Ageing of humanity, an opportunity for Startups .. ..

All of us at one point of time have to get old. While the young believe they have many more years to get old, the old people are living through the experience. 

Ageing is the process during which structural and functional changes accumulate in an organism as a result of the passage of time. The changes manifest as a decline from the organism's peak fertility and physiological functions until death. - Nature, click here

It is said that the aged people of the world, aged 60+ hold a majority of all wealth worldwide and they have a spending potential of approximately $15 trillion. Refer HBR article When no one retires, Paul Irving, Nov, 18.  (click here). Given the developments in human life expectancy, it is not very far that people will live for 100-120 years.

"Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears." - John Lennon

As per the World Health Organisation (WHO) (click here), by 2050, about 2 billion of the 10 billion people on planet earth (20%) would be elderly people of the age 60 years and above. The interesting aspect is that 80% of the aged people will be in the developing and less developed countries. 

If the country looks at the elderly as a liability, it will be looking at solutions, instead the governments should look at elderly people as great resources that can be tapped or extract value for more years, which will warrant a decent treatment of the people than the one meted out now.

Are we neglecting the elderly people ? Are we looking at them as people who are in the last days of their career, ready to step into the coffins ?

It is too early to say those things, because the longevity of people is increasing these days. With reduced hunger and better availability of food and proteins, the average human body and brain is more active. Other than lifestyle diseases, the probability of people dying out of hunger or food deficiencies is very limited. This has been one of the greatest contributions of the modern day science and economic developments following it. 

The pictorial of the ageing population is courtesy United Nations. 

While going through an interesting article cited above in the November 2018 issue of Harvard Business Review titled, When no one retires, by Paul Irving, the following points came to my mind. All figures are for 2020.

Global GDP (PPP)
IMF $130 trillion
World Bank $135 trillion

Global GDP (nominal)
IMF $83 trillion
World Bank $87 trillion

Global spending potential of people aged 60+ will be $15 trillion (by 2020). ie. about 18% of global GDP will be from the 60+ age group of elderly people.

People aged 60+ hold majority of wealth worldwide.

Ref: Irving, Paul, When no one retires, HBR, Nov '18.

Another interesting point to note is the average age of Nobel Prize winners of the world is 62 years, ie. a person is at the peak of his intellectual career only after the age of 60. This is the time when world over, people are asked to retire. The 2017 Chemistry Nobel Prize winner Prof. John Goodenough from University of Texas, US for invention of the Lithium-ion battery received the prestigious recognition at the age of 97 years.

All the above illustrations tell us that old age is not for retirement, but one where one can be more intellectually active and contribute to society in many ways that can benefit society.

Startups need to re-look in this sector of serving elderly people by means of providing 

• better health care and solutions 

• better use of assistive technologies
  

• better transportation / mobility  solutions 

• safe management of personal funds 

• better exercising solutions 

• better tech awareness to use gadgets and services 

• better home management services 

• better old age home management 
  

• better eyesight management  

Let us not look down on the elderly, they point us  to great business opportunities in trying to serve them.

George.

How to bring about innovative thinking ?

Innovation brings value and growth in societies. Were it not for the innovation of the steam engine and electricity or to more recently the digital computer, humans would not have been able to achieve this growth and economic prosperity. We  hear about the need to bring Innovation to our workplace, lifestyle, but we have struggled to bring it around. 

As we know any product, process or service that adds value to the user of that product, process or service, is an innovation. 

Recently in research conducted by Scott Kirsner on 270 corporate leaders in Strategy, Innovation and Research and Development roles, titled The biggest obstacles to Innovation in large companies  and reported in HBR July '18, (click here), it was found that internal politics and turf wars were the biggest obstacles to Innovation in large companies. Poor adaption of new emerging technologies, especially AI, Blockchain, IOT etc were at #6. Lack of budget was at #4 while lack of strategy and vision was at #5. 

