing premium pricing and abundance as innovation’s drivers, but few executives know how to cope with the shift. Companies must make their offerings accessible to a greater number of people by selling them cheaply and must develop more products and services with fewer resources.

Westerners are struggling to tackle this challenge, but some enterprises in developing countries, particularly in

India, are showing the way by practicing three types of “Gandhian innovation”:

• disrupting business models

• modifying organizational capabilities

• creating or sourcing new capabilities

Companies anywhere in the world can follow suit by striving for inclusive growth, establishing a clear vision, setting stretch targets, exercising entrepreneurial creativity within constraints, and focusing on people, not just profits or shareholder wealth.

From my point of view, I have recently been noticing a great need for new thinking. Internally and externally, I feel that the only way to solve such complex issues is with a new way of life, thinking or differently ordered way of our current thought.

I think the best part about this reading was actually making the connection between business and creativity and seeing what a huge difference it makes. I had always seen creativity and lateral thinking only suited towards art and design, this article shows that they are connected, which is very inspiring to see.

We must learn to innovate even when faced with constraints. Gandhian innovators start by accepting that there are constraints that won’t go away.

This has been coming up more and more, especially in solving user interface problems in software development, it is all about innovating within a very narrow space.

I have understood that innovation is a practise and that you have to constantly work at it to evolve entities further and further. Innovation and creativity are two forces which one has to learn how to work with and apply to everyday tasks and thoughts.