Over past few years I have written about Innovation on this blog. Recently I came across this TEDx video where Nirmalya Kumar talks about invisible innovation happening in India. Not quite the interesting innovation that we expect but innovation nevertheless.Nirmalya Kumar is a professor of Marketing at the London Business School and a passionate voice for new entrepreneurs in India.
Rupa Rajagopalan has been instrumental in running the Instructional Designers Community of India for the last few years along with some other enthusiastic members of the profession. As part of IDCI, Rupa edits a newsletter IDConnect. Rupa interviewed me for the second issue of the newsletter. You can view the complete newsletter on the IDCI community site. I am reproducing my interview here.The InterviewYou have been conducting salary surveys for the past 2 years. Have salary levels for Instructional Designers in India improved? What are the current trends in salary?It’s…
Talking about innovation always opens Pandora’s box (see comments on my post Innovation in Indian Learning Industry). Wikipedia defines innovation as: a new way of doing something or "new stuff that is made useful". It may refer to incremental and emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products, processes, or organizations.According to Merriam-Webster, innovation is:Main Entry: in•no•va•tionPronunciation: "i-n&-'vA-sh&nFunction: noun1 : the introduction of something new2 : a new idea, method or device Another site RealInnovation.com says: An innovation can be big or small. Brand-new or just a bit different,…
Will Thalheimer wonders what is the state of innovation in the Indian learning and performance industry in his recent blog post. He comments on the NY Times report on India’s anxiety over the slow pace of innovation and wonders what the situation is in the learning industry. Will Thalheimer is a learning-and-performance consultant and researcher who specializes in helping clients build more effective learning interventions. I guess it depends on what we call innovation. No I am not getting into an academic debate on what is innovation, primarily because I…
My boss for many years, and now my mentor and bouncing board for ideas, Neeraj Agarwal is joining blogsphere. He is starting his blog India Included, where he shares his insights in innovation and corporate social responsibility as part of what he is currently focussed on. In his blog, he focuses on what is out there already … ideas, thoughts, efforts, initiatives, pilots of different kinds in different areas that can and do inspire more and more people to take positive action. It would be great if you could…
I found this an absolutely fantastic example of Innovation. An upcoming band in Manchester, The Get Out Clause, unable to afford camera and crew to make a music video decided to use the 13 million CCTV cameras across the city. They set up equipment across the city and played in front of the cameras in 80 locations. Then they proceeded to write to the surveillance companies and asked for footage quoting the Freedom of Information Act. They managed to get their footage of about 20 locations, enough to make a…
There is an interesting discussion ongoing in our internal (behind the firewall) blog. It is getting interesting and I thought I would get some wider perspectives on this subject.My colleague writes:Innovation is a messy process where different alternatives need to be tried before we really get something new and useful. For one success there will be many failures. "Innovation" without some "Failure" is not feasible. Therefore, the system has to nurture failureOn the other hand "Quality" is about delivering on time, every time. "Failure" is not an option. Therefore, the…