Introducing the Frugal approach to Technology Innovation in Enterprises
In the following 3-part blog series, the aim is to impart a basic knowledge of what “frugal innovation” actually stands for and what it means in an enterprises’ context. The next two blogs will talk about the principles that guide frugal innovators and why enterprise CIOs must take a closer look at the possibilities of frugal innovation. “Frugal Innovation” is defined as the art of overcoming harsh constraints and innovating sustainable products with limited resources. As a concept, it is not new and has been around for at least a decade, largely prevailing in the socio-economic context of developing countries like India, Kenya, Brazil, and China, where we have seen examples of frugal innovation by grassroots entrepreneurs to multinationals across sectors. At the grassroots end, examples include clay refrigerators used to store vegetables in rural areas where the lack of electricity is a constraint to baby warmers designed to help premature babies maintain their body temperature and preserve their lives. At the multinational end, pioneers of frugal innovation include the likes of GE, Siemens and Renault-Nissan, who have built low-cost solutions overcoming the constraints of energy and environmental challenges. Frugal Innovation creates value for Individuals, Businesses & Society Frugal Innovation begins with identifying opportunities that arise from adversity. Innovative minds reframe problems and convert them into opportunities. Maximum effort is made to flex available assets and convert them into sustainable solutions appropriate to the problem, the situation and the end user. Frugal innovation, therefore, unleashes the creativity in individuals and helps them to do more and better with less. Frugal innovation is thus also geared towards creating value for individuals, business, and society through the efficient use of available resources. Because of the transformative power of the concept, I have been researching it along with co-authors for over a decade now. In 2012, along with Navi Radjou, an innovation guru and winner of the Thinkers50 Innovation Award, and Simone Ahuja, a film-maker and consultant, I wrote Jugaad Innovation, a bestselling book about frugal innovation in emerging markets and what large Western corporations can learn from their emerging market counterparts. Hailed by the Economist as ‘the most comprehensive book yet to appear on the subject of Frugal Innovation’, the concept of frugal innovation attracted a lot of attention in the West for the West. So, Navi Radjou and I then went on to publish a follow-up book called Frugal Innovation: How to Do More with Less that focused specifically on frugal innovation in developed economies in the 21st century. In the book, we look at large companies such as Unilever, Renault, GE, Siemens, GSK, and others that are using the frugal principles to drive innovation in resource-constraint environments globally. Frugal Technology Innovation for Enterprises Over the last decade or so, we have seen a tremendous explosion of frugal innovation in various socio-economic contexts. Now an interesting question arises: can frugal innovation be applied to bring technology innovation to enterprises? Ignitho has taken the bold, pioneering step of adapting this concept to drive Frugal Technology Innovation for Enterprises. I have been collaborating closely with Joseph Olassa, co-founder and CEO of Ignitho, to actively promote Frugal Technology Innovation for Enterprises in the US and UK markets. Joseph has been a leading advocate of this approach and has presented his ideas at various global conferences. Combining my research on frugal innovation with Joseph’s expertise in technology innovation, Ignitho and I have successfully developed a frugal methodology to rapidly prototype business ideas and scale technology innovation in enterprises facing time and resource constraints. Ignitho’s disruptive new approach can help unlock efficiencies to innovate using available resources (money, time, people), to deliver tangible outcomes for the business using technology. If the concept of Frugal Technology Innovation interests you, stay tuned for my next blog which talks about the principles guiding Frugal Innovators and how they can lead enterprises to achieve successful Technology Innovation.
