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Continued from Pg 1... 

 

Q: This is fascinating. We need to hear more?

 

A: Absolutely, when I talk about that to mid-level managers, to senior managers, to business owners, CEOs, small companies or big - it's a universal thing that technology, the change is coming so fast, it is wonderful. But unless you set some boundaries you are going to burnout and this is an area where you need your creativity to be at maximum, at peak, at excellence all the time.

 

Q: You recommend reading a lot. It sounds like the oldest rule in the book?

 

A: Yes, absolutely. Reading good materials like biographies of people who you admire, entrepreneurial success, comebacks ? people who fail come back an succeed ? those are the things that inspire me and get my creativity juice flowing. I start jumping up when I am reading something like this. I make notes and start working on my self. I take that energy and transfer it to my audiences and to the people that I am working for. Everybody is going to have a different way of regenerating and keeping their juices flowing. I know you get to talk to some of the top executives from all over the world and especially from here in India and that keeps your creative fires at peak level. But for all it is going to be different. What I want to suggest and recommend to people is that you got to tune into your creativity. This is an era of creativity and innovation and it starts with us inside.

 

Q: Do you want to give us 5-6-10 tips, or give it to people in small capsules, or in mantras from a guru?

 

A: I also recommend that there is a blinding flash of the obvious. Try downloading your ideas and getting them down on paper instead of trying to remember. When you see two people in a hallway or corridor they are working a common problem or a common opportunity. They start chatting about and somebody comes up with some idea and they start chuckling and say hey, 'That's my work.' Then, they go their merry ways and nobody has written it down. Well as an innovation coach, I am saying wait a minute here. Ideas are like butterflies, they flutter away. If we say ideas are the assets of companies, you cannot allow that. You can start a revolution in your team, in your company, and in your organization simply by getting people to pay attention when they have an idea.

 

Q: You need to be brave, isn't it? You can't be risk averse if you want to innovate as an individual?

 

A: That's right. Brave is a good word. We need to live our lives from the point of bravery without taking foolish risks but speaking our truth. I love the title of a book by Mahatma Gandhi where he said, Experiments in Truth. So often in organizations we sell out and we don't speak the truth. There is this type of person whom I call the maverick personality and they are so essential and valuable in an organization.

 

It took the genius of a maverick Pat Farrah, co-founder of Atlanta-based The Home Depot, to propel a mediocre warehouse to the second largest home improvement retail chain in the US. Home Depot's success is often credited for its independent and outstanding ideas. Today, a new store opens every 43 hours. From happy mediocrity to a USD 100 billion enterprise, Home Depot is a classic tale of a turnaround driven by the sheer power of ideas.

 

A: They beat to a different drum. It is part of their sort of constitution. The value they see in things is from a different perspective. If you and I see things exactly the same, somebody is not needed here. We are just echoing each other. So, what they do is they see it from that way, what about, or what is another way and that is the spirit that we need to engender.

 

Q: Any tips that we could use to inculcate and develop this attitude of being able to innovate?

 

A: Well, a lot of them. I really believe in writing in a journal, keeping a journal, and keeping a diary. Things are happening so fast today that you have to take a few moments everyday to kind of recall your thoughts, feelings, ideas, aspirations or goals. So, set boundaries and have some barriers. Technologists right now are creating new ways for us to be connected even more. So, that will be one.

 

Q: How critical is the challenge to be innovative for companies, because there are other challenges to deal with the digital age, globalisation, the changing big paradigm shifts that are taking place in the world? Where do innovation and the need to be innovative, rank in these challenges, among these challenges where companies are concerned?

 

Robert: I think it is vital and absolutely essential in the 21^st century, because look at what is happening here. Look at India in the last four years. India is foisting a slew of new companies becoming multinationals. Mahindra and Ranbaxy and many others are becoming global brands and they are threats, disruptive threats to the incumbents. I see this as being a global innovation revolution. 

 

So if you don't have a capacity to innovate on an ongoing basis, you are not going to be in the game. It is like 25-30 years ago Edward Deming introduced quality management. So pretty soon if you didn't have the essential level of quality, you aren't in the game. What I see today happening and it is happening faster than even I predicted is if you don't have innovation process, a well-oiled idea factory, you are not in the game.

 

Q: How do you ensure that the individual is encouraged to keep innovating?

 

Robert: That is the work of leadership. Leaders have to realise the era that we are in and they have to encourage in teams and managers and their senior leadership. The way you encourage it and the way you foster innovation is you look at what you reward. All too often companies have rewarded playing it safe, make your numbers, do not take risk, think short term and by golly, don't fail. But if you want a reward innovation, you need to praise and reward.

 

By reward, I don't mean monetarily, I mean recognition. But you want to recognize and reward different things. People who step forward to offer up new ideas, people who step forward to volunteer on innovative projects that are going to take them even more time when they have got a day job. It is already all consuming. People that go the extra mile for the customer and figure out creative solutions to satisfy this customer in this situation as oppose to saying well it is not my job.

 

Q: What do you say to other companies that have done this the best so far in your study of all these companies?

 

Robert: I think my all time favourite would be right now Apple, because in the late 90s they were given up for dead, many people just wrote them off and Steve Jobs took over the company, took back over the company that he founded and was kicked out of. He said we are going to innovate ourselves back to greatness. We are going to innovate ourselves out of the hole that we are in. That is exactly what he did. That is the kind of vision and look at their products. Steve Jobs will not accept products that are not user friendly, cutting edge designed, on a world-class level. That inspires me because, that is the technology and the marriage with the consumer, what the consumer wants and is forward looking.

 

Q: Would you say that young teenager from New Jersey who hacked the iPhone - is he an innovator?

 

Robert: There are some people in Taiwan right now that are already copying and doing rip offs, counterfeiting the iPhone and the iPhone has not even been introduced into China yet. So, it is a major problem.

 

Q: How do you protect your innovations?

 

Robert: It is increasingly a major issue. However innovation is always been a better temporary varnish. You have a partner that expires eventually. That's definitely coming down and more and more people ask me why bother to innovate if I am just going to be copied tomorrow and it is a legitimate question. But here is my point, copiers never prosper like originators.

 

Now it is true that originators have to keep originating, keep improving their products before the other guys catch up with them. That's the innovation arms race that we are talking about here. But the people, who originate, look at Home Depot, any of the brands that are your favourites. Yes, they have been copied; left and right, fashions on the Paris runway are being copied instantly.  But does that mean we gave up, rollover play dead- absolutely not.

 

Q: So keep innovating?

 

A: That's right.