• Insights

Robert B. Tucker, President, The Innovation Resource (TIR), is an internationally-recognized leader in the field of innovation. Tucker, one of the speakers at E & Y’s Strategic Growth Forum 2011 in India, talks about his views on innovation.

Entrepreneur (E): Innovations in India are yet to reach the global stage. How can we change this?
Robert Tucker (RT): In a recent survey of 50 most innovative firms of the world, Shaadi.com was the only Indian company to be named alongside giants like Apple, Facebook and Google. But I would argue that India is full of highly innovative companies. Tata Motors and Mahindra are standout examples. Firms as diverse as Reliance Industries and HCL are also recognized as innovators on a global scale. I look at your question differently. I see the ingenuity of Indian entrepreneurs and their amazing ability to solve problems and create opportunities with highly constrained resources as being truly impressive.

E: What about applying innovation to sales, services and accounting?
RT: These areas form a category called strategy innovation. In other words, everything a firm does that touches its customer, adds value to the customer experience and is not your basic deliverable falls in the category. This is a realm of great potential.

E: How can we ensure more innovations succeed?
RT: If an idea doesn’t make it to the market, it’s not an innovation; it’s an attempt to innovation. Even if it gets launched but fails, it’s not an innovation. Failure is and will always be a part of the process, no matter how much attention firms pay to improving.

E: What are the key trends that you see emerging?
RT: The field of innovation is seeing great innovation. More firms are turning to open innovation to partner with other firms to bring ideas to market faster. The big trend is toward systematic innovation, to where it’s a top priority in good times and bad; where you focus on managing and measuring the input, throughput and output of ideas. Firms are collaborating with their customers more closely than ever before and harnessing the power of social media. The innovation field will continue to evolve its tools, but ultimately it comes down to focus and will.

E: How can you ensure that innovations get ignited?
RT: In my new book, Innovation is Everybody’s Business, we interviewed 43 innovation-adept managers and leaders, looking to identify the skills that enabled them to get new things done. What we found really surprised us. Instead of oversized egos, we found team players, who worked to develop collaboration skills, who really showed up for others. They were more connected and were able to inspire deep trust. This is what ignited the will to succeed with the innovation initiative. In the book, we outline the seven fundamental ‘I-Skills’ that are essential elements in creating indispensable players at work: Things like an opportunity mindset, an ability and willingness to assault personal, company, and industry assumptions

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©Entrepreneur June 2011

Tags:
Facebook, Google, HCL, I-skills, Innovation is Everybody's Business, Mahindra, Reliance industries, Robert Tucker, shaadi.com, Tata motors, The innovation Resource, TIR