The ingenuity of human thoughts, leading to mind-blowing breakthrough business opportunities and possibilities, can never be replaced by bots. That the mundane and day-to-day is taken care of by the ‘wired’ organism — AI, bots and machines floating over Clouds; it’s time to unleash the organization and people towards making Orbit-shifts.

The organism is getting lots of love and affection from businesses and it’s spreading fast. The possibility of full-blown colonization seems very real — quite an unsettling thought. However, this change, like any change, presents us with exciting opportunities, only if we choose to see and embrace it. The most seductive and powerful of these opportunities is ‘Building an innovative workforce’. With the right culture, practices and methods, systems and structures, an innovative workforce will be able to conceive, pursue and execute game-changing leaps and transformative solutions leading to quantum impact. In essence, a workforce that will pursue Orbit-shifts, create new value as against merely maintaining the current — a dire need for every organization today.

Given the colonization, what makes ‘Building an innovative workforce’, a great opportunity?

Firstly, any successful pursuit of the innovation agenda, manifesting as a differentiated offering, process, business model or strategy, is fundamentally a human endeavor. A successful innovation pursuit calls for having the mindset of a ‘challenger’, with the ability to uncover unstated market needs, challenge wide-held industry and organizational mental models and come up with creative business propositions — things that the organism can’t. The ‘wired’ organism can powerfully learn logic, develop algorithms if fed with volumes of data. More often than not, this data is representative of current and past trends/scenarios. The organism can ‘predict, suggest’ and maybe even decided but never ‘imagine’ — a trait solely vested with us humans. The ingenuity of human thoughts can never be replaced by bots. Hence, creating an organization that unleashes and channelizes people’s imagination becomes mission critical.

Secondly, talking of businesses, in the last decade and a half, receptivity towards innovation has tremendously increased. What was earlier a desirable, nice-to have corporate brand badge is today seen as a key driver for growth and profitability. ‘Optimization’, which is pursed rigorously today, is going to become a commodity with the advent of the ‘wired’ organism, forcing organizations to differentiate through innovation. An innovative workforce with the right paraphernalia is going to provide a ‘ready-state’ for organizations to think and action their innovation agenda, thereby creating powerful end-market differentiation.

Thirdly, the attraction and traction points for today’s workforce are fundamentally different. Conventional drivers like stability, security and flashy perks are secondary for them. Their primary ask is a powerful, meaningful ‘purpose’ to work towards. They are ‘experimenters’ deriving their gratification from the pursuit of ‘out-of-the-box’. An ‘organization for innovation’ would provide a fertile, infectious playground for this workforce, for it democratizes innovation which otherwise would continue to remain elitist.

There are some great examples of initiatives taken by organizations towards building an innovative workforce and the rich dividends they have earned as an outcome is there for us to see.

Take the case of Titan Jewelry Business, which created the famed Innovation School of Management for its supply chain division. Employees, in teams, work on impossible, current and futuristic innovation challenges in front of the business. In a span of 20 weeks, teams navigate these challenges systematically to come up with breakthrough solutions and prototype them as well. These teams have thought of and executed possibilities which have left even the leading domain experts across the world speechless.

One team has created a 420X jump in the productivity of a globally benchmarked manufacturing process — a first in the world while another, tripled the capacity of their plant without adding any manpower and several more such Orbit-shifts were achieved. Today about 60 percent of the workforce are innovators and the innovation school has contributed significantly to the bottom line of the organization. Anand Group, a USD1.2 Billion auto-component group, has institutionalized innovation in 7 group companies. Anand group has created a robust innovation ecosystem where innovation happens by-design. About 1300 employees have been enabled to pursue innovation challenges on an on-going basis. For every six yearly KRA, each of these innovation champions, taken on an impossible innovation challenge — Innovation is a habit here.

These organizations have not just reskilled or upskilled their workforce. They have fundamentally repurposed them. Quantum Leaps achieved in these organizations cannot be achieved by an algorithm running on a machine. These were solely the outcomes of a passionate, creative human pursuit; outcomes of an innovative workforce. Instead of letting innovation be accidental and personality-centric, they have created a workforce who can make innovation happen by-design. Instead of innovation being a cream layer of skill, limited to high performers, they have made every employee achieve high performance through innovation. Innovation has become a norm of engagement within these organizations.

Every business rides on a ‘factor of eternal assurance’. A laundry business’s deep, unstated belief is that as long as there are human beings, they would clothe, which would need a wash-cycle, assuring an eternal continuity of business. For insurance, it is ‘life security’. For automobiles, it is ‘mobility’. These factors of eternal assurances are anchored around the market needs, which as we know, would undergo massive changes time-to-time. The future ‘factor of eternal assurance’ which organizations should build and capitalize on is the ‘innovative workforce’. Such a workforce can never put an organization out of business even if the entire industry shuts down, for they would have already identified newer core opportunities and adjacencies for the organization.