The top three reasons cited as responsible for lack of innovation in large companies were, (as given in the pictorial) 

1. Politics / turf wars, 
2. cultural issues and 
3. inability to act on critical signals

This calls for serious introspection as to what promotes and what holds back innovation. It also gives an idea of where one needs to actually concentrate to promote innovation in organisations. 

Innovation is basically of three types - Product, Process and Business Model (click here). All our thought processes of Innovation will be included in either the product, process or the business model.

If then, what is exactly Innovation ? 

• Does it reduce your efforts or inputs  ?
  
• Does it improve the outputs ?
  
• Does it incorporate modern technology ?
  
• Does it improve convenience ?
  
• Does it improve the speed of process and delivery ?
  
• Does it improve the quality ?
  
• Does it entail bringing around a new product or a process ?
  
• Does it improve safety ?
  
• Does it reduce pollution ?
  
• Does it help build sustainable environment ?
  
• Does it bring better value to customer ?
  

The answer is many .. Innovation encompasses all these thought processes.   

Most organisations try to promote a fearless, creative environment that helps employees think innovative. Apple and Google have gone to the extreme, by earmarking about 10-20% of their time for working on innovative products and services, that may in the future be adopted across the organisation for the benefit of humanity that could bring more value to society.

Referring to the article in HBR of Dec '19 by Scott, Paul, Rahul and Natalie, Breaking down the barriers to Innovation, (click here), the authors have listed out a tool called BEAN, Behaviour Enabler, Artifact and Nudge that the authors claim will enable innovation.

Behaviour Enables are tools or processes that make it easier for people to do different creative things

Artifacts are things that one can see and touch that will support the new behaviour

Nudges are tactics that promote change through indirect suggestion and reinforcement.

In the research carried out by the authors they have identified five features exhibited by innovative organisations, they are given by the anagram F-A-C-E-S

1. Focus on deeply understanding customers' needs, unstated needs and desires

2. Assume there is a better way of doing everything

3. Collaborate across and beyond organisations, often cross-pollinating

4. Empower people to take considered risks, voice dissenting opinion and seek extra funds to continue with their ideas

5. Believe that Success comes after rapid experimentation, failing often, iterating fast with the spirit of perseverance

Some of the barriers that stand in the way of Innovation can be given in the following points, again given by the interesting Anagram, T-I-D-E-S

1. Lack of Time

2. Interia, lack of infrastructure nd support

3. Doing things Differently

4. High Expenses or cost and possible punishment

5. Poor Innovative Skills

One major handicap of businesses is that they are organised to deliver predictable, reliable results.

The Development Bank of Singapore (DBS Bank Ltd) often had meetings which got extended, wasting hours of time and resources for the bank and the employees. They came out with an effective BEAN called MOJO, Meeting Owner - Joyful Observer, meeting owner being a senior officer and the Joyful owner being a junior officer , the two people together saw that meetings ended on time and saved the bank lot of money and resources. 

BEANS in general have to be simple words or expressions that are eye catching and simple - (approximated by another anagram, R-E-S-I-S-T)

• REINFORCING
• FUNNY and EXCITING
  
• SIMPLE
• PRACTICAL and IMPLEMENTABLE
• CONSISTENT and STEADY
  
• TRACKABLE

An organisation can have any number of BEANS for the different areas, proceses or actions and functions that need to be innovated.

In Alliance University Bangalore, India, we have arrived at a number of such BEANS, for example,

• Faculty need to be PIQS (Precise, Quick and Short), 
• classes have be IN-IT-EX (Interesting, Interactive and Exciting), 
• Quizzes need to be SH-EET (Short and Sweet), 
• Projects need to be PR-IN-EX (PRactical, INteractive and EXciting)

The advantage in this approach is that the faculty and students have now come to enjoy the teaching and learning experience.

