Last time I wrote about one of the techniques of learning Innovation called Innovation by Subtraction. This time, I would be trying to explain one more type of Innovation viz., Incremental & Radical Innovations.

The Incremental & Radical innovation techniques are most commonly used across the world for innovation. They are also called Sustaining & Disruptive Innovation techniques.

Incremental innovation generally relates to enhancements or small improvements in the existing products or services, whereas the Radical innovation brings a significant improvement in the product or the service.

One of the most common examples of the Incremental innovations are the early Pentium chips developed by Intel. From Pentium I to IV, they were generally based on the similar pattern however as the new version came out they brought out newer technologies & innovations in their chipset, which could be attributed to the Incremental innovation. Moving from a single core to dual or quad cores in their latest processers could be termed as a Radical innovation though.

Another example of Incremental innovation being Microsoft’s Windows 98 operating system, which was an enhancement over the Windows 95 operating system. The Windows 95, however was a Radical innovation over the previous Windows 3.1 operating system interface.

Now you may ask me how to differentiate between the Incremental innovation from a Radical innovation or you may even ask, what should be the degree of deviation between an innovation to be considered as Incremental vs Radical?

The answer to this question was defined by a team at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. They recommend to consider an Incremental innovation as a Radical if it meets one or more of following characteristics,

• The innovation provides entirely new set of usage features and experience
• In terms of statistics, it provides about five times or better performance
• Or it provides more than 30% reduction in the costs of the product / service

Normally the Incremental & Radical innovations go hand in hand. If you see my previous examples you would see that the Radical innovation has followed after one or more Incremental innovations. So you would relate to the fact that the Radical innovation is characterized by a long period of Incremental innovations before and after it.

The diagram shows the cycle of the Radical Innovations and how they arrive after a series of the Incremental innovations.

The important benefit of the Radical change is the fact that it can potentially and significantly change the basis of competition in the favour of the innovator.

Incremental innovation is relatively easy to obtain than Radical one and I am sure by now you would have understood pretty much of it.

There are significant examples of where the Radical innovations have given great advantages to the innovators. Some of them are as follows,

IBM

Introduction of electronic typewriter, nearly wiped off the manual type writers form the market and gave IBM a significant business advantage.

Wal-Mart

Innovated a radical process change in the way the supply chain was managed throughout its stores in the US that gave a significant advantage in terms of time & cost and helped it cement its position as No. 1 in the retail market.

Incremental Vs Radical – Which one to choose ?

Radical Innovations are significantly risky, take more time to develop and are more expensive to obtain in nature, whereas, the Incremental are significantly less risky, relatively cheaper & based on a proven product or a process and are more likely to produce results in a shorter time frame.

The Incremental innovations provide the businesses with a steady stream of enhanced and improved products / processes or services, but due to relatively simpler nature of these innovations it is required to keep in mind the following,

• Ensure that the innovations are focussed around the market demands.  Since the nature of innovation is such that you would eventually keep on developing new enhancements, small features, there is a danger that you might do something which the customers would not want and may not need in their product.  If you continue to churn out the improvements or new features that the customer does not want, the customer eventually might look for alternative products.
• Don’t forget Radical innovation ! Incremental innovations do not necessarily envisage the future technology and attempt to provide a bridge between current and future technologies. Imagine what would have happened to iPhone if Apple would have used the traditional keyboard design of the phone !!  Also, remember that its on Radical innovation that changes the business game in your favour !

So when you look around next and do a brain storming about innovation, you might want to start with an Incremental innovation and who knows you might bring out a Radical innovation in your product / process or your service ! 

Good Luck !

The technique is called The Minto Pyramid Principle, or the SCQA technique. The SCQA technique provides you with a flow, that you could use to write your storyline. It helps you write introductions that engages the audience attention before they are told the answers.

Ohh, by now you must be wondering what does SCQA mean? So before you get any impatient, let me describe them,

• Situation – describe what is the current situation
• Complexity – describe the tension / issue in the situation
• Question – describe the question in response to the issue / tension
• Answer – suggest answer to ease out or mitigate the issue / tension

Now lets take few minutes to describe what each of above point means.

Situation

As I mentioned earlier, the Situation describes what is the current situation with regards to the subject. This could be something that the audience may already know. This establishes the context of the discussion.

As soon as the audience might think I know this, what different are you telling me?  you know you have hooked them in the discussion and you may want to start telling them about the complexity.

Example

For last 6 months our availability has been very good and above the threshold.

