1

Embracing a Culture
of Innovation
Prof P. I. John
Formerly Meghnad Saha Chair in Plasma
Science and Technology

Institute for Plasma Research

Gandhinagar

Kuriakose Mar Gregorios Memorial Lecture

Pampady: 11 January 2023

2
What do we mean by Innovation?

Comes from the Latin ‘in’ ‘novare’: to create something new or to change something.

Doing something new, different, and better.

Innovation is about creating value from ideas.

• improved product or service

• improvement of an existing process
• Improvement in a social context.

At the root of innovation are ideas and we need to understand

the importance of ideas, where they come from and how to
nurture them.
3
How important are ideas? Adam Smith’s ideas
on the Division of labour
Anthony and free markets led to
Grayling, a British the Industrial Revolution
philosopher, says that and Capitalism
ideas are the wheels
that make the world
move
Karl Marx’s and Tim Berner
Frederich Engels’ Lee’s idea of a
ideas on the seed of World Wide
self-destruction in Web connected
Capitalism led to the entire world
Communism and the in a manner
Soviet revolution never possible
earlier.
4
 Imagination = any new idea
How do we generate new
ideas? Creativity = a new idea that has some value,
artistic or otherwise

Innovation = a creative idea that has utility

The formation of new ideas in the brain is a

complex process that involves various cognitive
functions. When we encounter new information
or experiences, our brain's neurons form new
connections and pathways. This process, known
as neuroplasticity, allows the brain to reorganize
itself and create new neural networks.

5
 The building blocks of novel
How are Ideas technologies are themselves
Born? technologies. They, in turn,
become “building blocks for the
creation of still newer
technologies”. The result is
combinatorial evolution, which
differs from the Darwinian
variety. The evolution is
sustained by exploiting novel
phenomena.

Steve Jobs believed that: “Creativity is just

connecting things. The broader one’s
understanding of the human experience, the
better design we will have.”
6
 Almost all essential breakthroughs
How do we Stimulate happened when people discussed
Ideation? their ideas in meetings. In a
discussion, intellectual stimulation
Kevin Niall Dunbar is promotes the birth of new ideas.
Professor of Human
Development and Brainstorming opens the flow of
Quantitative ideas and hunches more than is
Methodology at the possible in a regimented
University of Maryland workplace meeting. This allows
the growth of information
networks that allow hunches to
persist, disperse, and recombine.

The network patterns that we

form socially, outside the brain,
mimic the network patterns inside
the human brain.
7
Theory of
Adjacent Possible
A particular idea will have
similar ideas with slight
variations in its
neighbourhood. This
neighbourhood is called the
adjacent possible.
The boundaries of the adjacent possible grow as you
These variations represent explore them. All new innovations arise from the
opportunities for the idea to
exploration of the adjacent possible. Each
expand into new possibilities.
innovation opens new paths to explore.

8
Invention of the Light Bulb

Frederick de Moleyns used Edison first used carbonized

a platinum filament in an evacuated sewing thread as a filament. This
glass tube to make a light bulb. The made his first practical lightbulb. He
platinum material was also used carbonized sewing threads
expensive. Hence the invention was until 1880. Then he used Tungsten
not commercially successful
9
 Growth of Adjacent Possible
Imagine that an idea is like a house. There are two houses in its
neighbourhood. Each of these houses has its neighbours. So, we are
looking at an exponential growth of ideas.

10
How has wealth
grown over the
years?
Ideas generate wealth.
GDP is a measure of
wealth. GDP has been
flat since the last 100,000
years. GDP burst up in
the last two centuries.
Watch the number of
things that have come
into existence in this
time.

11
TAP and the Growth
of Human Habitats
This is also true for the size
of human habitats in the
last 300,000 years. The
horizontal line is the time
before the present, and the
vertical line is the logarithm
of the sizes of settlements.
Nothing happened for
290,000 years then it burst
upward.

12
 Places where people gather provide environments that stimulate the creation of good ideas.
Cities provide a wealth of possibilities and promote exploring novel ways of combining them.
They provide environments that connect and remix the most valuable resource: information.

Coffee shops in England The sidewalk cafes of Paris Homebrew Computing Club
inspired the Enlightenment formed another nucleus in Silicon Valley was an
of the 17th century emergent platform

13
The World Wide Web is another platform made up of a large
number of interconnected computers where ideas collide,
recombine, and allow different disciplines to borrow from one
another. Most hotbeds of innovation have similar physical spaces:

14
Mathematician Henri Poincaré described the
creative process as a collision of ideas rising into
consciousness in crowds. Fluid environments
where ideas bubble up are where they flourish.