Telehealth challenges in treating the elderly

Tele health has pervaded and is supporting the elderly by giving them excellent care by means of popular video apps like Apple Facetime, Android Whatsapp, Google Meet, Zoom, Skype etc. But are these technologies available to the needy patients and if available, are the elderly patients in a physical and mental condition or literate enough to be using these apps comfortably. 

I happened to read the HBR article "4 strategies to make tele health work for elderly patients" in Nov 2020. (click here) It was interesting to read as it is very much relevant to the present times. We see the elderly suffering due to lack of awareness and access to the modern tele health gadgets.

Most of the elderly "digital alien" patients may be aware but not as conversant with the technology as the younger "digital native" population. This raises issues regarding usage and utility of these applications for the elderly people, who critically need them during the Covid times.

Challenges faced by the elderly are given below with possible solutions

1. Not able to use the technology because of limited digital literacy

2. No access to the technology or equipment due to economic reasons or being in remote locations

3. Medical conditions preventing self use of these tech gadgets like blindness, Alzheimer's disease

4. Patients who need full time care and monitoring as they are physically unable to manage on their own

5. Patients are unable to prevent bystanders or public from misusing their weakness and not reporting to the authorities in case of any violation.

The remedies that can be applied are as given below. 

1. seeking help of a close family member who is digitally literate to operate the equipment

2. the government could provide the equipment on loan which could be returned after use

3. government could engage helpers or nurses if no family member of the patient is available to help or the patient needs full time attention

4. the ward nurses and attendants need to be more ethically trained to help and not exploit needy patients

I have been aware of cases in Bangalore, India where nurses from St. Johns Medical College have made visits to homes of Covid patents if they find it difficult to visit hospitals.  This may not be a viable option for all cases.

Putting the onus on the government systems to take care of the elderly and needy when close family members are not available does not work all the time, due to the already strained ways in which the existing government systems are functioning, due to lack of funds, modern equipment and good leadership policies.

Project CHIP (Connected Home over IP) ..

 While in the 80s, we saw the Internet move from text interface to the 90s when it moved to video and graphics, world wide web (WWW) and now at the beginning of the 3 rd decade of the 21 st century we find control going over to voice and the rise of Virtual Assistants from Amazon Echo, Google Home, Microsoft Cortana and Apple Siri, we are getting prepared to an exciting UI for these AI based Virtual Assistants that can carry out voice to text and reverse conversion.

Project CHIP (Connected Home over IP) which was suggested in Dec 2019 is an industry group working on connected smart homes with Amazon, Google and Apple along with the Zigbee alliance which is between Ikea, Samsung and Philips. Together the global giants with other players like Schneider will be able to make a great impact in the smart home market.

Project CHIP is a Connected Home over IP is an open-sourced, royalty-free home automation connectivity standard project which features compatibility among different smart home and Internet of things products and software. Wikipedia 

What are they planning to deliver ?

Adoption of a new royalty free connectivity standard that ensures better compatibility between smart home products with higher security is the main objective of this alliance. 

What is the advantage for the world through this alliance ?

1. Since it is open source, there will no royalty for connecting and using different networked products across ecosystems, ensuring inexpensive, convenient, free access and usage between home networked systems.

2. Being standardised, it ensures rapid adoption and wide usage. Just like the open source TCP/IP helped make Internet accessible for everybody, the project CHIP protocols will make it easy for organisations across the world to start collaborate using these protocols and provide vallued added end products to the customer (like e-commerce was enabled by www and TCP/IP).

3. Being cheap and low cost connectivity standards, it can promote fast development of poorer areas of the world

4, It can bring about great developments in healthcare and medical diagnosis without the interference of expert doctors

5. It can bring about revolution in improving productivity  in agriculture ending the food grain shortage

Over time, more uses will be exposed and innovated leading to better quality of human life.

George..

 

Administering Digital Health - Challenges of healthcare post Covid..

Healthcare professionals the world over during this Covid time are getting engaged with their patients through the Internet, the process is commonly called Telehealth. We see healthcare professionals interacting with patients and the public through different communication means, Whatsapp, ZOOM calls etc. 

