If we go 10 years back on mobile phone market, two names comes to our mind, i.e. Nokia and Blackberry. Market share of Nokia was around 50%. At that time, nobody can think that both company will go away from the market in very short period of time.

Let’s analyse, what went wrong with them and how Apple and Samsung came out strongly during that period.

Analysts says, Senior Management of Nokia and Blackberry haven’t thought on Innovation. Though there is a talk in the market that Nokia has discussed the smart phone technology in early stage, however due to the conflicting view of employees, it never got prioritised.

During the same time, Apple has Invested huge money on research.

Consequences of not paying attention to Innovation is, Nokia had been sold to Microsoft before ~5 years. And still suffering to compete with global giants.

Now let’s move to other sector- Digital camera.

Kodak Invented digital camera. They had huge market share in 90’s in camera. However in 2012 Kodak reported Bankruptcy. During the same period, another company called “INSTA” came with 15 employees and with ~1$ billion market capital (close to what Kodak had in 90’s). What is the difference here between the two. Kodak has Money, employee force, skilled employee and brand name. However they neither interested nor Invested in Innovative technology. Their management thought was, they should focus on primary business, i.e. reel business, instead of leveraging digital products for which they are the pioneers. During the time, reel business is replaced by Digital camera.

Kodak lost an opportunity as they couldn’t compete with other companies in digital business.

Based on case studies discussed above, it is necessary that we should be Innovative on job or we should be ready to adapt an innovation in work space.

Note that, Innovation is happening every where, in every sector. Let’s see below some examples

1. People have started farming on buildings vertically so space can be utilised.

2. Big giants ( e.g. Google) have started collecting health care data and investing in technology for predictive analysis.

3. There is a word called “Saudi America”, this phrase is mainly used for removing America’s dependency on Saudi Arabia for oil as oil will be replaced by other form of energy ( e.g. Tesla Motor’s for electric cars )

4. Low labour cost country concept will be myth in short period of time as Robots will replace the labourers. You can do a work using less money in America then you do it in China.

Another important point people usually discuss is, due to the Innovation, people can loose the job. I can say, it’s completely a myth. It helps to create new market and hence new jobs. Of course if we will not adopt an innovations, there could be a job threat as some one else will take our job.

To be innovative, we should

1. Allow to flow ideas from the mind. Use the Mind map technique.

2. Don’t focus on answering the question, focus on understanding the question.

What is difficult out of below two

a. 5 + 5= ? Or b. ?+?=10

Of course b as there is no limit to define the question.

Once Einstein said, “for me, understanding the question is difficult part and giving an answer is the easiest part.”

3. Encourage the Innovation at work place.

4. Firm should spend on training’s on Innovation.

5. Firm should also give some time to employee to think out of box.

Writer : Dharmesh Kothari