So, if we want to build environments that generate

good ideas in educational institutions, businesses,
or governments, we need to promote
environments which promote human interaction.
This is where new ideas are born and flourish.

15
Managing Ideas
Corporations have recognised
the importance of ideas.
Management of ideas is
managing the process of
collecting and developing ideas
and insights to get the most out
of them. Evaluating and
prioritising ideas is an essential
component of idea
management. Finally, the
implementation of new ideas is
the most challenging aspect of
the management of ideas.

16
Melvin Anshen wrote with
remarkable foresight that a profound
change in top management’s primary task
is emerging due to the accelerating
dynamics of technologies, markets,
information systems, and social
expectations of business performance.

The concerns have shifted from managing

physical resources to managing ideas.
Google, Apple, and Amazon not
by production factors but through the
accumulation of new ideas and
knowledge.

17
Apple’s strategy is a functional organization where experts
lead experts. Apple manages innovation through a cross-
functional Core Team of experts in multiple disciplines.

The Core Team structure breaks down the exclusive

barriers prevalent in organizations. Teams are staffed with
empowered decision-makers jointly accountable for
project success. Core Team members have deep
functional expertise and understand functional strategies.

Apple has retained its organizational structure despite its

multi-fold growth over the last two decades.

18
Is Innovation a Western
Phenomenon?
Innovation has shifted to the large
emerging economies of China, India,
and Brazil with a significant amount
of the innovation being frugal,
flexible, and inclusive.

Kenya has developed a reputation for

their entrepreneurs in micro-
enterprises.

South Africa is developing a

reputation as an area of excellence in
the application of mobile-based
solutions in health. 19
Is Innovation Happening
in India?
In India, innovation is happening
in both formal and informal
spaces. In the formal space, we
saw the sudden growth of
outsourcing innovation to Indian
companies. Many companies
today are contracting Indian
companies to do a major part of
their product development work
for their global products which
are going to be sold to the entire
world.

20
Global Innovation Centres
GIC is a cross-disciplinary venture
created to uniquely combine :

• innovative processes from

industry-leading experts

• novel, emerging, and proven data Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune

analysis technologies
Tier 2 Cities
• economically attractive global
services delivery models Quest Global Innovation Centre (QIC) at College of
Engineering Trivandrum (CET).

21
Management Innovation
The Global Delivery Model (GDM)
break up the tasks, send them around the
world where the expertise and the cost
structure exist, and then specify the means for
reintegrating them.

GDM refers to the assets and competencies

(skills/labor resources, tools, policies and
procedures, methodologies, infrastructure,
management, human resource functions, and
delivery processes) of an organization’s service
provider to source skills from global locations
for business benefit.
22
Innovation in the
Informal Space
In India, there is a general class
of inventive problem-solving
called Jugaad. A more formal
name is frugal innovation, an
approach that seeks solutions in
adversity, describing how the
world is negotiated by
improvisation and ingenuity. The
term “Jugaad” meaning “put-
together,” is used colloquially for
innovative solution-focused
problem-solving techniques.

23
A classic jugaad innovation is the
‘Mitti Cool’ cheap refrigerator,
developed by Mansukhlal Prajapati.
Prajapati was inspired to work on a
rural fridge that did not need
electricity to run, and that was
affordable for the masses. The
result was the Mitticool fridge
which launched in 2005. The
refrigerator is made from terracotta
clay. The top of the fridge is filled
with water, and then the contents
are cooled via the evaporation of
the water in the porous clay.

24
Jugaad Business Models
Jugaad concept is not confined to
products alone; it can be relevant to
services in a poor economy where the
cost associated with bridging the so-
called “last mile” problem is excessive.

A classic example is personified by

Mumbai’s dabbawallahs, who deliver
hot lunches to 200,000 office workers
each day.

25
Delivery of financial products to rural
Indians is another area. To set up a branch of a bank
in every one of the six lakh villages is expensive.

Kirana shops can now act as “business

correspondents” for Indian banks and these shops
effectively become low-cost bank branches for firms
such as ICICI Bank.

Financial service providers like Eko provide a

conduit between Kirana shops in villages and their
counterparts in cities, thereby providing a key
service to rural consumers whose family members
work in cities and send money home frequently.

26
Jugaad Business Models
SELCO provides solar lighting to rural Indians. Hande
realized that his customers were daily wage earners
comfortable with small daily payments for the solar
power. He found a way to supply solar power daily at
the same price as kerosene.

