Focus Areas
The TGIF meets regularly to review progress on creating an Innovation ecosystem for Tata companies, which would enhance their innovativeness. The efforts of TGIF could be summarized in four broad areas:
1) Learning and disseminating Innovation
Workshops:
Several workshops to introduce new concepts/tools on Innovation have been organized. It started with Prof. Clayton Christensen who taught the concept of Disruptive Innovation.
Last year, the concept of ‘Open Innovation’ was introduced with the help of Prof Henry Chesbrough of University of California, Berkeley, who is known to be father of OPEN INNOVATION. The learnings from this concept are now being rolled with the help of web 2.0 platform that would encourage Tata companies to open up with Group companies in the 1st stage.
A workshop by Prof. Julian Birkinshaw of London Business School was organized exclusively for a few Tata companies with specific focus to identify and strengthen the weak links of the Innovation Value Chain.
In 2009, a workshop for Senior Tata executives was organized in TMTC that was facilitated by Dr James Canton. Over and above these seminars and workshops, TGIF keeps the interest alive with the help of training programs by Mr Langdon Morris, Mr. David Wittenberg and others.
TQMS, which is Management consulting group dominantly for Tata companies on Performance Excellence, is also the execution arm of TGIF. These seminars, workshops and training have continuously enriched the ‘Body of knowledge’ in TQMS, which has resulted in enhanced its quality of facilitation.
Learning Missions:
To demystify and amplify the concept of Innovation, TGIF had organized Innovation Missions to some of the most Innovative Companies of the world. In 2006, a group of Senior Tata managers went to USA where they visited companies like 3M, Microsoft, Intel, HP and Raytheon.
In 2007, the mission with a different set of people went to Japan to study the role and importance of R&D driven innovations. We visited companies like Ito-En, Fuji, Olympus, Nissan, Toshiba and Hitachi.
A separate visit was organized to Cambridge in which a few Tata Executives participated to understand their eco-system for Innovation.
Learning from these missions has been used regularly by TGIF to refine its approaches for Innovation.
Dissemination:
Tata Management Training Centre (TMTC) has been pursuing the goal of creating a platform that could stimulate innovation in Tata Group, through research and training.
TMTC regularly organizes programs on innovation culture and tools. Some of the regular executive leadership programs organized by TMTC with the help of Harvard and Michigan universities have a separate module/focus on Innovation.
TMTC has also researched the subject and developed a number of papers on the subject.
Group Publication Team releases publications to disseminate the research carried out by TMTC. Some of these publications are:
- Innovation & Innovativeness , The Tata experience – 25 carefully selected innovations from various Tata companies between 1892 - 2008 depict the innovation culture of Tata Group
- 12 Levers that foster innovation
- Innovate - Learning mission to USA & Japan
- 12 ways to use Innovation Strategy to create competitive edge.
- Voyagers 2008 & 2009 - Case studies from Tata Innovista
- Innovation in India – The emerging dynamics
- Leveraging Science for Business transformation
- Thinking out of the box - Best Practices from World class companies
2) Encouraging Innovations
In 2006, TGIF started the process of celebrating innovations in Tata Group through ‘Tata Innovista’. The objective of this program is:
a) Recognise innovators
b) Encourage innovations in companies
c) Share the levers used by companies to identify and execute innovation projects
d) Create a culture of risk taking
Tata Innovista has three category of awards:
- Promising innovations: Those which have been successfully implemented.
- Dare to try – For serious and audacious attempts to innovate but could not be completed successfully. (The idea is to encourage the culture of ‘risk taking’.
- The Leading Edge – For innovative ideas for current business or new business.
Tata recognitions for Tata Innovista are given first at regional levels and then at Finals. The regional Tata Innovista is organized at nine places – Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Pune, London, New York, Singapore and Thailand.
The awards for the finals are presented by Mr Ratan Tata.
The progress of Tata Innovista has been shown in the figure below:
3) Measuring Innovation
Innometer™
TGIF wanted to have a ‘simple and easy to use tool’ to measure the innovativeness of a team, which could be a company, a Business unit or a small department in a large organization. TGIF wanted the tool to be capable enough to differentiate one team from another within an organization in a manner that triggers improvement and competition. With the help of extensive research carried out by TMTC on various methods of measuring innovation, TGIF finally adopted Prof. Julian Birkinshaw’s model for measuring the ‘As-is’ state of Innovation in companies. Some of the key points of the Innometer study are:
a) The Innometer could be conducted for the entire company or even for a small department / division / SBU within a company.
b) The measurement is done broadly two aspects: (a) Innovation process (b) Innovation Culture
c) The outcomes of the Innometer enable the company to identify the weaker areas in the ‘Innovation Process’ and ‘Innovation Culture’.
In 2008, the innometer™ studies were conducted in Tata Motors, Tata Steel, Tata Chemicals and Rallis.
In 2009, a study on ‘State of Innovation’ across 13 Tata companies involving around 2000 managers was conducted to study the state of innovation. Some of the key findings for this study was:
· Sr leadership of Tata companies is highly involved in the innovation projects
· Most of the companies felt that Tata Group is highly innovative
· They also perceived that their own company could do better on innovation.
· Managers also felt that companies could have a recognition system to promote innovation similar to Tata Innovista. This will also provide thrust to the execution of Innovation projects, which is relatively weak.
The Innometer studies have also been conducted in Tata Capital, NDPL, BU of Tata Steel, Titan, Tata Steel Processing and Distribution.
The Innometer study is followed up by an InnoMultiplier workshop for the company that helps them to identify and plan actions that would help them addressing the weaker areas identified through Innometer.
4) Collaborative Innovation:
Internal collaboration (Technology and Research Clusters):
During the learning missions of USA and Japan, we learnt that the chance of innovation improves largely, when companies from different industries come together. We validated this by carrying out a technology mapping exercise in Tata Group covering 24 companies. The exercise confirmed:
- Companies could gain a lot by sharing their Research and Technology roadmaps, infrastructure, skills & competencies.
- Key innovation projects could be identified where many companies could contribute. Such projects otherwise would not be possible either due to lack of skills, interest, investments or commercial strength.
In a meeting with Chief Technology/Research officers of thirteen large Tata companies, it was decided that opportunities for Technological Innovations should be explored by initiating few cluster specific discussions amongst the relevant Tata companies. Subsequently, following Clusters have been formed, which are successfully working on some of the collaborative projects.
· Plastics & Composites
· Nanotechnology
· Information & Technology
· Water
· Engineering
We are also trying to leverage the external eco-system through the TCS Co-innovation Network for other Group companies.
External collaboration:
Group level relation has been established with DuPont to work on collaborative projects. A team of few Technology executives from various companies led by Mr Gopalakrishnan attended the TechCon (Annual Science and Technology) conference of Du Pont to explain their technological challenges. The team identified a few collaborative projects and also found this concept of organizing TechCon meet very beneficial (which initiated the concept of internal collaboration).
In late 2009, a two day Innovation Summit was organized between the Corning Group and a few Tata Companies. A few areas of common interest have been identified between the two groups.
Similar relationships are being worked out with some of the other larger conglomerates.
|