Adaption of digital technologies in the healthcare sector is majorly observed in areas such as 

• customer engagement - engaging with patients
  
• care coordination - delivering personalised patient care
  
• improvements in remote work capabilities - distance is not an issue as I can get checked by doctors from Harvard Medical school or from from my nearest Public Health Centre
• expansion of the use of telemedicine - doctors checking patients using digital tools and prescribing medicines and procedures, even going to the extent of carrying out medical / surgical procedures over the Internet
  

Lisa and Lawrencein their HBR paper of November '20 "The pitfalls of telehealth and how to avoid them" (click here) points out the main issues in the field of telehealth globally. Healthcare issues all over the world during this Covid time have been very challenging. These are mainly related to access, while the rich are able to access the best doctors, disparities in access exist for vulnerable population, racial and ethnic divisions, elderly, low income and less educated groups in both the developed, developing and less developed countries of the world.

The medical professionals are also facing great challenges both in terms of 

• video fatigue, 
• longer work days 
• erosion of work life boundaries resulting in burnout and 
• work life disruption. 

Proper exercise of telemedicine results in good telehealth. Telehealth is very popular and very effective these days except for the above problems. People above the age of 65 years, black and hispanic patients, (like the tribals and backward classes in India) are less likely to use telehealth as their Internet access is also limited. 

In all probability, post Covid, the digital health systems we have been exposed to presently will stay and be part of our daily interactions. Our medical experience is going to be of a hybrid nature. It will be observed in the following four areas.

1. Better customer engagement
2. Care coordination
3. Improvement in remote work capabilities and
4. Expansion in the use of telemedicine
   

Some of the most popular applications of digital interventions in the Healthcare sector as highlighted in the HBR September 2020 paper titled 4 steps to digitize healthcare for the long term, by Siemens Healthineers (click here) are 

• electronic intensive care units (eICUs), 
• 
  home monitoring of patients, 
• virtual forward triage, 
• remote care 
• digital communication.

Siemens outlines four steps to have a smooth digital health transition. 

1. manage data as a strategic asset, both clinical and operational data need to be separated with proper security protocols applied
   
2. empower data-driven decisions deploying AI tools to make sense of patient data and operational data to help take the right decisions
   
3. connect care teams and patients including home monitoring with secure tele-consulting
   
4. build a learning health system with aligned incentives, learning from past experiences, with a commitment to digital transformation
   

The article by Lisa and Lawrence mentioned above, "The pitfalls of telehealth and how to avoid them, in HBR, November 2020, mentions the challenges experienced by healthcare professionals and patients.

1. Different telehealth systems in different countries and different hospitals in the same country, both in private and public sector raises issues of inter-operability, which needs to be addressed and reduced. Standardisation of processes, procedures, equipments can help a lot in this regard.

2. Provide all means to improve the communications between healthcare providers, professionals and patients, better communication can remove all non-standardisation problems

3. enhancing the relationships between the providers, doctors and the patients, by way of frequent meetings, sharing of knowledge

4. improving the quality and efficiency of healthcare by having hygienic tools, reliable equipments, machines and qualified and experienced healthcare professionals

Healthcare systems post Covid will see a great change with more telehealth opportunities appearing across the horizon, which is here to stay.

Can we depend on digital health tools to help us in this initiative ? Shirley and Mitesh in their article in HBR Nov '20, "Digital health tools offer new opportunities for personalised care", (click here) give us lot of ideas on this. The biggest change going to happen is in the area of personalised medical care that can be given to the patient in his or her home. 

In the study reported in the above article, digital health initiatives administered on a control group and three other groups with different personal health initiatives helped reiterate the fact that just like in service industries, we tend to deliver personalised experiences to the customer, in the same way, we need to be personal with each patient in administering digital health initiatives. We need to understand what suits each customer, according to their physical activity status and deliver them personal digital health initiatives.

