How to make our India office more creative & innovative?

A global technology firm that deals with high end embedded software and hardware products has its operations in India for the last 10 years. Being an organization that believes in innovation culture and having Innovation as one of its core value, did not see it happening in their India office. They had a history of just 1 patent in the 8 years of their existence in India and that was their area of concern when they first interacted with Kognitivus. They were looking to develop innovation capability of the organization and have their employees be more creative and innovative so that in future they can have patents filed from India offices as well.
Even though the challenge seemed to be clear enough, the solution was not as simple and straightforward. Creativity is not a skill that can be learned but one must unleash it as its inherent to all humans. To do so the biggest challenge is the fixed mindset that gets developed over a period of years based on the culture of the place, the belief system and environmental constraints.

Our unique immersive approach helped us generate insights regarding the skillset, mindset and toolset gaps for the group which was 20 people strong. Also, even after bridging the competency gap for innovation and creativity, if one does not have a platform to apply the skills, they become obsolete.

With the given background and analysis, we planned to enhance the innovation competency of the group across three broad areas

  • Unleashing creativity and developing skill set for innovation
  • Overcoming the fixed mindset by overcoming fear of failure
  • Tool set for Problem solving for end to end innovation solution development

We also timed the program with the planned “Innovation Day” within the organization to ensure that the group gets a platform to apply the developed competencies and see the results for themselves.

Our innovative ways like online follow up modules and group clarification sessions helped us reinstate the classroom learning and lead the group to adopt it with conviction. The activities, stories and case studies that we used were relevant and engaging and helped the group grasp the concepts better.

3 experiential workshops with 40% time spent on hands on activities empowered the group on innovation and creativity skills, problem solving ability and ability to bounce back from failures. Candidates were able to understand that creativity could be unleashed and had an experiential learning to do so within the classroom which lead them to know the methods of idea generation for innovation.

Systematically there were 10 ideas submitted from the group for their innovation day out of which 3 qualified for the final presentation on the innovation day among total of 100+ ideas submitted from entire India office. The group also did small innovations within their projects to improve some processes that they use in their daily work schedules which made their work life better.

Overall, we gave the group the skillset, mindset and toolset to be able to innovate wherever there is possibility and these learning have been propagated by the organization within for ongoing results.

Client: Global Navigation Product Company

Strength: 6000+

Services: Innovation Capability Development

Duration: 4 months

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