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Learnings from NTLF 2022 - The New Face of Innovation: Distributed and Hyper Connected
Learnings from NTLF 2022 - The New Face of Innovation: Distributed and Hyper Connected

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Below are some of the learnings from the discussion on “The New Face of Innovation: Distributed and Hyper Connected” from the NASSCOM Technology and Leadership Forum (NTLF) held in February 2022

The Covid pandemic has forced all sectors to adopt and adapt to new ways of working. In addition, consumers are also demanding new experiences with their ever-changing preferences. To cater to both these changes, companies have had to respond in a short amount of time and introduced new products and services and fulfilled the new expectations. Traditionally, this transformation would have been handled in a sequential manner, however, it is critical nowadays that businesses undertake all transformations in parallel.

 

How did pandemic change innovation in paints and coatings business and what have been the key trends that are compelling companies to innovate?

Companies in the paints and polymers business like Akzo Nobel have always hired a lot of data scientists and software engineers to research and find the most effective and sustainable solutions. This has been done by not only involving internal experts, but also external partners like start-ups, academia, peers, etc. This continuous quest of bettering the solutions and creating better products is what keeps companies beat competition.

For companies such as NEC Corporation, who are providing digital solutions not only internally but also to clients, the pandemic forced these companies to not only undergo a digital transformation themselves, but also present similar solutions for their clients as well. As pandemic spread across the world, many companies who were on the fence about digitization pre-pandemic, were now demanding expansive digitalization of their processes. Towards this, companies have had to democratize innovation, empower the internal teams to carry out the massive changes.

Even prior to the pandemic, research demonstrated that leaders and companies who are ahead on the digitization curve, grew at a double the rate of growth of the laggards. And post pandemic, this gap has further widened to almost 5 times.

 

As products and services become increasingly complex, everyone has dependence on suppliers, partners, academia etc. How does one get the entire broader ecosystem to co-innovate and create a collaborative environment?

For companies like Akzo Nobel, opening up and sharing the ongoing research with external stakeholders builds this ecosystem for co-innovation and collaboration. Even pre-pandemic, in 2019, companies such as Akzo Nobel collaborated extensively with the start-ups at a global scale where they shared challenges faced by the company and invited proposals for joint co-operation. Outreach through social media was also done and this collaborative eco-system has been expanding ever since.

While for companies such as NEC Corporation, customers have always been at the centre of all their strategies, with the customers not just looking for a solution, but for an integration. They help in bringing together many technologies to their customers, many of which are not proprietary. Hence, an ecosystem of suppliers and partners form a key component in their overall strategy. They have created a model of “shared victory”, where suppliers and partners feel a part of a bigger picture, and hence are able to share a robust solution to the customer. Start-ups and academia also form a large part of the ecosystem.

 

For a long time, innovation in an organisation was the responsibility of a few – like the R&D department, specific product teams, etc. However, as the need increases for all businesses to expand innovation across the entire customer value chain, will this require a transformation from a few teams to “innovation everywhere”? How should one enable that and what are the drivers that will help in bringing that cultural change?

The evolution from innovation from a few to “innovation everywhere” is related to a complete shift in the cultural mindset. Whenever any company is undertaking such an endeavour, there is bound to be friction among the various entities involved. Internal R&D departments of the companies may not want to share IP of their internal projects, and there is bound to be hesitation in participation by external stakeholders as well. For companies who have been successful in this transition, the change or the mandate has been pushed from the top, where the management has been visibly supportive of the initiative. If the management wants to build this ecosystem and leads by example, these cultural shifts will automatically trickle down into the teams as well and thereby becoming a norm rather than an exception.

In addition, innovation must be democratized. Those who are deeply involved at the grassroots of innovation must be empowered to lead and take decisions. To make it sustainable and ensure participation, there are 3 things which are important –

 

Innovation

 

  1. There must be a war cry to connect the organisation with various stakeholders. Many successful companies like NEC Corporation created a massive marketing campaign inviting many external stakeholders and introduced a committee, therefore, creating a crowd-evaluation system of these crowd-sourced ideas. Not only is the ideation and innovation democratized but so is the evaluation.
  2. Culture – Propagate a culture of failure. Reward failure. This will enable innovators to innovate more, find more solutions, try newer things.
  3. Put innovation at the centre of the organisation’s DNA.

Other aspects such as hackathons, contests, creating innovation hubs, also drive home the point.

 

How can an organisation retain human centricity at the centre of any innovation they undertake?

When companies can come with solutions for customers which adds value to them, is easy to use, then the innovation is easy to continue and can be made sustainable and scalable. In addition, the customers are not only demanding these smart solutions, but are even involved in the designing and co-innovating and co-creating with the companies directly.

At the same time, innovation disrupts a class of people with a specific set of skills. This can be solved by up-skilling and re-skilling in other upcoming skills as technologies and skills keep evolving. Organisations need to invest heavily in skilling of their employees to keep them updated with the latest technologies, engaged, and interested.

 

Read the latest NASSCOM “Resilience to Resurgence – Technology Sector in India 2022: Strategic Review” report, please click on the links below –

NASSCOM Community – https://community.nasscom.in/communities/bpm/technology-sector-india-2022-resilience-resurgencestrategic-review

NASSCOM Website - https://nasscom.in/knowledge-center/publications/technology-sector-india-2022-strategic-review


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Vandhna Babu
Principal Analyst - Research

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