Innovation - the transformation of emerging world businesses

Innovation is a buzzword today. Everyone wants to be innovative or at least appear to be innovative. Be it service or product or process, every aspect of business is now being linked with innovation. In the Western world (Innovation based economies) this revolution took place several decades ago, but now in the Emerging world (Skill based economies) also innovation is being termed as new way of doing business. But how does innovation finds its place in a world where 90% of business processes (or any other process as a matter of fact) are manual and human skill is in abundance.

Process innovation is defined as a new way of doing things with same or better output in lesser time and resources. Lets consider time as a resource for the time being , other resources being human and machines. Today's businesses need to minimize their input to efficiently manage their manufacturing costs. At the same time they also do not want to play with their output or quality of output. For example, outsourcing of business process (BPO) has been a fairly successful process innovation in the past. Bharti Telecom has been sucessfully been able to achieve lowest possible cost of calling for its customer with high quality of customer satisfaction level, because of outsourcing its all processes but marketing and customer management.

Technology innovation, on the other hand is associated with transforming an idea into workable product which can rise the standard of living of an individual. The process of idea generation is arbitrary and sometimes out of need basis. However, many organizations have set processes and rewards for idea generation by their employees and categorically analyzing those ideas to convert them into products. GE, and Mitsubishi, for example are known to have a well established process of idea and innovation management. Many a times technology innovation is linked to the R&D done by a firm, which is by large true, but not always. Google, for example, has a policy of generating technology ideas out of its regular employees, outside its R&D wing.

The risk for an organization to become innovative is that it looses it's employees' precious work hour. Innovation needs resources (time, human and machine). But as far as money is not involved directly, organizations tend to accept this model of innovation. As soon as the innovation demands spending, things start to deteriorate. Smaller firms with limited revenues can not afford to leave its employees in innovation mode for long. The irony is that most of these firms disappear if they do not innovate. This vicious circle is now being broken by many newcomers in the market, who are giving more importance to innovation rather than traditional way of working in emerging economies.