This is a book summary to facilitate those who are interested to bring innovative culture in their organisations. I strongly advice them to read the original book.

1. 8 steps to innovation—going from Jugaad to
Excellence
by Vinay Dabholkar & Rishikesh T Krishnan
Short summary for class discussion
By
Prof.S.Suryanarayanan

2. 8 steps to innovation-going from jugaad to excellence
by
Vinay Dabholkar and Rishikesha T Krishnan
 ANYONE CAN INNOVATE provided conditions are right
 D Udaykumar, an Architect designed the symbol for rupee.
 Thiagarajan Ramaswamy, an engineering student, designed now
popular commercial wet grinder different from hand driven rational
grinder.
 Nagaraja, a diploma holder in BEL came up with idea of replacing
gold headed transistors to nickel headed transistors saving Rs 18
crores in 2008.

3. What is innovation
 Innovation happens when an idea is implemented to create an impact.
Impact can be profit or social good.
 Innovation begins with curiosity, not necessarily creativity
 Innovation is iterative process, not linear.
 Innovation is not just risk taking, but assessing and mitigating risks.
 Process innovation—Arvind Eye Hospital
 Product innovation--- hybrid car
 Customer experience– Cafe Coffee Day
 Business model innovation—IPL, Narayana Hrudalay
 Most organisations incorporate multiple dimensions of innovations.

4. Idea management
 Innovation is basically about managing the idea funnel
effectively.
 Idea funnel:
 Building and sustaining idea funnel—suggestion box, quality
circles
 Improving idea velocity– more ideas and experiments
 Improving the batting average– singles or sixers

5.  Challenges to idea management
 Overcoming resistance to change
 Overcoming prediction disability

Challenge to idea management is analogous to elephant and
rider conflict

Elephant—emotions, traditions, inertia( resistance to change)

Rider---logic and rationality (prediction disability—fails to correct
the incorrect instinctive verdict of the elephant).

Companies use different methods to direct the rider, motivate
the elephant and shape the path to overcome elephant-rider
conflict.

6. PART ONE
BUILD AN IDEA PIPELINE
STEP 1
LAY THE FOUNDATION
Innovation programmes, Imagination breakthroughs,
Examples: M&M, 3M, Toyota, Galaxy(surfactant)
Key processes of Innovation programme:
1.Idea Management ( who submits, who selects, who funds)
2. Buzz creation ( campaigns, rewards, innovation day)
3. Training and development( prototyping, TRIZ, idea
communication, leadership development)

7. Idea Management System.
Six levers are;
1.Source: where idea comes from ( employee, customer,
supplier,..)
2. Scope: ( What is the scope-Improvements ,process or product,
customer experience, business models etc.)
3. Stages: number of stages before implementation.
4. Technology: presentation of ideas-suggestion box, website,
and so on.
5. Selection: selection process-committee, voting, and such
methods.
6. Sponsorship: Allocation of resources, physical, financial,
human.

8. BUZZ CREATION
 “ Power of ideas” campaign launched by Economic Times in 2009:
 “ Of all the things you can lose your heart to, an idea is the most
obstinate. It will set your heart aflutter with whispers of success and
riches. It will share your bed, your shower, your desk. It will sit next
to you at dinner. Some learn to ignore it. Some learn to love it.
People call them entrepreneurs.”
 START UP.

9.  Turn around of Indian Railways in 2008:
 Constraints: Passenger fares can not be raised; political
decision. Freight fares can not be raised since
competition from road transport intense.
 Innovative approach:
1. Modify freight rates to target high value
commodities.
2. Carry more freight per train
3. Increase the number of trains by reducing their
turnaround time.
o Buzz creation by slogan “ Heavier, faster and longer” .

