India Innovation Summit - 2008

I had the opportunity to attend the 4th India Innovation Summit in Bangalore from 20-21 June, 2008 and must say that I was thoroughly impressed with the spectrum of innovation taking place in India. Events of this sort really open your eyes to the kind of creativity prevalent in our culture and at the grassroot level. The theme for the event was "Innovation in the 21st century". To capitalize on the emerging opportunities and address the challenges, organisations and governments need to leverage emerging technologies and collaborate with stakeholder communities across geographies to co-create value. Sustainable growth is possible only when innovations are integrated with ethical business practices and care for the environment. The conference presented many case studies on the topic and I could see one common theme emerging from most of the cast studies - Customer co-creation. The key note address was provided by Dr Shekhar Mitra, Global R&D Vice President of Beauty Care, Procter & Gamble, and he shared some of his personal experiences on customer driven innovation at the firm. According to him, the key principles that drive innovation at the firm are:

• Innovation requires a new global view of scale
• Innovation occurs at the confluence of ideas
• Social responsibility sparks innovation

In an attempt to deliver meaningful and credible innovation to the consumer, the firm relies heavily on stakeholder collaboration at various stages of the consumer lifecycle. And all this is driven by a deep market insight which aids in mapping technology to needs.

I'd like to quickly highlight fascinating innovations that caught my eye.

1) Services Innovation: United Film Organizers - This was arguably one of the best presentations of the day and Rajesh Mishra, CEO for Indian operations of UFO Moviez took the audience through an entirely different experience of movie making and his innovation around it- Digital Cinema. This Disruptive Innovation is a brilliant move which cuts cost (by a factor of ten), kills piracy and increases reach by digitizing and encrypting the movie content and delivering it via satellite straight to the movie theatres. With over 11,000 theaters all over the country, UFO has been able to create one of the best movie experiences for masses, challenging a 100 year old analog technology.

2) Eco-Wise Waste Management - Manik Thapar started this company as a result of a project study he undertook while studying in the US. At that time, there was no single company involved in end-to-end waste management and the space provided a huge opporunity. Eco-Wise gets into the zone of collection; transportation; segregation; treatment; and disposal of organic and inorganic waste, creating India’s first private waste segregation and treatment facility.

3) Indore City Transport Service Ltd (ICTSL) - Vivek Agarwal, Collector of Indore, took up the ambitious challenege of recreating the commuting experience of citizens of the city through a completely integrated Bus service. Some of the features of this service include control rooms, digital signage at bus stops, MIS information for drivers and other controllers, colorized buses for route identification, pass vending machines, trained conductors, and well oiled buses, among others.