Complexity

Ok, you set up the context and you have explained the situation. However, now is the time when you actually mention the actual problem or an issue that you want your audience to know.

The answer to the question What happens now that we understand the situation or  What happens next? might help you create a tension un the minds of audience with regards to the story you are telling. Also, once you trigger the tension or curiosity about the possible question, its time you tell the question.

Example

However, this month the situation has changed and we had an unwanted dip in the availability statistics.

Question

The question will arise logically after the context you have set and problem complexity you have mentioned in earlier two points. In most of the cases it might automatically come in the minds of the audience, but you may just want to logically put the question forward.

Example

So what do we need to do to recover from the availability loss and resolve the situation?

Answer

The answer to the question is the main substance of the whole story and you have to make your point emphatically here.  Try to summarise your answer first – completing your introduction to the answer and later break it down into details and write the main body of your presentations or story.

Example

We need to complete find the root cause of the problem. Ensure the problem is fixed and put a plan for prevention of reoccurrence.

I am convinced that using this technique for providing updates would be really effective in day to day work, however I am sure it would take a bit more time for me to actually understand practice the SCQA technique.

After all, this has been explained to us by our Vice president and he seems very convinced of the benefits of using this techniques

The method is explained in greater detail in Barbara Minto’s book "The Minto Pyramid Principle".

Indeed, its not easy to be a father of two !!

Anyways, back to the topic !

I always thought innovation is something that can never be taught on the job and I thought it must come from within individual to break the mould and find out better ways of doing the job. I never thought that you can actually teach someone to think innovative and come up with innovative ideas, implement the innovation concepts and practice innovation techniques.

How wrong I was to think that !

I have been part of the Innovation Sessions in my organization and the experience there has been nothing short of great. Not only these sessions have given me a direction to think different on innovation, but also to learn more on various innovation techniques and processes. 

With this post, I would starting a new article series Learning Innovation based on my own learning and my thoughts on the same. I hope this first post will give you few leads to help yourself learn more on innovation techniques and processes so you can also try them in your organization,

Innovation by Subtraction

Innovation by Subtraction is a bit uncommon process but might yield surprising results.

To use the IbS process for doing an innovation in a process, we are expected to make a list of components of the process. The list should contain the MUST have components of the process. Now, as a part of the IbS, you are expected to brainstorm on how the process would still function without each of the components.  We are expected to innovate the potential value or benefits would be without the components.

However, the most important part of the solution must be the fact that the solution should not compromise the business value or benefits coming out the process. It should sound like a workable business idea !

The examples we discussed within our session were very interesting and the ideas that came out were even better. Have a look at the following table which might give you an idea on how radical can your thinking get when you remove the most essential part (you thought) from your process, service, product.

IbS has been a catalyst for many great innovations over the year.  Most notably of them were,

Phone call with IVR (Interactive Voice Recording)

The most important thing when you deal transactions on phone, are of course the people.  You need someone to listen to you and act on your instructions or help you in dealing issues. Now when you apply the IbS rule to this process of a phone call and remove the most important part of the process, the listener (person) and replace with an automated solution, what remains is an innovative solution of IVR.

Business benefits – Significant reduction of costs, reduction in errors, more customer satisfaction in general.

Client server technology

The most important part of the computer functionality was the business processing and the subsequent hardware that is consumed by desktop PCs do support the business processing. When you remove both 1. an ability to compute itself  and 2. CPU unit, what remains is an innovative solution of Client server technology. The server controls the business processing and has significant CPU power while the clients are more of dumb terminals with only monitor & keyboard as significant hardware. You can still perform full tasks and can add more terminals with less costs.

Business benefits – Significant reduction of costs, space & consistent performance

Touchscreen

Did you ever think of any computing device until last few years with no keyboard to interact with? Calculators, mobile phones, notebooks, desktops were all having dedicated keyboards for users to interact with them. You now take out the most important part of the device interaction i.e. keyboard and the innovative solution is to have a touch screen interface. Touchscreen technology has been touted as one of the most popular device interaction technology now a days with more and more devices giving option of touch screens.

Business benefits – Style factor, bigger screen areas, better interaction techniques

So, think on you can use the IbS technique for finding out innovative ideas and solutions for your processes, services.

So, without saying much here are the photographs.  They are also available on Flickr URL

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Also, if you care, please leave a comment on my blog on how you feel about them.

The first and foremost, I did have a time to play with my little kid ‘Sharv’ and see him growing during his first month. He is one cute little prince for us !

