Innovation of the Holy Grail Hbr

Samuel Alejandro Arenas Quiroz A01372720

Ingrid Rivera Castillo A01373494

Lenin Silva Gutierrez A01373214

Innovation of the Holy Grail

• Prepare a reading summary (max. 2 pages) with your own words

As we know, innovation has become a really important matter on every company around the world; in this article from the Harvard Business Review “Innovation’s Holy Grail” we got to learn from the most innovative Indians that have developed great innovational systems thanks to the high and particular demands of their market, better known as  “The Gandhian Innovation”.

During two years our friends from HBR, decided to learn what was making the Indians so innovative and competitive in every single market (they had presence in a lot of industries, including automobile, pharmaceutical, health care, etc.) by the end of their little investigation they figured out that what made Indian companies like these was that they focused on “affordability and sustainability” and for this they had 3 major rules:

1. Disrupting Business Models: They decide not to follow an established business model, they would rather create a new one or improve an existing one that will fit their business perfectly.
2. Modifying organizational capabilities: One of the severan interesting things about the Indians is their capability to synthetize technologies resulting on lower production costs among other beneficial stuff that come along with these great skill they have.
3. Creating Or Sourcing New Capabilities: Not only they work towards the innovation talking about the company’s organization, but they do also work on self-improvement that will later impact the company in positive ways. The constant innovation has led to the need of having better employees that learn quickly and can easily adapt to the company’s new strives.

Truth is India is a really big country with a huge population, a population that is not only in one ‘economic’ sector, there are several. When we talk about changing business dynamics we sure talk about these; in the early beginnings companies, such as Bharti Airtel, focused on the ‘upper class’ in India, later they came to discover that they had to broaden their horizons, they changed their business dynamics. Instead of focusing on small sectors of their population they “expanded their market to the entire Indian population”.

Throughout the rest of the article we get to read more about the Gandhian innovation process; from the problem-solving strategies (which is basically by learning new things or improving the already existing ones), to synthetizing technologies, the combination of all of this has led to the creation of new technologies.

Lastly we learn some of the rules to getting innovation right, these rules are:

• Start thinking not just about your company or that specific ‘high class’ market; be inclusive and think about everyone.
• Keep a clear goal; no company will never go that far without a clear mission and vision.
• Establish goals: with time limit. It will make it easier to reach them and to keep walking towards your mission.
• Even when there are things you wont be able to change and that will get in the way of your innovation process you should learn how to get around them and get the best out of them too.

People are your main focus. It starts and finishes here.

• Explain the 2 most important ideas you understand from the reading

1. Gandhian Innovation: Essentially it is meant to for a company to do a lot with little resources they have. It should be sufficient to cover only the basic needs and not use more resources than necessary that will later become waste. It is to think outside the box with current resources.
2. Targeting not only the upper class, but also the lower ones. By simply focusing on one specific class, the company is closing off their market and limiting income. Also, the main objective is to provide a service or product that benefits everyone, even those with few resources. If the service or product is able to accomplish the needs of the people, then revenue will simply flow on its own. The main objective is the people.

• Express your Opinion on the article

• Overall, the article offered a view into the ever-changing Indian business model. The focus on doing as much as you can with what you have is definitely an interesting form of innovation and in a country that has a need for such innovation is a good step in the right direction. I believe that Gandhian innovation should be taken to places outside of India as it offers a much need change in a world already saturated with many ideas. This form of innovation is actually fairly original and offers benefits to the consumers and the company alike.