CII & BMGI Presents Manufacturing Innovation Conclave

Business Wire IndiaAs the knowledge partner for Manufacturing Innovation Conclave, held in ITC Maurya, New Delhi on the 24th June 2016, BMGI presented how Innovation can lead to an exponential growth in manufacturing. The event was organized by Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) that works to create and sustain an environment conducive to the growth of industry in India.
 
The event comprised thought leaders from across the world with senior management representations from reputed organizations like Rolls-Royce India Pvt. Ltd., Punj Lloyd Ltd., ExxonMobil Lubricants, Siemens Limited, Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd., CNBC-TV18, Tata Power Ltd., Google for Work, Dassault Systemes India Pvt. Ltd., to name a few and representations from industrial & governing bodies like National Innovation Foundation of India and National Research Development Corporation.
 
The event was organized in four sessions where the inaugural session looked at Transforming India through Innovation. The second session reflected on importance of Leading Innovation followed by a CEO panel discussion on Innovation and R&D as Keys to Make in India’s success. The closing session focused on understanding technology trends that are driving innovation.
 
Setting the context for the inaugural session, Mr. Kishore Jayaraman, Conclave Chairman & President, India & South Asia, Rolls-Royce India Pvt. Ltd., welcomed the audience and introduced the speakers. He opined that for the Make in India initiative to be successful both in the short and the long term, the need of the hour is to instill a robust culture of “Innovation” in India. To enable this, we need to make innovation a national agenda supported with the right investment, policies and metrics.

 
Introducing the theme for the conclave, Mr. Ambarish Raj, Head of Innovation Practice, Breakthrough Management Group India Private Limited set the context for the day ahead highlighting the importance of leading innovation inside organizations along with innovation lifecycle management. Mr. Raj talked about several critical aspects of Innovation Management such as importance of Innovation Council inside organizations, Measuring Innovation, Reward and Recognition for Innovation, Innovation Financial Management, Open Innovation that are required today to make Innovation not only effective but sustainable paving the way for building a strong culture inside them.

 The inaugural address was delivered by the Chief Guest Dr. Raghunath Mashelkar, President – Global Research Alliance & Chairperson, National Innovation Foundation of India. Dr. Mashelkar highlighted that India has dropped in rankings on the Global Innovation Index from 2011 to 2015 that shows that despite increased focused on Innovation in these years, the other countries are more competitive and rising faster. He shared that disruptive technologies are gaining momentum globally giving an example of advanced robotics where shoes manufactured by Adidas in China is shifting back to Germany owing to rapid reduction in costs. Dr. Mashelkar also brought out the fact that even though iPhones are made in China, Apple earns substantially more than the manufacturing company that highlights the need for India to move from being a sweat shop to an intellect shop and also focus on value arbitrage instead of cost arbitrage. He also suggested that celebrating failure is key to inculcating an innovation culture inside organization. Dr. Mashelkar concluded his address by stating that Culture will eat strategy for breakfast and for organizations to pole-vault into the future, innovation is very critical.
 
The focus of the second session was how Leaders can create and run the Innovation Engine for their organizations. Several eminent speakers talked about differences between leading innovation and managing routine work. The session Chairman, Mr. Ashok Wadhwan, President – Manufacturing Business, Punj Lloyd Ltd., highlighted that we never spoke about Innovation 5-10 years back but today its’ importance cannot be ignored. He urged the community to come out with flexible ways to deliver products and services to customers through innovative ways never thought of before. Mr. Pradeep David, Head, India Operations, Universal Robotics A/S, talked about Human-Robot collaboration in his address. He focused on the need to create smart factories and make things communicate digitally. Mr. Shankar Karnik, General Manager – Industrial, ExxonMobil Lubricants, spoke about ExxonMobil’s journey of leading a century and a half of technology innovation where he highlighted the importance of innovation for diverse applications such as energy efficiency, sustainability and reduction of carbon emissions.
 
There is a need to have a healthy pipeline of opportunities to innovate, opined Mr. Gautam Dutta, Senior Director, Siemens Industry Software. He talked about several transformation forces that are required to increase our ability to innovate. Dr. Kurichi Kumar, Head of Engineering, Rolls-Royce India Pvt. Ltd., highlighted that setting innovation teams up for success is vital, yet corporations often fail when doing this. Dr. Kumar provided insights that serve as a talent management roadmap for growth companies in search of high-performance teams that deliver. Mr. Varun Gadhok, Country Head – Manufacturing Solutions, India and SAARC, Autodesk India Pvt. Ltd., steered the discussion towards embracing disruption in an innovation era and Mr. Sachin Chaudhary, Business Head-Mortgages, Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd., brought in the aspect of innovation in delivery by sharing his learnings from the financial services sector.
 
The third session post lunch was a CEO panel discussion chaired by Mr. Rononoy Bannerjee, Assistant Corporate Editor, CNBC-TV18. Mr. Bannerjee kick-started the discussion by stating that India won’t be isolated owing to the recent BREXIT phenomenon and more R&D is required to go hand-in-hand with innovation for Make in India to be successful. Mr. Umang Das, Chief Mentor, ATC Telecom Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd., highlighted the need for substantial growth in infrastructure as well as need for leveraging the existing one through innovative means to support Make in India. Defence manufacturing is the fulcrum on which Make in India will happen, opined Mr. Rahul Chaudhary, Chief Executive Officer, Tata Power Ltd. (Strategic Engineering Division). Mr Chaudhary highlighted that by 2020, import of electronics will be higher than the oil bill. He also mentioned that job creation will be directly linked with value creation for which an ecosystem needs to be created.

Mr. Ambarish Raj, Head of Innovation Practice, Breakthrough Management Group India Private Limited, continued the discussion stating that traditional jobs are ceasing to exist in the new evolving world where increasingly new skills are required. What trends in manufacturing and hence job and skill requirements are needed to pole vault us into the future, questioned Mr. Raj to the group. Mr. Mohit Pande, Country Head – South East Asia and India, Google for Work, summarized the discussion so far stating that innovation is tied to the culture and leadership in the organization. Organizations who are not afraid to make mistakes have innovation in their DNA. He further stated that having impossible targets as an organization pushes people for innovation. Mr. Vinod Sood, Managing Director, Hughes Systique Corporation, added that technology is leading us towards disruptive innovation. He gave examples of several unique customer experiences enabled by technology such as Uber in Auto, Airbnb in hospitality to name a few. He underlined the challenges of customer requirements and expectations becoming complex today.