Meanwhile, the furniture work that I had started to get done is complete today and I would soon be posting the photographs on this blog for you all to see and comment on. If you can’t wait until that time, then you might want to have a look at my previous post about my designs and imagine how it may look like So finally I have my work desk at home where I am sitting to write this blog !

More importantly, I had a great time thinking on what I should be doing as my next move. In my previous post where I mentioned that I have resigned from TechMahindra, I did mention that I had a job offer in my hand and I might join another organization in search of a better & a bigger challenge.

However, when I left TechMahindra, my primary objective was to take a break and think about future.

Amdocs offered me a chance to join their organization and offered me a real challenge that I was looking after. A completely new domain, a very different set of technology & processes & of course different set of people around, was a big challenge. I somehow liked it and finally decided to join the company and take up the new assignment.

I still have the thoughts of getting into entrepreneurship and would be attempting to do something along the way. Keep an eye on http://www.thirdbuttonred.com meanwhile .. !

However, hopefully the new assignment now will give me new chance to prove myself all over again..

Sharv represents name of Lord Shiva

Few more names we considered were Romir, Arin, Aarav, Aarush, Krish, Rishit, Adit & Aadi.

He is fair, got dark grey eyes and smiles in his sleep !!

I have uploaded few of his photos on Facebook and you can see them by clicking here !!

It gives me great pleasure to inform you all that my wife (Kanika) delivered a healthy baby boy yesterday night (15th Sep 2009) and have made us proud parents again and my daughter has her own younger brother now !!

It’s a great moment for our family !

Unfortunately due to me being in a different city than my wife during this, I could not be with her during her painful moments but the joy she has given all of us has made us forever indebted to her. 

I love you Kanika, more than ever now !

Now comes the most difficult part of deciding a name for the baby. Although we have been discussing few names for boys & girls earlier, we were never serious in arriving at a definite name until now.

We had a simple criteria in our minds while deciding names. We think the name should be short enough, easy to read, write and pronounce. Few names we are thinking as of now are  Romir, Arin, Adit & Aarush.   Hopefully we will decide a good short, sweet name for the baby boy very soon !

In a celebration mood …

me !

This article has nothing to do with any award / reward function you would see on a television, cinema, but its more to do with the way awards and rewards are judged within an organization and how sometimes it puzzles me.

Today, I had been to a rewards committee meeting as a guest judge and at the end of meeting, I left the room with lots of thoughts to ponder with.

Few days before the meeting, I was sent an excel sheet with good detailed nomination information about  6 candidates from whom I needed to judge the top two candidates. The top two would be rewarded a certain amount as per the company policy. There is a quota of the monthly / quarterly awards which are distributed at the end of every month / quarter.

Normally, the rewards committee has few fixed judges and few guest judges. I was one of the guest judge this time and was asked to voice my inputs on who would, in my opinion, win the award and why.  During the discussion, I observed that the rewards committee makes a good effort and attempt to discuss each case and try to give their opinions on the face value of the nominations they are presented.

On a whole, the process of inviting nominations from Project Managers and having a meeting in which a representation from Sr Management, HR & few guest judges would decide who wins, is good enough in most of the cases.

Most of the decisions, unless the judges know the nominee well, are made on the basis of what is written in the nomination form and how well the arguments are written.

The whole discussion made me wonder, in the end, who actually gets rewarded?

Is it the person who has done a great work or the person who has actually written a great nomination form with appropriate arguments?

How do you ensure that the right person gets the award?

What I have also seen, is the fact that the award normally goes to the person who has come out of adversity and saved a project from a serious escalation or from a difficult situation. Example of this could be someone who has just handled a business critical Priority 1 problem and resolved it within the SLA timings.

Then there is one person who makes an effort all year to keep a consistent performance and ensures that escalations do not happen and also ensures that the crisis situation never arises. This person, although gets nominated for the award, but would never get it, because his nomination form would be a lightweight, compared to the first one.

Typically in the support project, what I have seen is the team or the individual that resolves most problems or most crisis situations is rewarded the most. While, in a positive way it is correct to appraise a person who has gone extra mile to resolve the crisis and save the project from any potential penalty.

However, on the other hand, few people who are proactive, keep wondering what they need to do to get a recognition? In few discussions with the teams previously, we used to joke that we have got the project to such a stable phase, that there is no more challenge left which would give the team a chance to shine above the rest. !!