George..

Planning to innovate ?? - take your first steps in Sustainability.

Sustainability is a great buzzword in industry today. But is following sustainability taxing for the industry or an opportunity ? The paper in HBR Why sustainability is now the key driver of innovation by Ram Nidumolu, CK Prahlad and MR Rangaswami in HBR, Sept, 2009 (click here) is an interesting writing to understand how organisations can voluntarily take steps for sustainability and be innovation trail blazers for the other players in the industry.

The authors mention what are the first steps and how any organisation can start its first steps at Innovation. It need not be from research and development or production or any similar industry area. The first steps can be from the area of sustainability, identify areas where there are violations in terms of environmental standards and propose actions to meet those environmental standards. Those can be the first baby steps any organisation takes in the area of innovation. The paper speaks of how sustainability could be the first innovation steps in any organisation and how that innovation can help the organisation to create industry standards, take the first mover advantage and set standards for others to follow.

By treating sustainability as a goal today, early movers will develop competencies that rivals will be hard-pressed to match. That competitive advantage will stand them in good stead, because sustainability will always be an integral part of development.

Stage 1 - viewing compliance as an opportunity
It is easy to comply with low level; sustainability requirements. But it is difficult and tough to comply with high level sustainability requirements.

Stage 2 - Making Value chains sustainable
The actions taken to get the value chains sustainable has to start from ther supply chain.

Supply chain - Along with many sustainable practices, using Carbon management technologies aim to manage anthropogenic releases of greenhouse gases, such as those associated with the combustion of fossil fuel use, in an effort to mitigate the potential impacts of these emissions on climate systems. 

Operations - ensuring that the different operations in the organisation, with suppliers, distributors etc are sustainable
Workplaces - Work From Home and Telecommuting options bring in gret benefits to the organisations both in terms of saving on energy, transportation costs, utilities, rentals and so on.
Returns - Returned items more frequently than not, almost 70% are in working condition. These returned items instead of throwing away can be used in demo, training centres or can be cannibalised to recover costly parts that can be reused.

When companies start environmental sustainability programs, they unknowingly take the lead with their competitors in these areas of innovation. This gives the organisations great confidence and an advantageous lead over their competitors. These innovation initiatives also help uncover the monetary benefits that waste reduction and energy efficiency can deliver. This gives the organisations definite and  measurable lead and advantage over their competitors.

Stage 3 - Designing sustainable products and services
Along with the existing product line, companies can plan to design new products that are environmentally sustainable. These products though will take some time to establish itself, can definitely give an upper hand to the organisations vis-a-vis its competitors.

Stage 4 - Developing new business models
Recovering the useful items from the waste materials can help organisations to start new business lines from these new products, giving them ample time over their competitors to innovate and offer superior products and services.

Stage 5 - Creating next-practice platforms -
Organisations that practice sustainable solutions in their daily operations finally end up with their employees getting competitive and coming up with daring innovations that can change the manufacturing ecosystem itself, creating next practice platforms.

Taking this first step in innovation, the sustainability initiative will definitely give the organisation a competitive edge over competitors. With more competitors carrying out their own novel environmental strategies, the earth itself will benefit.

George..

Improving the Machine Learning algorithm - Getting an upstart

Artificial Intelligence is the field of the future. It is going to pervade all spheres of human activity. The earlier one gains access to the terms and tools of using AI and Machine Learning, the better one can remain in the forefront.

Machine learning is an application of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides systems the ability to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can access data and use it learn for themselves. - expertsystem.com

Machine Learning is completely algorithm, data and feedback based. The output of the Machine Learning system is the output of the interaction of data and feedback with the algorithm. 

