Can we define Innovative organization?

What makes an organization innovative is debatable but there are some attributes which can differentiate an innovative organization from others. Some of these are as under:-

1. Freedom which is visible when a team member is empowered to try new approach to his/her work.
2. Trust which shows when members share their ideas with one another with openness.
3. Humor when people do their work and have fun too.
4. Idea support when members encourage each other ideas.
5. Debate when they constructively challenge each other ideas and approaches.
6. When there is less of conflict and interpersonal issues.
7. When members have time to think about new ideas and new ways to problem solving.
8. When members can take action in case of risk

It is the responsibility of the leader to oversee the change towards innovation and to use all his resources to make his organization more innovative. He can choose persons with potential and can make them attend leadership trainings which can be arranged in-house or from outside to instill a culture of innovation. One should always remember that when we are talking about culture change the time frame most certainly goes up from days to years and this becomes most important factor to gauge a CEO’s performance.

The Right Transition

In one’s professional life one always faces transition where one may be asked to lead a new project within a strategic business unit or you may be transitioning from a smaller role in a bigger organization to a bigger role in a startup company. How one approaches such transitions become very important for one’s success or failure.

In a startup situation the challenge is to build the structures, systems and strategy from scratch without any clear framework, recruiting and building a high performance team and all but with limited resources. In a situation where you have been told to save a business acknowledged being in deep trouble the challenges are to re-energize the demoralized employees and stakeholders, making effective decisions under time pressure and going deep enough with painful cuts and difficult choices. In case of managing a rapidly expanding business the challenges are to put structures and systems in place for effective scaling and integrating many new employees. In case of re-energizing a previous successful organization that now faces problems the challenge is to convince employees that change is necessary and carefully restructuring the organization. And in case you are in a situation where you have to sustain success where you are told to hold a position by a very successful leader then the challenge is to manage the team the leader has created and also have to find the ways to take the company to the next level. In many cases the challenges may be a mix of the above for which the challenges and to-do list will vary

India needs more free business resources

I was listening to an interview of Steve balmer in which he again and again stessed in one thing that you should do what you love. If someone wants to start something he/she should go for it irrespective of recession as microsoft and apple were also started during ressionary period and GE was started just after the great de-leveraging of 1873 which was the bubble just before 1930’s. He said that possibilities are immense specially in technology domain and software is going to touch many fields. In fact I see lots of technology startups coming up in India specially by engineering graduates. Most of the ideas which I see are good but the only concern is that these youngsters are more of technocrats and have very less business orientation. There is a need to have more of free business resources within India so that these young enthusiasts can refer to them for guidance.

Why are we lagging in internet revolution!

I was reading a news column which read that starting july 2010, every person in finland will have the right to a one-megabit of broadband connection and by 2015 it will be extended to an impressive 100 Mb broadband to everyone. Well that is impressive considering the fact that approximately 79 percent of Finnish population used internet. In India as per the TRAI figures of June 2009 the internet subscribers were 14.05 million with the share of broadband around 47%. These figures are still very less percentage wise. Even the teledensity in India as of June 2009 is around 40% which is also less and if we take rural teledensity it is around 16% which is dismal. Though the telecom setup in India is improving but we still are far away from the world class infrastructure through which we can harness the talent available in the rural areas which still remains untapped.

Promote Entrepreneurship

Most of us would like/love to be entrepreneurs at some point in their life or at least have thought on these lines. I wonder what would happen if we were exposed to entrepreneurship right from our school days irrespective of our subjects. That is a humanities student or an art student should know as much about it as would a management or an engineering student. Only when we will involve all from various backgrounds right from early years of learning, would we see great products/services materialising sometime in future. Would that not be amasing!

Evolution of Yahoo

I was listening to the former president of yahoo Ms Sue Decker who now teaches at Harvard Business School. She tols that more than 500 million people visit yahoo per month. In the initial years ie from the year 1995 to year 2000 the main aim/strategy of yahoo was to get big fast. Then till year 2006 their main focus was to monitize through media sales and text marketing and now their main aim is to integrate all irrespective of the audience and give them a seamless experience. She also told how they feel that they should have entered much before in search. Now they are rewiring yahoo and making it open to third party developers and in this way they are hoping to cash in the wisdom of crowds. Even though their latest marketing communication of " Its you" they are promoting their customer first approach which is indeed commendable and should give them good results.

Do you know what you don't know

In your life it is very important to be aware of those things which you do not know or are not within your scope. This is important because then you can think of other alternatives of doing that thing or involving a third person who is best suitable for that job. After all , no one know everything.

Technology spreads exponentially!

If you are an entrepreneur in the technology domain and say you come up with an application of mobile phone and it clicks. One can imagine the king of value it can create for your customers as well as you in a very short time. I read somewhere that HP took 40 years to become a billion dollar company, Microsoft took 15 years, Oracle 9, yahoo 2 and Skype took 6 months only! One can imagine the kind of wealth future entrepreneurs will create.

Why some organizations buzz with energy?

I was listening to the podcast of Lynda Gratton professor of management practise of London business school in which she has explained why some organizations buzz with energy and some do not. She calls this by the name of hotspots. She says that hotspots are created when employees work in a co-operative ways irrespective of the internal competition, good coaching and mentoring practices are also an add on, behaviour of senior management as well as your hiring process also becomes important. It becomes important to screen out non cooperative people. Encourage people to work across boundaries on something that excites everyone. Strong commitment and the ability to work with different styles of people also becomes important.

Small business mistakes

I came across a great article on 101 small business mistakes and what you can lean from them. I am giving the link: http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/money/article/101-small-business-mistakes-and-what-you-can-learn-from-them-gregory-go