Whenever I go to any conference or some sort of it, the commonest word I find is ‘Innovation’. Innovation, out of box thinking, creativity and many other similar jargons are setting new trends of fashion in our old-fashioned R and D sector. It is applauding and also inspiring, but worthless unless, we understand these words completely. Most of the people, I find, confuse with the implication of such words and hence its implementation looks like a fool’s dream.

People working as group-head or team-lead in R and D sectors are religiously sent to the top-most management colleges to understand innovation. They are taught how he/she can sow the seed of innovation and how this plant of innovation can be further nurtured.

The term innovation is generic in nature and it means a novel idea that can bring desirable and fruitful changes. The seed of any innovation is an Idea-an Idea specific to that particular ecosystem which is the result of the sacrifices of so many ideas which are referred as bad ideas. But these bad ideas are those who steps us up to the good idea. What I think Ideas are never good or bad. Even what we say a bad idea is the one which is not good.

The question how to fuel innovation is of utmost importance and its solution, perhaps, is the unrestricted flow of ideas without any binary discrimination of ideas into good and bad. People need to be encouraged for providing ideas. The best way is to provide incentive and recognition for every idea. There may be question on its feasibility for taking so many ideas and implementing is a huge task and it demands people’s support as well as monetary support. But getting one innovative idea can pay back all the expenditure incurred. There are many examples which show how one idea saved millions for an industry.

 There are many cases; I have witnessed myself, where Ideas are ruthlessly sentenced to capital punishment for being impractical and ridiculous. In such situation, not only it kills one idea, but also it chokes the passage of the stream of ideas forever. It is discouraging not only for that person but also for his colleagues. Such environment will never taste the success of innovation.

Particularly, in R & D sector and in this more specifically, those which are under government control are too orthodox to spend any amount of money to encourage innovation. For them, Innovation is just a fancy word which decorates the language. Even, they have made innovation centre but it is only limited to higher authorities and hence, it never permeates to the people it really needs.

 For a long time, we have been begging to other countries for technology, now it is time to revert it back. We often talk about being a leader, not merely a follower. Innovation is one of the tools which can step up to such heights but before this, we need to wash away the orthodox mentality of not-to-change. Investment for Innovation should not be understood as useless but should be accepted as a worthwhile investment.