10. BUILD AN IDEA PIPELINE
STEP 2 CREATE A CHALLENGE BOOK
 Curiosity and problem consciousness
 Challenge book—identifies organizations’ problems,
future desires and needs.
 Three important sources of identifying problems:
1. Feel the pain
2. Sense the wave
3. See the waste

11. CHALLENGE BOOK

12. BUILD AN IDEA PIPELINE
STEP 3
BUILD PARTICIPATION
 Four elements of building participation:
1. Role Model—people who inspire
2. Community of practice— groups of people
informally bound togather by a shared expertise
and passion
3. Innovation catalysts– encourage idea givers, offer
constructive inputs
4. Rewards and recognitions

13. PART TWO
IMPROVE IDEA VELOCITY
1. How do we improve the speed at which ideas
move forward?
2. Is it possible to organise ourselves better so that
idea velocity can improve?
3. Are there any competencies that can be built to
facilitate this process?

14. IMPROVE IDEA VELOCITY
STEP 4
EXPERIMENT WITH LOW COST AT HIGH
SPEED
 Fail early, fail often, fail inexpensively
 Four types of assumptions in conducting
experiments of an idea:
1. Need-what customers need
2. Technical—how we can put together what we have
3. Production—prototype to field ‘ scaling up
4. Commercial—how we can make profit
o The real outcome of experiment is LEARNING,
more than experiment works or not. ( failure
fallacy).

15. IMPROVE IDEA VELOCITY
STEP 5
GO FAST FROM PROTOTYPING TO
INCUBATION
1. Idea communication – story telling helps; good
stories are concrete, curiosity flow, rich in
emotion and have credibility)
2. Idea championing ( examples—George
Fernandez, Einstein and Customer as champion
and co creator) )
o Organisations help ideas move faster by
effective innovation reviews and supporting
incubation of new ideas.
o ( iPod, Adsense, Dandhi march)

16. STEP 6
ITERATE ON THE BUSINESS MODEL
 Who is our customer?
 What do we offer him?
 How do we reach him?
 How do we make money?
 Examples: Shaadi.com / Bharat Matrimony

17.  Who is my customer?
 Identify your customer. Example: Air Deccan;
different types—CEO’s wife, Sai Baba, Medical
evacuation, exploratory survey.
 What to offer? Product or service to solution
 Red bus– selling software to selling on line
tickets.
 IBM—product to solution; Airtel-IBM

18.  How to reach the customer?
Patent protection, partnership, complementary
assets.
 How to make money from innovation?
Ease of imitation and ease of finding
complementary assets decide your competitive
position.

19. PART 3
INCREASING THE BATTING AVERAGE
STEP 7
BUILD AN INNOVATION SANDBOX
 1. Innovation process is like a sand box; there are
constraints or boundaries within which
experimentation tales place.
 Example of sandbox through Aurolab
Sandbox element Aurolab element
Fixed walls Constraints such as low cost,
IOL,quality and scalability
Sand Environment for
experimentation like making
no frills IOLs ( without shape
and colour) in the basement of
a hospital.
Tools Equipment
Kids A cross functional team .

20.  2. Affordable loss heuristic( or rule of thumb)
 To find out more about the potential of an
innovation, how much we can afford to lose
today.
 Biocon—oral insulin project—affordable loss
heuristic—then commit the resources to the
project.

21.  3. Create a platform- platform is a configuration
of technologies and interfaces that allows
customisation to meet the needs of different user
groups or construction of new applications.
 Microsoft—Windows platform
 Biocon—Fermentation process; enzymes to
biopharmaceuticals.
 Reva—electric car; In future, Reva technology
may become a platform for Mahindra.
 Tata 407– tipper, pickup van, bus, trick etc.
 4. Open innovation—open source platform like
linux.