Local entrepreneur manage and maintain the solar

panels and batteries and charges a small rent to
lamps rented to the villagers every evening.

Overall, the solution is frugal, it has flexible business

thinking behind it, and it includes many people who
would otherwise be excluded from access to clean
energy solutions.

27
Innovation in Medical Service Delivery
Dr V. Mohan, a
world-renowned
People from villages find it difficult to come to the diabetes specialist
city for treatment as this costs money and takes time
away from work in the fields. Dr. Mohan’s mobile
diabetes clinic travels from village to village.

Patients enter the van and look through the

eyepiece of the medical device within. An image of
their eye is beamed via V-SAT to the physician sitting
in the clinic in Chennai who makes a prompt
diagnosis that is relayed back to a local health
volunteer in the van.

The local health volunteer then communicates the

diagnosis and treatment plan to the local health
volunteer ensures that the patient follows up on the
doctor’s advice and returns for a check-up when the
van makes its next visit to the village. 28
Is Jugaad the Future frugal innovation is set to be this year’s theme for the Gottlieb
Duttweiler Institute’s 18th European Trend Day innovation
of Innovation? conference.
Jugaad: A New Growth Formula for Corporate America
•by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, and Simone Ahuja

• Thrift not waste.

• Inclusion, not exclusion.

• Bottom-up participation, not top-down

command and control.

• Flexible thinking and action, not linear

planning.

29
Four future innovation trends
"Quantum innovation” is "out-of-the-box" thinking, the kind of change that is so
disruptive. This category includes all innovation efforts that signify a paradigm shift and
re-imagine our businesses from the bottom up.

"New organisational forms". Companies are saying goodbye to the old "9-to-5, Monday-
through-Friday" work environment. Many new firms don't even have an office: they are
fully virtual companies. Even those who seem more traditional are changing:

"Reverse innovation". Instead of developing innovation in mature markets and then

outsourcing its production to emerging countries, many organizations are doing the exact
opposite.

"Embracing mistakes". A culture of risk helps promote entrepreneurship... and with it

comes a humble approach to innovation, where we see projects as experiments that may
fail but will still yield learning opportunities for future success.

30
What are the Characteristics of Innovators?

Benjamin Franklin conducted

electricity experiments,
theorized the existence of the
Joseph Priestley Darwin studied coral reefs, bred Gulf Stream, designed stoves,
bounced between pigeons, performed taxonomical and made a small fortune as
chemistry, physics, studies of beetles and barnacles, a printer
theology, and papers on the geology of South
political theory America
31
Can we Quantify
Innovation?
The Global Innovation Index (GII) was
launched in 2007 with the aim of
identifying and determining metrics and
methods that could capture a picture of
innovation in society that is as complete
as possible

“An innovation is a new or improved product or process (or combination thereof) that
differs significantly from the unit’s previous products or processes and that has been
made available to potential users (product) or brought into use by the unit (process).”

32
The National
Innovation Challenge
provides a 360-degree cycle of
learning and understanding
the process of innovation and
start-up. It is designed in a way
that; each team will traverse a
path from problem
identification and ideation to
building a business model and
finally entering the phase of
Enterprise development in a
time period of one year.

33
A Personal Example of
Innovation

Plasma Torch

Plasma Pyrolysis of Waste

34
Large gas throughput required to stabilize the arc results in
product gas dilution and reduction in energy efficiency

pyrolysis product gas is extracted

and used for the arc stabilization,
improving heat transfer without
diluting the pyrolysis gases

35 % increase in pyrolysis
efficiency
improves the heat
distribution in the primary
chamber
increases electrode life by
reducing the electrode
Endogenous Gas Fed Plasma Torch erosion rate.
We can all be Innovators

Josh Linkner: Big Little Breakthroughs: How Small,

Everyday Innovations Drive Oversized Results,

36
 Conclusions
• Innovation means doing something new, different, and better
• At the root of innovation are ideas and we need to understand the importance of ideas,
where they come from and how to nurture them
• Ideas form in the brain. A new idea is a unique network of neurons firing in close association
inside your brain.
• Almost all the essential breakthrough ideas happened when people discussed their ideas in
meetings and conferences
• A particular idea will have similar ideas with slight variations in its neighbourhood. This
neighbourhood is called the adjacent possible.
• Places where people gather provide environments that stimulate the creation of good ideas.
• Management of ideas is managing the process of collecting and developing ideas and
insights to get the most out of them. This has become an important management function
demanding good strategies.
• In India, innovation is happening in both formal and informal spaces.
• Jugaad is a uniquely Indian way of frugal innovation

37