One of the best examples of Machine Learning is the Google Maps. When we look at how to improve the Machine Learning algorithm that improves the predictive behavior of the system, we need to look at the following steps and analyses

1. the driving routes, 
2. number of vehicles using the Google Maps software, 
3. alternate routes available
4. how fast one can collect this data through the communications network, 
5. how fast it can be processed, 
6. how fast can the feedback be collected and 
7. how effectively can this feedback be recursively used to improve the algorithm

This is just one example of Artificial Intelligence /  Machine Learning application in the modern day life.  Analysing Radiographic images is another area where AI is already finding use.

So the best way to improve the machine learning is to find ways 

1. to improve the algorithm based on which the Machine learning happens
2. getting access to reliable, accurate, disparate and varied source of training data and
3. gaining access to faster and effective feedback loop based on which the algorithm improves further
4. provide best quality output results that are effective
   
5. gain access to competitive advantage in sourcing data, and feedback

In Machine Learning we cannot deliver less quality results like in products, it can only be less effective output or prediction. Since Machine Learning is self learning and adaptive, if we give it access to large amounts of quality data and feedback, naturally the output predictions also will be of high quality.

Gaining the Competitive edge is vital in the Machine Learning area as the saying goes, the winner takes it all. 

Each player distinguish himself and his AI services by 

1. identifying sources that can give data and feedback that has not been accessed, 
2. identifying sources of data and feedback that are slow and hence has not been accessed, 
3. identifying sources of data and feedback that are not in a readable form 

The player who has access to large quantities of data and feedback and having an efficient algorithm that adapts to the changing times,. will finally get the upper hand in the coming years. 

The article by Ajay Agarwal et al, "How to win with Machine Learning", HBR, Oct 2020 (click here) gave a good insight into writing this article. 

George..

Structuring an organisation for Innovation

In the digital world from the early 50s, we have seen digital computers starting as centralised Mainframes, Mini. In the early 80s we saw a great innovation, the advent of the desktop computer.

Later on in 2007 we saw another innovation, the mobile phone had computing capabilities, smart phone in 2016, wesee the mobile phone also getting great photography capabilities.  

In the software side, the advent of iTunes in the early 2000 was indeed a great game changer for the music industry.

Frequently we opine that Innovation is a function of individual characteristics, subject expertise and organisation motivation. But rarely we look at the organisation structure that can can aid innovation.

Recently while researching through the Harvard Business Review on Innovation, I happened to see this article in the latest November-December 2020 issue of HBR titled "How Apple is organised for Innovation". (click here). It was an aye pener for me to understand how organisation structure can influence Innovation in the organisation. 

Typically organisation at the time of starting are organised on functions, like Production, Planning, Marketing, HR, Finance, Accounts , Shipping etc... Bur a organisation grows, we find functional organisation become cumbersome and problemmatic , resulting in complex communication structures and often missed communication, resulting in sub-optimal decision making. As the organisation grows in size, products and plants, the senior management then takes the decision to reorganise on products, business units or divisions. The basic functions get replicated in all these divisional or plant organisations.

While researching I was fascinated to read how Apple Corp, has grown from its starting on April Fool's day in 1976 to the present day to turn in revenues of $260 billion, generating profits of $55 billion and with a market cap seven times to $1817 billion. (click here for Fortune site).

Apple Computers, Inc. was founded on April 1, 1976, by college dropouts Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who brought to the new company a vision of changing the way people viewed computers. Jobs and Wozniak wanted to make computers small enough for people to have them in their homes or offices.

From 1976 since the start of Apple to 1985 when Jobs was kicked out of Apple Macintosh program. The Macintosh was getting popular and the author had the good opportunity to work on the Macintosh in Goa Engineering College. 

What is interesting is to know how after Steve Jobs rejoined the company in 1997, 12 years after being chuckded out, it had revenues of $ 7 billion. By 2020 the revenues have grown to $260 billion, app 37x in a matter of 23 years.

When Steve Jobs died in 2011, the organisation  had grown 15x to $108 billion in a matter of 14 years . After Time Cook took over in 2011 till 2020 in 9 years, the organisation has grown only 2.4 x.

