"Shake off complacency to go forward" Azim Premji at the Fifth India Innovation Summit
New Situations need New Solutions
[Bangalore, 12 June 2009] The Fifth India Innovation Summit by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) opened to a packed audience here today. The summit was organised with the intention of emphasising the importance of innovation in an economic downturn and India's key role as a flag bearer of innovation for economic development. The summit also took a close look at the preparedness of India Inc. in challenging times and its ability to leverage on current market opportunities innovatively. Kris Gopalakrishnan, MD & CEO, Infosys, chaired the summit and Azim Premji, Chairman, Wipro Ltd delivered the keynote address.
Welcoming all delegates and participants T. Parabrahman, Chairman, CII Karnataka State Council said, "This summit has grown in stature, quality and number of participants over the years. Innovation will be pertinent everywhere; in business processes, to deliver value more efficiently, in customer intimacy, to increase the utility of goods and services, and in business models, to extract new sources of value from networks and information flows."
Kris Gopalakrishnan, Chairman of Fifth India Innovation Summit and MD & CEO, Infosys congratulated CII on taking the lead and for the continued success of all summits organised till now. "Innovation is a cycle from generation to growth, boom, bust, and creation of a new normal. For any country in the world, India is of primary interest and there is a lot of focus on India now", said Kris Gopalakrishnan.
Azim Premji, Chairman of Wipro Ltd said, "Creativity is thinking up new things and innovation is about doing new things; so basically innovation is just applied creativity. It need not be restricted to products and can be about quality, productivity and most importantly in fundamental business models." The current complacency of the industry is worrying because the competition is growing at a faster pace, e.g. the BPO export of Philippines now is almost equal to India while 5 years ago it was just 10%. The actual India advantage is our family culture that supports engineers. India still generates more engineers than it needs while the western world still does not have enough to meet their own requirements. "We need to have recruitment in diversity, particularly in the mass recruitment or else it will lead to recruitment of clones. You should get those who are different, who will bring in new views, ideas and a new way of doing things. Only this shall bring in innovation," said Mr. Premji. He also stressed on the need to allow creative failures. Companies should identify, prioritize and allocate resources so as not to dilute the innovation efforts. While summing up his address, Azim Premji stated that "Innovation is about the sprit that engages the body, mind and heart and the excitement of thinking and the courage of doing things different, about creating a better tomorrow than today and outcome based for our country."
The first session of the summit concentrated on economic cycles and innovations. Economic downturns are hotspots for innovation, and several great companies today are products of previous economic downturns. Sahana Sarma, Partner, McKinsey & Company highlighted that the current downturn is indeed a structural break and is the time to ask 'What is the new normal?' "Indian innovation is among the fastest growing in the world, but however with a low level of diversification. India's young population can be a critical asset over the next few decades," said Sahana Sarma. The potential areas to drive innovation in India are mobile services, building management systems and solutions that are applicable to local as well as international market. The industry should also focus on improving talent base and enabling entrepreneurial culture.
Amit Kalyani, Executive Director, Bharat Forge Ltd said "Companies that continue to invest in innovation shall come out of recession much stronger and are able to convert adversity into opportunity." Innovative cost effective measures are bringing down cost through focus on cash conservation, product quality and speed to market. Companies should concentrate on bringing even the lowest denomination employee into the game and eliminate waste processes. Girish Wardadkar, President & Executive Director, KPIT Cummins stated that "Digital manufacturing is a tool & process to validate and establish proof of concept for a new product and associated infrastructure."
"There is a need to assess the situation and develop scenarios. There are opportunities even in this downturn and hence the need for cherry picking our strategy and establish the mood accordingly" said Bhaskar Bhatt, MD, Titan Industries Ltd. He was opening the session on the current downturn and innovative solutions to the dominant concern.
"The global gems and jewellery industry is on a progressive note. The market for branded jewellery in India is growing at a fast pace and is expected to be at $2.2bn by 2010" stated Ganesh Narayan, Executive Director, C Krishnaiah Chetty & Sons.
Hameed Bhombal, Senior President & CTO, Aditya Birla Group opined that innovation is questioning and challenging the existence for something better, more exciting and more rewarding. From an online industry perspective Jawahar Malhotra, CTO & VP - Consumer Platforms, Yahoo! India R&D said that a confluence of imperatives - dreams of the people, population growth, global warming leading to a low carbon economy - is leading to a huge opportunity. The current challenges are tight budgets, glut of a low priced page inventory and online user expectancy.
The day saw practitioners of innovation coming together to share their experiences and do case studies on how they implemented their innovative ideas. It also helped in creating and expanding a network of such companies through periodic interaction.
"CII Innovation Summit is not only a premium event, but an excellent opportunity for organizations across industries to come together to discuss and showcase the spirit of innovation in the country," said Bina Raj-Debur, Director, Corporate Marketing, HP India. "The world is observing India with great interest, and innovation in the areas of environment, resource conservation and energy efficiency will help sustain our competitiveness in the current economic scenario," she added.
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