4 Key Principles For CIO While Selecting An Innovation Partner
Introduction: In today’s complex and fast changing world, the role of the CIO is not an easy one. Balancing the demands of the commercial business, key IT sponsored programmes, compliance (The California Online Privacy Protection Act, The Computer Security Act of 1997 and GDPR to name a few) and let us not even go into the territory of Digital and Agile working practices! It’s not surprising that IT innovation usually ends up low down the priority list. Add this to the challenge of securing funding for efforts that may not have clear paybacks then the result is Technology Innovation is often ignored completely! Is this acceptable? Technology Innovation – Ownership Well the short answer would be everyone and anyone in an enterprise could and should have a role. But where should ownership reside? I set it hard to argue that there is no better place than that of the office of the CIO. The question CIO’s need to ask is ‘am I comfortable’ with that responsibility and maybe ‘am I comfortable’ with it outside IT? If you come to the conclusion that you should own it then you need to take actions to make this happen. Plan In order to really gain momentum, there are a few key principles that need to be considered: The need to allow anybody in an enterprise to put forward ideas – Technology ideas are no longer the exclusive domain of IT. Accept and embrace it. The enterprise innovation groups are bombarded with unlimited ideas coming from various internal teams. The issue is in identifying the right idea and the required time to nurture these ideas. Keep the process light – don’t hide behind monolithic processes (read barriers) – The CIO’s we speak to often say that they mostly qualify ideas based on factors such as exertion, money, production, and achievement. This process is high cost and time-consuming, resulting in ideas being scrapped even before they are properly considered. The key is to identify ideas with minimum effort and filter the ones with maximum potential benefit. This is easier said than done using monolithic processes in innovation. Resources – plan some time to look at ideas to find the best potential innovation idea. While considering an idea CIOs are forced to consider the following factors such as the effort, capital and output required, to turn these ideas to functional products. Budget – allocate some resource/money – In today’s digital era, CIO’s often shy away from adopting a ‘silver bullet’ approach to technology innovation. CIO’s should think of ways of starting small and gain some traction. Be smart – look into the market for ideas – for example have you looked at RPA and how you could use it to improve your business processes (including IT) or extend a legacy system or two. What are businesses in other industries doing? Could you ‘migrate’ the model to your business? Partner – To build a competitive advantage, enterprises need to carefully select their innovation partners. Enterprises should look to select an innovation partner who is able to bring a global delivery model leveraging onsite and offshore advantages to the party. Innovation Partner For those ideas that require software to be built the golden rule is not to spend any more than you must in order to prove or disprove the idea. Look for a partner who does not treat innovation projects the same way as mainstream IT projects – business cases/project and expects the same guarantees on the investment return. Enterprises should look for innovation partners who give preference to ROI-backed innovation or in other terms sustainable innovation. An equally cost-effective method for sustainable innovation is adoption of Frugal Innovation methodology for technology innovation by enterprises. Ignitho Technologies, headquartered in the USA, and with its offices in New York, USA & London, UK, and its innovation labs & development centres in Richmond, USA, Brighton, UK and Kochi, India, specialises in Digital Applications – The ability to start small and deliver quick outcomes which are inherently scalable, for the web, mobile and cloud and Innovation Pods – The ability to build focused agile pods with cross-functional teams delivering faster prototypes and digital solutions. The secret of success for Ignitho lies in their Frugal Innovation methodology – “the ability to do more with less” – developed in collaboration with a world-renowned thought leader from the University of Cambridge. With its Frugal Technology Innovation methodology, Ignitho works with enterprises to identify potential ideas and using the geographically spread innovation labs to build MVPs. This allows enterprises to take up a step-by-step approach to technology innovation instead of going for the big bang approach which could, in turn, hurt their IT budget. In summary, the CIO’s should invest the time and take the lead on Innovation and should not be afraid to do so. There are great tools and partners who can help CIO’s succeed on the journey. You may not find a ‘silver bullet’ idea but if you start the journey with a partner like Ignitho, you will find things that can improve your business and that can’t be a bad thing.