We need to understand that this growth of Apple has happened over the last 50 years, during the growth of the digital age. Steve Jobs took the lead in exploiting digital tools and technology to take a company from scratch to a numero uno technology company of the world in 44 years. 

What has not changed in Apple over these 44 years has been the organisation structure style. It initially was functionally organised and even to this day with $260 billion revenue, still continues to be functionally organised. Corporations that have grown this size all have changed their structure to be based on products, business units or divisions.  

How has Apple managed to stick to the functional organisation style and still give exceptionally innovative products and outstanding usiness performance ?

Three leadership characteristics are vital here

1. Deep functional expertise of the members and leaders of teams

2. Immersion in deep details desired by customer, even going beyond.

3. Willingness to debate collaboratively across the organisation

Apple's leaders are all deeply knowledgeable in their specialised areas. Also the deep passion in their field of expertise and an unflinching commitment to give the best to the customer, whether he wants it or is aware of it or not at an affordable cost. combines with the willingness to challenge existing ideas and be willing to accept new ideas from the system have all been great inputs to the success of the organisation to a great extent.

For an Apple insider, this may not be apparent and visible, but for an outsider, the innovation process is interesting. While from 1997 to 2011, we find breakthrough innovation was happening in Apple, post Steve Jobs' tenure, the innovation is mainly incremental. Apple is yet to come up with a breakthrough product that can set a whole new industry following. Apple has been incrementally innovating it's earlier products. Like for instance the portrait mode in the camera that was made popular from the 2016 model of iPhone 7 onwards.  

Why has Cook not been able to bring in a major breakthrough in the innovation process at Apple in the last 9 years ?  We find only incremental innovations happening on the existing product. Does it require another person of the calibre of Jobs, different from Cook, to pursue with developers and know customer needs, likes and dislikes well to come up with a breakthrough innovation ?

But is one dependent only on breakthrough innovation all the time to succeed ? Take the example of Toyota, the Japanese automotive giant. Toyota never believed in breakthrough innovation, it has all the time carried out incremental innovation and is undoubtedly one of the largest automobile companies of the world. 

Is incremental innovation better than breakthrough innovation ?         

Citing research on Procter and Gamble and other small Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) by Marcel Corstgens et al published in MIT Sloan Management Review and reported in HBR, (click here), it is found that though P&G spends a massive $1 billion every year on R&D, rarely has it come up with any radical or breakthrough innovation compared to the relatively small Reckitt Benckiser that has reported small gains over five to eight years in  it's product line, resulting in slow and steady rise in profit and sales. McDonalds and Heinz have also reported small benefits with incremental innovation. Companies with large R&D budgets have only reduction in costs, improving profits than small companies who are achieving small definite gains taking them confidently forward.

How can organisations now in their advanced stages of growth organised on division or product line, realign to the functional style and innovate is an interesting point to be considered. The Apple's example was to demonstrate how innovation was supported in Apple with the functional organisation structure.

George ..

Transition to a Work From Anywhere (WFA) culture ..

Happened to listen to a podcast from a HBS Associate Prof. Raj Chaudhury as part of my lectures to students on the Work From Home (WFH) culture.  My interest was particularly high after reading reports from the press that Tata Consultancy Services, the IT giant from India employing almost 4.5 lakh employees and headquartered in Mumbai was seriously thinking of shifting most of its employees to work from home option. TCS is a top employer globally, and has 453,540 employees representing 147 nationalities across 46 countries. 

 
TCS was honored as one of the Fortune Best Big Companies to Work For in 2020. TCS 25x25 policy speaks of less than 25 percent of employees coming to office at any point of time and employees spending less than 25% of their time in the office. Secure Borderless Workspace of TCS is thus a great way to work post-Covid. Many organisations around the world are observing how TCS is able to perform and if the experiment turns successful, may turn to the WFA option.