Now, what does this mean for the L&D function?

L&D plays a critical but often a thankless ‘supplier’ role within an organization — mid-year performance reviews, identifying capability gaps, personalized training plan and interventions, catering to specific requirements from the business leaders — the services offered are cool and plenty. There is consensus omnium amongst L&D fraternity around ‘evolving to stay relevant & valuable’.

However, to build the organizational innovation capacity and for businesses to successfully leverage the innovation opportunities, the role of L&D needs to undergo a tectonic shift — not just catalysts, evangelists or partners but Strategic Capability Architects.

Architects who can influence and shape the business vision and innovation agenda, whose business and end market understanding is superior, who are able to create and catch market trends and influence the business to build the innovation capability needed for them to be cutting-edge in the market. And the new role sounds cool too!

This article was originally posted on People Matters by Gokul Ranganathan

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Corporate Brochure

• Break Through Mental Model Boundaries To Unleash an Orbit-shift
• Create A Breakthrough Strategy to Refresh and Renew Growth Drivers
• Create ‘Strategic & Operational Innovation’ Breakthroughs
• Transform People Capability for Orbit-shifting Innovation
• Institutionalize Orbit-shifting Innovation into Organization Culture

In this webinar by Rajiv Narang, one of India’s top innovation thought leaders, we present our point of view on how to Mobilize Sales Teams To Break Through Mental Model Boundaries for both B2B & B2C Segments. The webinar was conducted on December 19th, 2018.

Inspiration & Insights into:-

• Finding Transformative Solutions for the Toughest Problems
• Going Beyond ‘Coping with Change’ to ‘Leveraging Change’
• Moving from ‘Waiting for Mandates’ to ‘Taking Charge of Creating the Next Leap’

Through a live sharing of Case Studies drawn from Erehwon’s Orbit-Shifting interventions across industries, from both B2B and B2C segments.

What Our Clients Say

Vasanth Kumar

Managing Director

Lifestyle International

Erehwon through their unique “Orbit Shift” process as well their innovative “customer insight exercise” helped our team to get a strategic perspective of the industry we are in and also a deep understanding of our customer behaviour to arrive at breakthrough solutions for our retail formats at Landmark Group, India.

Casparus JH Kromhout

MD and CEO

Shriram Life Insurance

“At SLIC, we are very pleased with our association with Erehwon. They have taken on the challenge of “orbit shifting” Shriram Life Insurance with a lot of passion and we were able to form a strong multi-disciplinary team who could work together seamlessly and with a strong focus. Erehwon brings a unique blend of structure and creativity which helps to inspire breakthrough innovation. It ensures that we stay on course but also allows for powerful solutions to emerge. Also, their experience and network have helped us to tie up with good partners that will help us take our solutions forward. We are looking to great results from the initiatives that are now being piloted and also more good solutions ahead”.

Luke Raskino

Disruptive Innovation for Laundry Category

Unilever, UK

“Today, only 6 months since our formation, thanks to our partnership with Erehwon we have created a new way of working and insighting, one that has delivered outstanding innovation challenges, insights and indeed 3 disruptive ventures that our Global Leadership Team has commissioned…. would thoroughly recommend them to any business looking to produce game changing innovation.”

Massimo Pozzetti

Global Innovation Director - Laundry Category

Unilever, UK

“I have found great value in working with Erehwon. They have truly brought new capabilities in our innovation process. Their approach is not being the usual facilitator of an innovation process, rather a co-creator of innovation ideas that can break the market dynamics”

Casparus Jacobus Hendrik Kromhout

Managing Director and CEO

Shriram Life Insurance

“At Shriram Life Insurance, we are very pleased with our association with Erehwon. They have taken on the challenge of “orbit shifting” Shriram Life Insurance with a lot of passion and we were able to form a strong multi-disciplinary team who could work together seamlessly and with a strong focus. Erehwon brings a unique blend of structure and creativity which helps to inspire breakthrough innovation. It ensures that we stay on course but also allows for powerful solutions to emerge. Also, their experience and network have helped us to tie up with good partners that will help us take our solutions forward. We are looking to great results from the initiatives that are now being piloted and also more good solutions ahead.”

Massimo Pozzetti

Global Innovation Director - Laundry Category

Unilever, UK

“I have found great value in working with Erehwon. They have truly brought new capabilities in our innovation process. Their approach is not being the usual facilitator of an innovation process, rather a co-creator of innovation ideas that can break the market dynamics”

Harsh Mariwala

Chairman and Managing Director (CMD)

Marico Limited

‘Inspiring and insightful—energizes leaders to brave the odds and make the next Orbit-shift happen.’

