Marketing in a Flat World - Creativity & Innovation... continued...

Gaurav Kapoor

General Manager a...

Living in what has been the heart of innovation for the last several decades, this factor in my view is the one with most leverage. I am continuing on the discussing around Creativity and Innovation in this post

Creativity and Innovation

Creativity is typically used to refer to the act of producing new ideas, approaches or actions, while innovation is the process of both generating and applying such creative ideas in some specific context.

In the context of an organization, therefore, the term innovation is often used to refer to the entire process by which an organization generates creative new ideas and converts them into novel, useful and viable commercial products, services, and business practices, while the term creativity is reserved to apply specifically to the generation of novel ideas by individuals or groups

In the interest of sparking debate, I would say that here is one area that Indian marketers have to look to the more mature markets for inspiration and application. In the context of Indian consumerism, India with its perpetually limited resources and scarcity has made an art out of ‘survival-based creativity’

Making Innovation part of the DNA

A couple of months back, a reputed Wharton Business School Professor came up with a study of the ‘Indian business model’ and how it will be a predominant force in the next 5 years and will be followed globally. I would agree to some degree but would also strongly contend that there is some time before the Indian marketer can convert creativity to innovation as part of their DNA.

The fact that a Google, a Yahoo, Skype, eBay, VMWare, myspace, Facebook, get repeatedly get created out of locations outside of India is not as much a reflection of the size of the Western Markets and the investment available as it is about applying process to creativity to create innovation. It may be just a question of time – but we’re not there yet.

The Nano (and I am talking about the car) is in many ways just the beginning - of true Global Innovation - Product Innovation, Marketing Innovation, Business Innovation ..

India now already has and will increasingly have the right of access to a lot of the best capital, the best talent, the best resources and an increasingly global footprint. The stage is set for a young 25 year old to create a $100Bn company based out of Bangalore (or maybe even Bhopal) in 5 years from inception that is not about India but about the world … I am sure there are ideas glowing and the lava flowing - can we turn it into true innovation ?