In a nutshell, there are quite a few factors that would determine whether a project or a person would get a reward or not and few of them I could list as follows,

• Type of project – If a project is stable and all processes are matured, then there is a less likely chance that the project would be considered for any award. Eventually, all the people working in the project have less chance of getting recognized for their work.  Effectively, since the project itself does not offer any challenges, even outstanding person would struggle to get a recognition for the work there.
• Nature of work – If someone has saved the project some costs, efforts or time, then the person would be worthy candidate of being nominated for the rewards. Whenever the nomination is given, its important that all the necessary details are furnished properly. Moreover, the benefits must clearly come out of the nomination form. The words such as costs reduction, resource reduction, automation, efforts saving, crisis resolution  should come out appropriately and should be emphasized.
• Glorify the work -  As I mentioned above, irrespective of how many judges know your work quality personally, the decision is made on the basis of what is written in the nomination form. So its very important to glorify the work and presented accordingly.
• Awareness – One of the most important aspect of being rewarded for outstanding work, is being aware of rewards process and ensuring that the information is proactively sent with some good details as I mentioned above.  During few discussions I had with the teams, it was observed that the team ‘expect’ the managers who work with you to ‘recognize’ their work automatically without the team expressing willingness and desire to actually have one awarded. Its a misconception that the work would automatically be awarded without any advertisement or internal marketing. Unfortunately, its one of the most difficult part for teams to understand and practice.
• Due attention by project managers – Its very easy for project managers to put the blame on the rewards committee about lack of reward to the team. The rewards committee is the soft target by many project managers who fill up the nomination form just because its mandatory and lack ‘awareness’ as I mentioned above.  The project managers should ideally go all out to ensure that all correct details are furnished, glorified and presented accordingly for the rewards meeting.

These are just some of the tips you could use to assist yourself in presenting your case better.  Finally, a quick word on what I believe,

There is only one alternative to hardwork, its name is ‘smart work’ !

• Where would I fit in my 5 or 7 speaker home theatre which intend to buy sometime sooner rather than later
• I have a projector so I need to a place where I can incorporate the projector screen in the design to pull it down and use it for watching movies or sports
• Needed more open space where I can keep the books & papers
• Need of giving more importance to utility over aesthetics
• Finally and more importantly, I realized that the design needs to be modular so as to re-align the drawers if required in future

So out of these added needs, I have created two more designs which I am putting below. I have tried to mention where I intend to keep what so hopefully would give you an idea of how things will look like once its ready and done.

SRD Design 3

SRD Design 4

I personally have liked the Design 4 more than Design 3 but I would want to give some more thinking on which one I should really go for.

Please feel free to click on these designs and explore them and let me know your comments on how I can make them even better.

Ohh, and in case you are wondering what does the title (H.A.M.B.A.I.D.N) mean, its  ‘How about me being an interior designer now?’ !

Since the time I came back from UK, I have been thinking of doing lots of modification in my house in Pune which I bought 4 years ago but never had a chance to stay in (kept locked !!). So the idea of having a TV cabinet & a wall unit came out of the necessity of me trying to get my house in systematic order.

First I gone through lots of interior designer books to find out great ideas. Had gone through at least 15 books but none of it actually gave me a great design which I would use straight away in my home. 

Later, through a reference of my friend, I managed to hire an interior designer to do this work for me, however the designs that were sent to me did not excite me enough to go and agree on them.

Finally I decided to take time and do my own designs.

Internet definitely helped me in getting hundreds of design ideas for every corner of home and after lot of research and thinking I finally managed to get my own home furniture design in place which I would pursue further with the interior designer.

In case you are looking for ideas on home furniture, I would recommend you to visit a great website http://www.home-designing.com for hundreds of them. They are absolutely free to view and be inspired by !

Now without any delay, below are my two final ideas that would go to the workshop for construction.

You can click on the images to see the larger images and feel free to use it in case you want to design them for your own furniture.

While putting the design in place I had following basic requirements as follows, I wanted

• to have a combination of the computer workstation and the TV cabinet together in one seamless design
• to have an exclusive space for printer & my external HDD drives
• to have an exclusive space for my set top box, home theatre & speakers
• to have an exclusive space for news papers, magazines
• to have an exclusive space for mobile charging for my family
• to have an exclusive space for storage of wires, cables & toolkits

With regards to the wall cabinets in the second image, you would definitely have guessed by now that the design has been inspired by Microsoft Office logo. I just love the colour combination of the logo and I thought it would fit in perfectly in my door side partition.  Microsoft, I hope I have not broken any copyright by using the above in my home furniture. After all, I am doing your advertisement !!

I have now sent the designs to the interior designer I have chosen to implement them for me and I am looking forward to see them in flesh for sure.

Do you like them? Let me know your thoughts ..