Major innovations are like bamboo thickets, not oak trees. Look closely at a breakthrough innovation and you will find that it actually is a collection of different innovations clumped together. Google is a good example. Their page rank algorithm wouldn’t have made them a successful company had they not combined it with clever implementation of online advertising.
An even better example is the revolutionary SpaceShipOne winning the Ansari X prize. Year after year one could see a steady accumulation of innovations that brought the competitors close and closer to their goal of launching a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. The reality is that a single innovation, no matter how good, doesn’t by itself do the trick.
How does a startup turn one innovation, one bamboo tree, into a thicket? The quickest way is to transplant other individual bamboo trees, i.e. innovations, from other places into the patch that has your original innovation. This is how the Silicon Valley ecosystem works. When a firm succeeds with, say, a clever got-to-market innovation, this innovation becomes part of the repository in the ecosystem and is available to the next startup to use.
The blind spot
A startup firm in India focusing on the “India-out” model (start local then go global model) doesn’t have this Silicon Valley type innovation repository to rely upon. So it has to do more heavy lifting before it can turn a single innovation tree into a valuable innovation thicket. If an entrepreneur is aware of this challenge then s/he can do something about. But this awareness is missing. They have a blind spot. This is one of my observations from the last few days of travel.
I started the week at the TiE Summit at Mumbai where there were some good discussions about spurring more entrepreneurship in India. This event was also billed as a “celebration of the New Indian entrepreneurial spirit” and it did live up to that theme (see some news coverage here and here). After the TiE Summit, I spent two days as a jury member for NASSCOM Innovation Awards 2006. This year we had over 150 company applications which we had whittled down to about 18 semi-finalists in three categories – product innovation, process innovation and business model innovation. These companies came and presented (see some sample news coverage here) over two days. We have now selected a smaller set (names yet to be announced) which will go into the “finals”.
This week’s innumerable conversations about entrepreneurship and innovation have helped me put my finger on the pervasive blind spot among India based entrepreneurs. I believe that we would have far better outcomes among the current crop of startups if there was more awareness that any single innovation doesn’t yield positive outcomes.
But more awareness of the blind spot by itself would not solve the problem. After all, in the absence of a Silicon Valley type innovation repository, a company has to do more home-grown innovation. This in turn requires a more disciplined approach to innovation.
“Disciplined” innovation
I have been thinking about what this “more disciplined” approach to innovation can be. I am veering to the view that we have to highlight the fact that innovation is a journey with many stages. It always starts with an insight. Some insights become a proposition. Some propositions become a prototype. And some prototypes get rolled-out. These stages, from insight to rollout, call it IPPR for short, are integral to product innovation, process innovation, business model innovation or any other kind of innovation.
Embracing a disciplined approach to innovation will inevitably lead to two further questions: How does a company become a better cradle - i.e. more insights are born there? And how does it make sure that more of these insights reach maturity – i.e. it’s becomes a less toxic habitat? This is something I will examine in a future post. Meanwhile let me know what you think about the existence of a blind spot among India based entrepreneurs.
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