Laercio Cardoso

Head Hygiene

Unilever Indonesia

“The street fighter challenge conquered the divisions heart and become our motto. It unleashed an outstanding energy, a winning spirit. We felt the force and we believed in it!”

Anuroop Tony Singh

Vice Chairman

Max NewYorkLife Insurance, India

“It gives you recipes for Success . It gives you insights into leaders risking all to pursue Quantum goals. It leaves people enthused .. Leaves them with a ‘we can do it feel”

Marico Industries

Marico Limited

“Erehwon is a creative, evolving, strategic partner…has helped create a mindset for Innovation and brought in clarity on how one can convert creative ideas to opportunities”

The post Webinar: How To Mobilize Sales Teams To Break Through Mental Model Boundaries ? appeared first on Erehwon Innovation Consulting.

You may read the introducing context for these cases here —

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 1 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 2 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 3 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 4 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 5 of 6)

When the challenge is to not just solve, but actually Turnaround a problem into an opportunity the tool needed is Breakthrough Innovation.

Succeeding in spite of the global financial crisis

Launching a new product in the midst of an economic recession (in 2008) was the problem Mahindra Auto was faced with. They realised that the usual go-to-market approach would not be good enough. They applied Orbit-shifting Innovation.

A mission team nominated by the organisation was facilitated to create a Breakthrough Launch Strategy. The Breakthroughs they achieved were in the ‘Product Positioning’ and in Customer Engagement. For e.g. The traditional test drive model was one of the many established industry models that were challenged and reinvented.

Launched in the midst of an industry recession they not only achieved their launch target but actually doubled it.

David beats Goliath by turning a threat into an opportunity

In the year 2000, Hindustan Unilever launched Nihar coconut oil to compete with Marico’s leading brand Parachute. Hindustan Unilever’s aggressiveness was visible in its extensive advertising campaign, outspending Marico at every step.

The Marico team came together for a two-day workshop and generated a host of ideas, none of which pointed to a Breakthrough. There was by now, a growing sense of despair, ‘What can we do? Hindustan Unilever is a giant. They have much more resources than we do’! They were doubting their own ability to take on and win against a multinational. Their questions were ‘How to prevent encroachment, how to minimize loss?’

But the team wondered, how can we adapt to the change than resisting it? They realised that they had to somehow win the battle against the giant.

They said, ‘We cannot beat them with resources, we will beat them with ideas.’

Marico chose to focus on their strength in distribution and beat Nihar hands down. Eventually, the cycle was complete when Hindustan Unilever sold the brand Nihar to Marico in the next few years.

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Breakthrough Problem #3 : Hitting the wall of diminishing returns

You may read the introducing context for these cases here —

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 1 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 2 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 3 of 6)

What parts of your work/business are experiencing the frustration of ‘More & more effort in this area is yielding only minimal returns?’

When attempts to solve a problem are hitting the wall of diminishing returns, it is a clear symptom that the approach being used to attack the problem needs to change.

To go faster by merely changing the direction of the sail is not enough, we need to change the sail. The tool needed is Breakthrough Innovation, which fundamentally challenges the approach.

Transforming Customer Engagement

The Fragrance division at IFF (International Flavours & Fragrances) was focused on Increasing the strike rate with client briefs. This organisation was essentially a B2B (Business to Business) organisation, they supplied fragrances to product manufacturers for shampoos, soaps, etc. Every time any company wants to insert or even change the fragrance, it sends out a brief to fragrance suppliers and asks for a bid. Increasing success rate of winning these briefs was critical to growth.

At that point in time, the fragrance division was losing more briefs than it won. In fact, they were winning only 1 out of every 6 briefs, and yet, when they collected annual customer feedback, there seemed to be nothing to be concerned about as all customers said they were satisfied with the relationship. For the Fragrance Leadership team, it was evident that efforts were hitting the wall of diminishing returns, it was clear that doing more of the same was just not enough.

Applying ‘Orbit-Shifting Innovation’ created a Breakthrough in the customer engagement model — to go beyond merely supplying to the client’s brief and create fragrances that will differentiate the client with their end user — the consumer.

This led to a Breakthrough idea. Take the clients brief but come back to him with not one but two submissions: The first submission to exactly meet the clients brief and the second submission to meet the clients consumer’s need. To achieve the second submission the IFF team initiated a process of getting first-hand market insights and designing a fragrance to meet end consumer needs — their second submission was now rooted in first-hand consumer insight.

This shift, when executed, led to more than doubling the client strike rate and fuelled an exponential growth in the next 6 years that went beyond their 10X aspiration.

