Design by default

The first step of personal development is the understanding of “Who am I” or “how our life is designed”? This is something like “if you want to reveal the secret you will have to go into that.

As quoted by Mr. James.J.Mapes in his book Quantum Leap Thinking, we always have options in our life and the choices that we make out of these option finally shapes our life. But the challenge become apparent when we have to make choices, because choices we make are result of the way we look at the life. Or in other words we see life through a filter of belief system. The composition of that filter determines the quality of our choices. And the clarity of the filter depends on many things- experience, education and environment.

Theoretical concept of this conditioning of life has been proposed by many others like Shiv Khera who says….in one of his book “You Can Win” that our life is conditioned (I think designed) by the situation or the persons (surrounding us) we encounter throughout our life. It may lead to a positive attitude or negative attitude (toward life or other things).He defines these surroundings as environment- family, society, friends, works etc – experience – with person and situation and education- formal or informal.

Carrying this philosophy forward I just want to say, everything in this world has its phases of development, being it a business, life or career it has to pass through formative, growth, maturity and finally end phases. The quality or the design of each phase is somewhat determined by the act of preceding phase (except formative). As discussed the choices taken in growth phase of life is the function of the filter system built during formative phase that finally decide the design of latter stage of growth phase. Same applies in career as well, initial quality of your experience at work station further shape the future of your career to an extent (not completely).

The point I want to make here is, no matter how our life or career is designed, we can alter it…..yes we can…..”Every moment is the seed for new life”. At any point of time if we think we can change our self we should take charge of our life and move ahead. This is what everybody says starting from Vivekananda to new generation motivational speaker Robin Sharma. But my thinking here is, so what if our conditioning or designing was done by default can we take charge to design the life of others as a parent to design the life of our next generation, as a boss to design the career of our subordinate? Can we create a positive environment around us, can we create a good experience for others or can we pass on the right education to others? If we can do this we can change the world.

Reverse Innovation: Future MNCs

A reverse innovation, very simply, is any innovation likely to be adopted first in the developing world. Increasingly we see companies developing products in countries like China and India and then distribute them globally. In contrary Glocalization (made up of two words Globalization and Localization) where in the innovation are done in the developed country and then distribute them worldwide, with some adaptations to local conditions has been the strategy for the MNCs for growth across the world. It allows multinationals to make the optimal trade-off between the global scale so crucial to minimizing costs and the local customization required to maximize market share. Glocalization worked fine in an era when rich countries accounted for the vast majority of the market and other countries didn’t offer much opportunity. But those days are over—thanks to the rapid development of populous countries like China and India and the slowing growth of wealthy nations.

VG (Vijay Govindrajan, Professor of International Business and Consultant of General Electric ) and Jeffery Immelt, CEO of GE who are the pioneers of this concept has explained the evolution of this concept in General Electric. Following this concept General Electric announced that over the next six years it would spend $3 billion to create at least 100 health-care innovations that would substantially lower costs, increase access, and improve quality. Two products it highlighted at the time—a $1,000 handheld electrocardiogram device and a portable, PC-based ultrasound machine that sells for as little as $15,000—are revolutionary, and not just because of their small size and low price. They’re also extraordinary because they originally were developed for markets in emerging economies (the ECG device for rural India and the ultrasound machine for rural China) and are now being sold in the United States, where they’re pioneering new uses for such machines. This is how the reverse innovation is working and believed to be the future for the growth of the MNCs.

The fundamental driver of reverse innovation is the income gap that exists between emerging markets and the developed countries. There is no way to design a product for the American mass market and then simply adapt it for the Chinese or Indian mass market. Buyers in poor countries demand solutions on an entirely different price-performance curve. They demand new, high-tech solutions that deliver ultra-low costs and “good enough” quality.

Reverse Innovation has evolved in following four phases:

Phase 1 — Globalization —Multinationals built unprecedented economies of scale by selling products and services to markets all around the world. Innovation happened at home, and then the new offerings were distributed everywhere. For instance, Xerox Corp. developed big, bulky, expensive copiers for U.S. consumers; it then sold them in Europe through its subsidiary Rank Xerox and sold them in Asia through its subsidiary Fuji Xerox.

Phase 2 — Glocalization — In this phase, multinationals recognized that while Phases 1 had minimized costs, they weren’t as competitive in local markets as they needed to be. Therefore, they focused on winning market share by adapting global offerings to meet local needs. Innovation still originated with home-country needs, but products and services were later modified to win in each market. To meet the budgets of customers in poor countries, they sometimes de-featured existing products. For instance, McDonalds changed its menu in India to include a lamb burger while still maintaining its core global product platform.

Phase 3 —Local Innovation — In this phase, the first half of the reverse innovation process, multinationals are focusing on developing products “in-country, for country.” They are taking a “market-back” perspective. That is, they are starting with a zero-based assessment of customer’s needs, rather than assuming that they will only make alterations to the products they already have. As teams develop products for the local market, the company enables them to remain connected to, and to benefit from, global resource base. For instance GE is using this concept for development of the low cost ECG machine.

Phase 4 — Reverse Innovation — If Phase 3 is “in country, for country,” Phase 4 is “in country, for the world.” Multinationals complete the reverse innovation process by taking the innovations originally chartered for poor countries, adapting them, and scaling them up for worldwide use.

Now after understanding the concept of this reverse innovation I would like to apply this on micro level in our country. Take an example of TATA NANO which was developed for the two wheeler rider who can not afford to have four wheeler. But now this is planed to launch TATA NANO in European market with the name of TATA EUROPA.

I want to through one question to my audiences that is there any way where in we can use the innovation to cater the demand of low income group and then escalates them for the upper segment market too.