Skillsets

Strategy Infograph

Product Infograph

Executive with a Track Record in Developing Growth Strategies and Solutions: I have devised and implemented winning strategies that have opened up new markets and business opportunities. I have developed strategies that address customer/market needs, secured buy-in from executives/board, motivated the functional organizations to deliver and launched successful products & business models.

 

Family Man: I enjoy spending time with my beautiful wife and two lovely kids. As a family we are a good mix of outdoors and indoors. My son and I are pretty much outdoors and sports oriented while my daughter and my wife like the indoors. This diversity of interests helps us maintain good balance in our lives.

Category: Reviews

There are 2 posts published under Reviews.
25 Nov, 2011

Understanding non-consumption and barriers to innovation

Have you ever wondered why people use a paper based workflow, when there are more efficient software solutions available for doing the same job? This is referred to as non-consumption, when users prefer not so effective methods for doing a particular job while better solutions are available in the market.

The reason is that non-consumption is most difficult to understand and solve, and it cannot be solved by dreaming up and developing a product within office walls. To disrupt non-consumption, the innovators need to get in front of the customers (those who are non-consumers) and understand why they don’t use the available solutions. Once you understand the reasons you can try to solve for eliminating non-consumption and many times this has nothing to do with the product. In this blog I would highlight few reasons why non-consumption exists, drawing from my experience and reasons suggested in a must read book “The Innovator Guide to Growth “.

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29 Oct, 2011

Innovation Needs Ambidextrous CEOs

In a earlier blog I had discussed  “Innovation Influencers” and how each influencers holds a critical piece of the puzzle required to unlock innovation. At the center of this puzzle is the CEO of the company. CEO should take personal interest in innovation and cultivate the right culture within the company.

HBR article on “The Ambidextrous CEO” analyzes this topic well and here are some of the reasons why it is important for the CEO to support innovation.

  1. Innovation drives long-term growth: Stable companies have a good understanding of their traditional growth rate based on market dynamics. Company shareholders know the traditional growth rate and expect companies to do better year over year. Without innovation, companies cannot meet shareholders’  ever growing demand for growth. Hence, CEO’s rely on innovation to build the future growth engines that would help them meet their future growth obligations.
  2. Future is more uncertain with innovation than with core products: Issues with core products, revenue expectations, margin expectations and overall performance is estimated relatively well with core products. But innovation potential is very uncertain and usually a wild guess. And who better to guide/support the team dealing with this uncertainty than the most visionary person in the room, i.e. the CEO.
  3. Traditional business metrics do not apply to innovation: Given many innovation projects start out with no or modest revenue numbers, business metrics like contribution margin, revenue per FTE etc cannot be applied to innovation projects. These metrics make innovation projects look bad and ignore future potential of the projects. When executives try to measure innovation using the same scale as core business, CEO needs to step up and support innovation to give it a chance to survive.
  4. Left to mid-level managers, innovation will suffer: Budget decisions, staffing decisions, marketing and sales support decisions, and many more such decisions are usually made in support of core products. This is because mid-level managers are trying to make decisions in their best interests and in supporting their products. Given that innovation products are not the responsibility of majority of the mid-level managers, they tend to starve innovation projects. This is where CEO needs to step in and assign right resources for innovation projects to make sure that innovation thrives at the organization.
  5. Innovative companies enjoy higher multiples and generate more shareholder value: Typically companies that innovate and generate higher growth rates get better multiple for their earnings. This in turn generates better shareholder return, which is the primary job of the CEO.

Companies where innovation is actively supported by the CEO, strive at innovation and generate better shareholder value

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