22. INCREASING THE BATTING AVERAGE
STEP 8
CREATE A MARGIN OF SAFETY
 Story of Air Deccan, low cost airline, great
innovative idea; crash of IT system leading to
business failure and sell off. How do we guard
against failure?
 How do we avoid the ‘ optimistic bias’ tendency to
exaggerate future forecast. Steve jobs failed on
Lisa project.
 Three precautions: Creating alert:
1. Refer baseline rate– a kind of gestation period ( IT
system in airline industry will take years to be
mature for use)
2. Look at historical events.
3. Premortem –failure scenario ( not risk analysis )

23.  Do last experiment first; identify ‘ leap of faith ‘
assumptions and then validate with experiment.
Idea Leap-of-faith assumption
Pringles chips to carry images to
make eating them more fun (P&G)
We can print images/ text on pringle
chips
Make a cinema with India
mythological stories in cities and
villages ( palke)
Indians in cities and villages will
pay to watch the movie
Start a helicopter taxi service in
bengaluru ( air Deccan)
There will be people who will pay rs
35000 per hour and hire helicopter
service
Start an online portal for
matchmaking ( shaadi.com)
People will pay for bio data
submitted to this site.

24.  Innovation protection mechanism:
1. Liability insurance
2. Innovation portfolio; multiple products
3. Innovation engine; “ only the paranoid survive” .

25. INNOVATION MANAGEMENT
DASHBOARD
N
o
Parameter Lead indicaor Lag indicator
1 Pipeline Number of challenges in
the challenge book
Number of ideas in the
pipeline; number of ideas
per person per year.
2 Idea velocity Average time to give
relevant feedback on the
idea of the author; number
of experiments/protoypes,
feasibility
studies,invention
disclosures,white papers in
a year; average time for
the first customer
feedback; frequency of
innovation review; avergae
time to get support from a
champion
Number of experiments in
exploring new types of
customers defining new
offerings/products,explorin
g new partnerships and
new pricing
models,average time from
formal approval to
cash/saving/impact
contd…..

26. 3 Batting average Number of
innovation
sandboxes,
number of
innovation
platforms
Percentage of revenue
from innovations in
the last five years
4 Participation Number of people
giving ideas/
comments/ votes,
mentors/
catalysts/
champions
Number of active
Communities of
Practice (CoPs), role
models, customers
engaged

27. SUMMARY OF APPROACHES IN
MANAGING INNOVATION
Direct the rider Motivate the
elephant
Shape the path
1. How to build and sustain the Idea Pipeline
Build a challenge
book ( U&I portal,
HCL and Petition
Box, Tihar Jail)
Create internal
role models Ajay
Bhat, Intel)
Roll out an idea
management process
( Maruthi, P&G, GE )
Launch a campaign
( e.g: ‘ Heavier faster
and longer’ , Indian
Railways)
Rewards and
recognition ( TATA
group and Maruti
motors)
Establish a regular
innovation review
programme ( GE,P&G)
Create innovation
catalyst
( Cognizant,
intuit)
Create
communities of
practice ( Mind
Tree, Tihar Jail)

28. Direct the rider Motivate the
elephant
Shape the path
2. How to improve Idea velocity
Define low cost high
speed experiments
( quick wins)
Showcase prototypes Ensure effectiveness
to the innovation
reviews ( P&G,
Google)
Publish a metric on
idea velocity
Reward learning
from failed
experiments ( ‘ Dare
to try’, TATA group )
Create a lab for
experimentation
( Edison )
Find champions for
selected ideas.
Get customer
feedback ( Lego, Tata
steel )
Assigned a dedicated
team to the project
( Nano)

29. Direct the rider Motivate the
elephant
Shape the path
3. How to improve batting average
Give tough
challenges ( Arvind
Eye Hospital, Nano)
Senior management
attention ( TATA
motors, P&G)
Create an innovation
sandbox.
Affordable loss
heuristic ( Biocon)
Create a compelling
vision ( ‘ Eradicate
needless blindness’,
Arvind )
Create a venture
fund( Cognizant)
Surf big waves ( oral
insulin, Biocon)
Do the last
experiment
Create an innovation
platform, Premortem