Reducing ATC Losses (Aggregate, Technical & Commercial losses)

New Delhi Power Ltd (NDPL) had set about trying to reduce — Aggregate, Technical and Commercial (ATC) losses. ATC losses can be as high as 70 per cent. The team quickly managed to bring down ATC losses from 70 per cent to 55 per cent. This was, as the team leader said, “Low hanging fruit, just efficient administration was enough”. But the real challenge was in reducing the loss below 55 per cent. Now every next per cent was tough. They were hitting the wall of diminishing returns.

An innovation team was formed, and they were first asked to frame their challenge. The first framing of the challenge read, Reduce ATC losses from 55 per cent to 17 per cent, because this was the best that has been achieved in an Indian city, Ahmedabad. ‘When provoked further, ‘they took on the challenge to bring it down to 15 per cent, because 15 per cent was the best achieved globally, in an European city.’

Then, they were asked an orbit-shift question, ‘What is the theoretical best? Don’t look at existing benchmarks, just define the theoretical best. The theoretical best was 7 per cent.’ The final orbit-shifting challenge surfaced from shifting the reference point from the BEST IN THE WORLD to THE THEORETICAL BEST.

Chasing the Theoretical Best forced the team to suspend judgment and look for fundamental Breakthroughs and not just solutions as good as the best in the world. The Breakthroughs that followed have brought down the ATC losses to 13–14 per cent, beating the global best.

You may read the next parts here:

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 5 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 6 of 6)

The post 5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 4 of 6) appeared first on Erehwon Innovation Consulting.

They’ll be able to spot these https://happydays365.org/uncategorized/how-to-select-a-good-writing-service/ things before people visit them, that can prevent someone from wasting time looking for those errors on your site.

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The post 5 Problems Which Only Breakthrough Innovation Can Solve (Part 2 of 6) appeared first on Erehwon Innovation Consulting.

But the reality is that, more often than not, these ambitious leaders get frustrated because the Mindsets and Tools that get used in pursuing an Orbit Shifting Challenge are incremental in nature. This frustration is a direct result of pursuing an Orbit-Shifting Challenge with Orbit-Maintaining tools. It is like fighting the next generation war with the old generation tools.

The first question which we urge ambitious Business Leaders to re-examine is

What are the problems or challenges that “business as usual” ways can’t solve? What are the challenges that can only be solved with Breakthrough Innovation?

These are the 5 kinds of challenges that we have come across that need nothing less than the most powerful Breakthrough Innovation Tools. These are the five areas ready for the Breakthrough question:

1. Not Improve But Transform — When the need is to not merely improve (say by 10–15%) but transform a process, product or business model, the starting point needs to be fundamentally different. When the challenge is to create a step jump then doing more of the same won’t be enough. What is needed is an approach that will not just follow the existing paradigm but challenge it, what is needed is a paradigm shift.
2. Not linear but Non-linear Growth — What parts of the current growth equation are extremely resource intensive and is a hurdle to future growth? Where has the current business cycle reached a point when the need is to break the traditional Resource to Results equation like ‘Doubling the rate of Growth is going to require Double the resources’. Creating a non-linear growth strategy, will need an approach that will fundamentally challenge the Why, the What and the How of the current growth equation.
3. Hitting the Wall of Diminishing Returns — Where is your business hitting the Wall of Diminishing Returns? In other words, what are the business critical areas where more and more efforts are only producing incremental returns? What are those areas where a lot of time and effort has been invested but which yields only marginal gains? This symptom of diminishing returns is a clear indicator that investing more time and effort in the same direction won’t help. What is needed is a radically different approach.
4. Differentiating a Commodity — This question usually comes up when a new leader comes in and refuses to accept that a commodity cannot be differentiated. Finding a way to differentiate a commodity beyond price will need a series of Breakthrough questions in customer and channel engagement — it needs Breakthrough Innovation.
5. Turnaround a Derailing Problem — Derailing problems usually strike when a radical change in the regulatory or competitive landscape occurs. The difference between the firms which thrive or the firms which struggle to survive lies in how an organisation chooses to respond. Faced with such derailing problems, most leaders get preoccupied in finding a fix that will prevents a negative fallout, a fix that will minimise the damage. But when a leader has chosen to not merely fix the problem but to turn it around into an Opportunity — then the approach needed must be radically different.

When faced with one of these five Business Challenges, merely asking people to “Think out of the Box” won’t be enough. A deliberate and rigorous application of Breakthrough Innovation will be needed.

The subsequent parts of this article would discuss examples in each of these Breakthrough Challenges and how Breakthrough Innovation was applied to find that transformational solution.

You may read the next parts here:

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 1 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 2 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 3 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 4 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 5 of 6)

5 Problems which only Breakthrough Innovation can solve (Part 6 of 6)

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