Speaking engagement on Innovation at NITTTR, Chandigarh on Innovation, Innovation Types framework and Best Practices of applying Innovation in Classroom Teaching environment

1. INNOVATION AND
INFLUENCING
CHANGE
ABHISHEK SYAL
NITTTR, CHANDIGARH
ABHISHEK SYAL

2. About me
■ MBA from MIT Sloan
■ Market Intelligence at EMC Corp.
■ Co-inventor to 4 patent pending tech
■ Founded and led my own social venture, ARISE
– Differentiated offering: self-learning for disabled
– Innovative combination of online and field
volunteers

3. Agenda
■ Part – I:Why should you care to study innovation?
■ Part – II: A framework to analyze innovation types
■ Part – III: How to apply innovation’s best practices in your
classroom?
■ Part – IV: KeyTakeaways

4. WHY INNOVATION?
Part - I

5. Change is a part of evolution
■ Four things: tools, physical attributes, brain function, lifestyle

6. Innovation and Change
■ Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity – not
a threat. (Steve Jobs)
■ Innovation is change that unlocks new value (Jamie Notter)

7. This change affects society..
■ Hunting and gathering – wheel, arrows, tribes
■ Farming society – agrarian, feudal – sickle, marketplaces, cities
■ Industrial – printing press, assembly lines, transport
■ Information – electricity, telephone, communication
■ Knowledge – computers, internet, decisions
■ Future ? – smartphones, social media, space travel, quantum
computing

8. Disrupts industries..
■ Car disrupted horse as mode of
personal transport
■ Electricity disrupted kerosene
lamps as personal home lighting
■ Telephones disrupted postcards
and mail
■ Smartphones disrupted
telephones

9. And topples governments and
organizations..
■ Facebook and twitter and ‘crowdsourced traditional media’
(Al Jazeera) toppled or changed governments in
– 2009-2010 Iranian election protests “WithoutTwitter the
people of Iran would not have felt empowered and
confident to stand up for freedom and democracy,” Mark
Pfeifle, a former national-security adviser wrote.
– 2010-2011Tunisian revolution
– 2011 Egyptian revolution
– Libya,Turkey, etc..

10. Innovate to influence the change
■ Innovation has affected every component and organization of
society, think evolution
■ Embrace the change sooner than later, think to your
advantage
■ Best to innovate to influence change than be influenced by
change

11. THINKING ABOUT
INNOVATION?
Part - II

12. Innovation
■ Innovation is a new idea which, when implemented, leads to
a more effective device or process.
■ Innovation can be viewed as the application of better
solutions that meet new requirements, unarticulated needs,
or existing market needs.
(Wikipedia)

13. Innovation by ApplicationType
■ Product related: new products, services or technologies
■ Smartphone app platform disrupting Nokia and Blackberry
■ Uber or Ola cabs disrupting the cab/taxi industry
■ Whatsapp disrupting texting and calling
■ Process Related: new business models in businesses,
government or non-profits
■ SaaS based businesses disrupting licensing
■ Online government services disrupting traditional bureaucracy,
increasing efficiency
■ Social Impact Bonds changing how non-profit impact is measured

14. Innovation by DeploymentType
■ Radical Innovation:
– completely new, breakthrough research or a business model
– Needs fresh perspective, talent or even new customers
– High risk, high return
■ Incremental Innovation:
– Small changes, slightly better services
– Use existing resources or users
– Low risk, low return

15. 2 x 2 Innovation Framework
New Features New Products
Process
Efficiency
Management
Innovation
RadicalIncremental
Product oriented
Process oriented

16. KeyTakeaways
■ 2 x 2 innovation framework that you can use
■ Don’t stereotype the four types of innovation
■ The value creation of the results are highly situation
dependent, this framework is just directional guidance
■ Diversify projects in all four types in the classroom
■ Project activities, outcome and learnings to be shared so that
the students get the maximum learning experience

17. APPLYING INNOVATION
PART - III

18. Finding the Right Problem to Solve
■ Expressed user needs
– When you are very hungry, you want food
– E.g.: dandruff oils, fan
■ Unidentified Pain-points
– When you are very hungry, you want delicious food
– E.g.: Uber or ola cabs, cars, telephone

19. Customers don’t always know what they
want, but they know bad experiences

20. User Interviews to Find the Right
Problem
■ Best done with a 360 degree stakeholders to understand the
ecosystem
■ Map the user’s decision making and product experience
journeys
■ Ask them pain-points or issues they face
■ Ask them how do they solve for these issues currently
■ Go to the 4 or 5 whys
■ Do a lot. A lot is not enough

21. Lean Startup Methodology for
Innovating
■ Define the pain-point you are solving in users’ words and
then, find a new minimum simple solution that solves it
■ Create a dashboard of final results and test out the customer
landing metrics
■ Pivot, if needed
■ Build  Measure  Learn
■ Final Product or Services Build and Launch

22. TemperatureApp
■ With Julian Struab, MIT Phd and Erica Swallow, MBA, MIT
■ Idea: smart sensing of temperature through existing
smartphone tech
■ Idea: Enable personalized temperature control at workplace
■ Interviewed employees, facility managers, professors,
building admin, other temperature control startups like
ecovent
■ Pivoted our idea to smartphone thermometer – a great
learning experience during our New Enterprises coursework

23. Difference in Engineering vs Design
Approaches
■ Engineering heavy focused on problem solving, analyzing, and
arriving at the right solution
– Mostly single-shot
– Defined by parameters and constraints
■ Design and Architecture focused on problem identification,
developing multiple solutions, rapid prototyping testing, arriving
at optimal solution
– Highly iterative
– Defined by constraints; more variables to play around with

24. MIT / Harvard Classroom Experience
■ Focus on giving students methodologies to solve the
problem; latest case study method
■ Choice of software or own choice
■ Let the students find their problems to solve
■ Focus on real world issues and existing user pain-points
■ Focus on problems with big or bottom of the pyramid impact
■ Teach teams about team norms, focusing on collaboration,
communication and divide and conquer

25. Applying Innovation Principles in
Classroom
■ Projects should be as forward looking as possible
■ Problem Identification for the future – look for current unsolved
pain-points
■ Focus on high value creation / high impact rather than
complexity
■ Projects should be in teams having students with different
skillset

26. Applying Innovation Principles in
Classroom
■ Project work should be shared in class with feedback and
questions from other teams
■ Encourage students to develop global perspective through
understanding different market contexts and their local
solutions
■ Don’t reinvent the wheel but use latest available tech,
especially open source

27. KEYTAKEAWAYS
PART - IV

28. KeyTakeaways
■ Innovation is everywhere,
influencing change
■ Focus on finding the user
pain-points
■ Encourage simple solutions
that improvise on existing
research / hi-tech
■ Collaboration of agile teams
is key

29. THANKS
abhishek.syal@sloan.mit.edu