10 Steps To Consider While Selecting An IT Outsourcing Partner
The current predicament of a CIO while selecting an IT outsourcing partner Today CIO’s have an added responsibility to transform businesses into a better enterprise. The new age decision makers, drive their business through dynamic markets, delivering on an architecture that is built on a scalable platform and which has the capability of rapid response and providing tools that offer insight and decision support. According to a study conducted by a top analyst firm, 31% of IT services have been outsourced in 2017 and this will continue to grow in future. Outsourcing has revolutionised the way business is done in almost all sectors. Though a gradual process which evolves with time and as per the latest requirements of the industry, the basis of outsourcing business is to accelerate the pace of one’s business and increase its efficiency. Outsourcing is certainly a blessing for the business community in today’s dynamic market. But the process, or steps in selecting “the right IT outsourcing partner,” need to be performed after careful analysis of many factors, any one of which, if overlooked, can put an outsourced project, in going way over the projected timeline and budget and leave the business or the product way behind their competitors in its go-to-market. Factors often associated with outsourcing, such as over-promising, under-staffing, security breaches, culture shock, and many other factors can turn profit margins into cost overruns and software that falls far short of the client expectations. To build a competitive advantage enterprises need to carefully select an IT outsourcing partner. In this blog, I will discuss some of the steps you need to consider before selecting an outsourcing partner for the purpose of structuring a global delivery model leveraging onsite and offshore advantages. 10 steps to consider while selecting an IT outsourcing partner 1. Identify the need for Outsourcing First and foremost, identify your need to outsource. Many enterprises outsource as part of cost reduction. Up until a few years ago cost reduction was the major reason to outsource. However, it should no longer be looked at as the sole driving force. You should be looking at current and future staffing models how you can improve inefficient processes what non-core activities you don’t need to do yourselves as drivers, and, what financial benefits you can achieve You should think long and hard about the benefits that can be gained from having a distributed and flexible staffing model to cope with the inevitable ups and downs in the dynamic market. 2. Support from the Board It is inevitable that some members of your staff will not be in favour of outsourcing. Some of their concerns may be purely self-preservation but others may be genuine perfectly valid issues and it is vital that all are listened to and that the senior team speak with one voice in detailing the reasons for outsourcing and benefits it will bring. The board need to see and understand the benefits and champion the relationship between the non-IT fields and outsourcing. Therefore, to be successful there must be buy-in at the most senior levels within the company, especially the HR as the word redundancy might pile up and make it harder for the outsourcing companies. 3. Identify an IT partner with the same rigour and passion of the larger corporates If you’re one of the Fortune 500 firms, outsourcing vendor size may not be an important factor, but for smaller firms, getting the attention of one of these large corporates can be tough. While selecting an IT partner, verify the expertise of the core team’s background. For example, Ignitho’s co-founders having previously led business units for the likes of Accenture, Mindtree, Cognizant and HP, as well as other senior professionals who have joined Ignitho from the likes of Capgemini and Infosys, enables us to deliver for our customers with the same programme rigour and approach to top quality, without the engagement overheads of bigger industry players. 4. Cultural fit of the IT Partner As responsible IT executives before selecting your partner, you will have performed due diligence, take up references, go on site visits etc. However, you also need to consider the cultural fit and the size of organisation you are partnering up with. You don’t want to be a very little insignificant player; the retention of whose business is neither here nor there to the outsourcer. Similarly, you need a partner that can meet the needs of your organisation with very little or preferably no delay at all. Think about your partner as being a long-term strategic fit and not a short-term tactical fix. For example, Ignitho’s global Sales & Delivery presence provides you, local touch-points at every stage to facilitate a smooth transition and ensure any cultural differences are dealt with quickly and seamlessly. And a unique and strong CIO Ecosystem provides you with peer guidance from locally based ex-CIO’s to “get it right the first time.” 5. Check for expertise in multiple software technologies The expertise in multiple software technologies is often overlooked but is crucial to the success of any outsourcing deal. Choosing a vendor who knows only a few technologies, even if they’re best in class in the ones you think are right, risks the “hammer and nail” problem: to those armed only with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. Remember, you’re hiring the outsourcing vendor for expertise you don’t have internally, so be careful not to reproduce your own limitations in this choice. Look for a partner with developers in a wide variety of technologies to increase your chances of success. At Ignitho, our delivery strength lies in the robust pool of experienced, technically competent resources across Microsoft, Open Source, Java, Mobile, Machine Learning and Augmented and Virtual Reality technologies. 6. A Clarity in the Requirements and What is Actually Being Outsourced Make sure left and right hands within your team know what is being proposed. You don’t want manager A thinking you are outsourcing Networks and manager B thinking you are outsourcing Storage. Similarly, you need