Sujavna 2:31

At around 1100am on Sunday 29^th July 2012,

My thoughts keep revolving around two sets of information bytes that I was fortunate to receive during the week that went by. While there is no apparent connect between the two sets, I continue to doubt if they are indeed unrelated.

The first set of information relates to, how the world of commerce, especially the Indian part, is managing to acquire and manage intellectual property, and what challenges it continues to face in the process. Impressive indeed, when one listens to the systems being evolved or adopted, especially the collaborative work between the regulators, government agencies, judicial agencies, the legal communities and the innovators, themselves!  And the second set of information relates to the failure of monsoons and the resulting prospects of a drought situation in India. Media reports paint a gloomy picture of an adverse economic impact as well as dire sustenance nightmares for millions of marginal farmers.

So where do I see the link between the two? To me the connection is the unevenness of institutionalised innovations happening in the government and corporate segments.

For starters, the need to innovate and ensure that the 24x7 systems that are being established to institutionalise innovation, in most of the leading corporate businesses in India, are also replicated within the entire hierarchical pyramids within Indian government agencies.

Why cannot industry captains such as Adi Godrej, Sunil Bharti Mittal, Kiran Mazumdar, Anand Mahindra, Ratan Tata, Azim Premji, Chanda Kochar, and others spend 1 fortnight every quarter adopting “non-related” government departments or agencies to mentor young bureaucrats to become 360 degree leaders and enthuse them to be more innovative? Perhaps they can also encourage their own senior colleagues to actively scout for similar roles with performance appraisals being tagged to such initiatives.

Any takers? Any rebuttals? Happy to know your views, so please share them with me.

Sujavna 2:30

It is 830pm on a humid Sunday evening (22^nd July 2012)

Having talked about disruptive innovation in the educational system last week, I wanted to know if such instances have taken place in India; and as I researched, I was surprised to learn that, while commentators have assessed the innovation regimes in India as either “uneven”, “jugaad” and in a recent case (by Nesta, UK) as “frugal”, none have bothered to study the disruptive nature of innovation in India.

So perhaps there is more work to do and I think I will be busy researching this aspect in the coming weeks. I will report back if I do find something interesting, but certainly I would welcome any insights from you too.

Wishing you a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:29

As the clock strikes 12 noon on 15^th July 2012,

I am quite excited to know that it is not enough to conceptualise on disruptive strategies, but the disruption has to be executed with excellence and finesse. Shombit Sengupta (check out www.shiningconsulting.com) comments on this in his FE column “from the discomfort zone”.

While I generally agree to excellence and finesse as desirable values in strategy-implementation, I belong to the group that firmly believes that the world is still in an era where disruptive strategies are yet to become main-stream and commonplace and strategy formulation followed by calibrated strategy rollouts are even fewer and farther apart. So my thought for today is focused on the question: Can we have a disruptive innovation across our secondary school, undergraduate and graduate education systems that can help facilitate the “mainstreaming” of disruptive creation of products, processes, governance systems and socio-economic experimentation?

Have a great weekend.

Sujavna 2:28

It is 1100am on 8^th July 2012.

Why should mundane chores and activities become mundane in the first place? Can there be some triggers that will let us know when a particular activity probably crosses the thresholds of “novelty” and “fine-tuning” phases? And can we evolve standardised process-guidelines that will let people (those carrying out or benefiting from these activities), re-design their “soon-to-become” mundane tasks, less onerous and more exciting?

Does Disneyland offer us some solutions here? How does a janitor at any of Disney’s parks overcome lethargy that can only normally result from her/his mundane daily tasks? How does Disneyland management innovate in making the job of a janitor more exciting for the job-holder and still ensure consistently high-quality services for those visitors who may need to use the restroom / washroom facilities?

Are there examples out there in government establishments (such as employment exchanges) that demonstrate the feasibility of re-design of services that make them interesting for the employees as well as satisfying for the customers?

As I ponder on these questions, I hope that you may have some answers and insights to share with me.

Wishing you a very good weekend and a great week ahead.

Sujavna 2:27

It is 1145am on 1^st July 2012.

And I am delighted to know that there are many persons who can articulate soundly the arguments for sustainable development, even when there are “file-pushing” bureaucrats and “self-serving” politicians who adeptly confuse the rest of us with platitudes. One such articulate , and perhaps an argumentative Indian is Dr Sunita Narain, Director-General of the Centre for Science and Environment, who has captured the dilemma of the conclusions of the Rio+20 Summit neatly, when she says – “ why the fight against the Right for Status Quo or Business As Usual of both developed and developing nations” is an important and necessary first-principle even as we agree to the other first-principle of a common but differentiated responsibility to tackle environmental challenges caused by development.

But I would like to ask Sunita and others of her ilk a question? Are we asking ourselves the right questions at Summits such as Rio+20?  Perhaps, the assumptions about development and acceptance of current economic indices as representative of development, and the resulting hypothesis about environmental impact indices, themselves preclude any normative solutions; and therefore there is an immediate need that an entirely new set of economic development indices and resulting environmental impact indices need to be postulated at such conferences and experimental economies that are governed by such models be piloted under multilateral charters. Can India and China take a lead on such innovative efforts? Can organisations such as CESE become bold enough to postulate such new economic and environmental models?

Wishing you a great weekend.