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This article has been published in Bombay Management association's E-Journal- Vol 01/No.

02/ May 2013 Innovation- Art or science? - Ravindra Puri


I have seen many people struggling to answer this question. Those who find the answer succeed in Innovation but for the rest, the journey stops. The confusion arrises mainly because most of the time, innovation is associated with creativity. But in reality, innovation means creativity plus implementation. Innovation is complete only when a new creative idea is implemented successfully. Next question is where to start and how to start? You can start with capturing the creative ideas. Ideas can be contributed by you, team members, other employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. I would call this as an art of creating ideas. What is frugal engineering? : It simply means that we need to select the idea which will reduce cost of product/ service without impacting the customer. Next question is how to understand the impact of a new idea on the customer. The KANO model can help to answer this question.( The Kano model is a theory of product development
and customer satisfaction developed in the 1980s by Professor Noriaki Kano which classifies customer preferences)

KANO model looks as below-

As per the KANO model we can divide customer needs into three categoriesBasic Need - These are basically the features that the product/ service must have in order to meet customer demands. Performance need -These are the features of the product/service that are associated with performance. Delighter need -These are features of the product which are not expected by customer, but if provided over and above the basic and performance features, the customer will be delighted. We need to select the idea and check if it is impacting any of the needs in a positive way. Case in point: Recently I visited a hotel called Asthera Sathon in Bangkok. As a customer some of my basic needs are a clean room, good air-conditioning and steady water supply. For me, the performance need is - the speed of service. Delighter- Here I got two cans of beer, two cans of cold drink, and two water bottles complimentary every day. That delighted me in true sense since I did not expect them. After that I experienced the real innovation using the frugal engineering approach. I saw a small beautiful placard in the bathroom mentioning, We have a practice of changing the towels, napkins, bed linens every day. But if you feel you havent used any of these and

there is no need to change, keep it in the rack. We wont change it. Now thats a good idea. Washing unused towels doesnt make sense. The idea is small but it leads to a big difference. Lets assume that the hotel has 500 rooms. Even if one cloth item per room is identified to be reused, . it translated into tremendous efforts and, resources saved. This saved money can be used to further delight the customer . Many a times, there are ideas that do not directly impact a customers need but make the organisations saves money which can be passed on to delight the customer in many ways. So, while generating an idea is an art and implementing it is a science, the process needs a systematized approach. A combination of art and science can lead to great innovation, which can often surpass our creativity and imagination.

Ravindra Puri is an Innovation professional who has driven innovation in a wide range of organisations. He can be contacted at ravindrapuri@gmail.com Contact:9930860345

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