When scarcity fuels innovation

I enjoy reading Jonathan Schwartz's Blog – a link of long standing on my blogroll. Some months ago, when I was among a few lonely voices talking about opportunity in what was being pronounced as gloom, Jonathan wrote on his blog: “There's opportunity everywhere I look.” He reminded us of the time when the internet bubble burst and pointed out “That same zeal for breakthrough, game changing economics is back with a vengeance … And the title of his post? ‘Innovation loves a crisis’.”

We in India have been bred on the adage: Necessity is the mother of invention. On a lighter vein, is it also often referred to as jugaad. But seriously, we have seen scarcity breed innovation all around us.

The Maruta tractor-trailer that runs on a water pump in the villages carrying villagers across long distances is one such innovation. The Nano car is saluted as a manifestation of innovation or ‘frugal engineering’ with the power to find more in less. Our parents have always sensitized us to consider every drop and every grain as precious. Our culture revolves around an attempt to get best out of the least. And innovation is the key to this.

Fortunately, our generation has seen growing prosperity. So, the kind of scarcity we see today in the cities where we operate is a different kind of scarcity – that of skilled talent, capital, and now of an appetite for risk.

It is only innovation that can and will drive us out of this. This innovation I am referring to is not just about new products. I am talking about disruptive, transformative innovation – a whole new approach to business.

Sure, the ground under our feet has shifted. But isn’t that what we had been saying all along: that change is the only constant? These times should be seen as an opportunity to transform – both organizationally and personally. It will certainly separate the grain from the husk. But, more importantly, it should change the way we all think.

Now I am going to set a ground rule in my blog. I am not going to use words like crisis, catastrophe, depression…so freely brandied around to describe these times. These can only get us deeper into a hole as I honestly believe our biggest obstacle right now is our collective psychology.

We need to go on the offense, not on the defense. Rather than worrying about the impact on our company, we should be focused on innovative approaches to reduce the impact on our customers, our employees, our shareholders. That will take care of our company automatically.