Work from Home is what TCS is trying to propagate. But Prof. Raj Chaudhary is trying to speak of a still advanced concept Work From Anywhere (WFA). (click here..) Prof. Raj Chaudhary quotes of the US Patent Office deploying this policy from early 2015 and reported a 4.4 % increase in productivity. 

Knowledge workers are specially benefitting from this arrangement as they have the flexibility t work independently from either home or anywhere within the country or outside.

The five Organisational processes that get affedted by this WFA policy are given below -

1. communication 
2. sharing knowledge 
3. socialising 
4. measuring productivity 
5. data privacy and regulation

The benefits to the organisation and employees are manifold as given below

• Freedom to live and work from anywhere in the world
• Better quality of life
• Closer to family
• Greater recreational opportunities
• Move to healthy suburbs instead of living in crowded urban  spaces
• Lower rentals for the organisation and as well as employees,

Liiving in top end spots like Koramangala, JP Nagar etc in bangalore can pull any person behind by as much as INR 30 - 40K every month as rent, while in Bangalore suburbs rents are as low as INR 6000 and even lower in the villages. 

Working on the cloud server and secure communication channels help ease the communication problem. Organising weekly get to-gethers where attendees are selected randomly across hierarchy in circulation, with top management in attendance is a great way to socialise. Since there are no fixed hours of working, employees can work across geographies and time zones without much of adjustment from home. 

Weekends with family and away from work gives relaxation to employees.

Gitlab after implementing WFA policy was able to report $18,000 benefits for each employee.

 The main benefit of this policy in countries like India is going to be reduction in traffic on roads, less pressure on urbanisation and pollution.

Is Covid the right time for Open Innovation ?

Prof. Henry Chesbrough of the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkely, coined the term Open Innovation over a decade ago, or specifically seventeen years back in 2003.  (click for his HBR podcast here.) According to Prof. Henry Chesbrough  

Open Innovation is the distributed innovation process involving flows of knowledge across organisational boundaries for both monetary and non-monetary reasons in line with the organisation business model. 

An organisation has knowledge within it's boundaries as also outside it. Organisations are ready and willing to take knowledge from outside but are they ready tio share their knowledge with the outside world ?

In open innovation when an organisation shares its ideas with ideas, there is a possibility the external organisation looks at the idea from a different perspective and can come up with a use or application never thought before. The potential of ideas and sharing thoughts is so powerful.   

When one does Open Innovation 

• one need not always start from scratch, it may be from the middle
• one can get to market faster with the new product or application and
• share the risks and losses with the other players

Times of crisis have been great opportunities for organisations to try out different ideas. Similarly they have done during the Covid time. 

The Covid crisis has got the world to understand one major lesson, we are all in it together. There is no escape for any one person or community from the effects of the crisis. All major crisis going to befall humanity are indeed ones that have global impact, like for instance, global climate change. The experiences we get from this crisis should form our learning to tackle the next global crisis. 

Open Innovation or Crowd Sourcing is one of the best  ways to solicit workable, plain practical ideas from the teams and affected individuals.

During crisis times,. how can we make open innovation work ?

1. Don't ask for or insist on IP rights - concentrate more on sharing your advantageous position with others to produce products that can benefit humanity during this tough time

2. Leverage two sided innovation -  companies have come to realise that they need participation from the employees and managerial staff or partners together to succeed.

3. Embrace new partners - earl;ier we were working with limited partners. Now with the global crisis , suddenly companies are xposed to international  willing partners and collaborators

4. Urgency leads to transformation - it is a crisis like situation that brings the best in any person or organisation. Similarly a Covid crisis like situation has brought the bright companies and their people to work together for brilliant solutions to tackle this global crisis.

We can unitedly and through open innovation initiatives tackle major crisis likely to befall humanity in the future.

George..

Ref: 1. Linus Dahlander and Martin Wallin, Why now is the time for Open Innovation, HBR, June 2020.