It is 7am on 8th September 2012
Two interesting sets of advice on fostering a culture of innovation (that I learnt during the week that went by) have great relevance for the governance challenge that the Indian political establishment seems to be going through.
I located the first set of advice in a book on Frugal Innovation (the book is titled Jugaad Innovation and is authored by Navi Rajdou, Jaideep Parbhu and Simone Ahuja). While discussing how the principle of thinking and acting flexibly has been a core characteristic of jugaad innovators, the authors advocate strongly on why organisations and entrepreneurs need to FAIL CHEAP, FAIL FAST and FAIL OFTEN to succeed.
The second set of advice can be found in a 2010 HBR blog by Tony Schwartz, who was then commenting on six secrets to creating a culture of innovation. I refer to the second secret that Tony has encapsulated wonderfully as “CREATIVITY CAN BE SYSTEMATIC”, wherein he delineates on how the well-defined stages of “first-insight”, “saturation”, “incubation”, “illumination” and “verification” do not always unfold predictably, but do certainly provide the most-effective roadmap for creativity.
Now why do I think both these sets of advice are relevant for the Indian political establishment? When you see that politics (as is currently practiced by all major parties) is entrenched in a very inflexible approach of “my way or the highway”, when you realize that political leaders do not want to be seen as failing and when you feel a vacuum in direct communications from political parties, which leads you to believe that there is no effort at incubating and verifying their ideologies and political stands, it is then you realize that there is a huge effort required by the political establishment in India to innovate.
Hope you are having a great weekend.
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