Let me recount an apocryphal anecdote about how shoes were discovered!

Once upon a time, long long ago and far far away, there was this king who got fed up with all the dust that covered his feet every time he walked. So, he summoned his council of ministers to find out an immediate solution to this nuisance.

One of the bright sparks suggested that all the dust in the world be dusted away. You can very well imagine what happened. The whole world got covered with dust! Another bright mind took the cue and suggested that the whole world be washed clean. Hundreds of millions of gallons of water was poured and the whole kingdom turned into a mud pool filled with slush. The most brilliant among the ministers then suggested something which was really “innovative”. He prescribed that the world be covered with animal skin. Thousands of animals were slaughtered and it created so much commotion that the project had to be abruptly halted midway.

All the while an old cobbler was sitting at a corner and observing the proceedings. He gingerly came forward and with all humility suggested that instead of attempting to clean the whole world of dust, if the king covers his feet with animal skin the whole problem could be solved without the least bit of fuss!

Thus was discovered the contraption which has shod the feet of mankind since then.

You must be wondering why I wasted so much space on something which is so simple and anybody with an average commonsense would have been able to suggest. Therein lies the beauty and exclusivity of innovation. It is always there but only a few can see it!

Henry Ford revolutionized the way factories worked by innovating the assembly line system of production. It unleashed enormous productivity and he reaped many times over the economic benefits of large scale operation. He did not fail to transfer part of these benefits to the consumers and became a household name the world over and etched his name in the English lexicon.

History abounds in numerous such examples.

When Boeing introduced jet planes in commercial airline service, an inexplicable series of mid-air blow ups started taking place. The airplanes blew up on their own in mid-air. Naturally, this caused widespread panic and the commercial airline industry which was on the verge of a boom upon the introduction of jets, faced an unwarranted and wholly unwelcome slump!

What was going wrong?

A series of detailed and painstaking investigations followed. A lot of midnight oil was burnt and lot of pates lost their crowning glory! Finally, wonder of wonders, the reason for these blow ups was tracked down to those innocuous rivets which were used to attach the window frames to the body of the airplanes! These rivets were hammered in the aluminum body of the airplanes just as they were done in cars. But the hammering created tensions in the aluminum and microscopic fissures were created as a result of these. Under normal conditions such fissures would not pose any problem at all. But when the airplane was way up in the sky, the atmospheric pressure became very low outside and the passenger cabin had to be kept pressurized. This outward pressure caused those microscopic fissures to gradually increase in size and finally the windows blew off the airplanes causing them to blow up in mid air. Who ever thought that a humble rivet would cause a huge airplane to disintegrate!

Again the brilliant minds started working! The solution, which now seems so simple and obvious, was then indeed a revolutionary innovation. Engineers simply stuck the windows with a special type of glue instead of using rivets! Airplanes stopped blowing up and after a brief hiatus; jets started ruling the skies again.

There are a plethora of different facets that come under the rubric of innovation, and it is not necessarily always related to technology. Today, innovation is about reinventing business processes and building entirely new markets that meet untapped customer needs. With the internet providing an unlimited stream of new ideas, innovation is now all about identifying and crystallizing the right ideas and bringing them to the consumers in record time.

Yang Mingsheng, CEO of Agricultural Bank of China created a gentle giant in the world banking industry by concentrating on the farmers who were till then completely ignored as the age old wisdom in banking considered investment in the agricultural sector as extremely risky.

Sunil B. Mittal, CEO of Bharti Televentures Ltd. took his company to stellar heights by outsourcing everything other than marketing and customer relations. Now his company charges 2 cents per minute and is continuously adding one million customers every month.

However Apple Computers lies at the top of the heap of innovative companies. Just observe how they put the ipod in the market.

First they entered into an innovative agreement with the music companies for selling their songs online. Then they innovated a unique business model of selling songs online for a dollar each and finally they innovated the brand by continuously hyping about the various physical features (how fabulous the white ear buds are, how wonderful the shape of ipod is) of ipod.

The consumers were not given a product, they were provided with an entirely new service which they never experienced before. They could now download and listen to their favorite songs with utmost ease. This cluster of services on iTunes software platform converted an ordinary mp3 player into a youth icon!

Take the case of another master innovator – Toyota. Prius has elevated Toyota from innovator of manufacturing processes to the level of a product innovator. The company is now going into the design details of its suppliers to effect a cost reduction through the entire process of vehicle manufacturing.

The article would remain incomplete if a mention of Proctor and Gamble is not made. It has revolutionized the entire concept of in-house research and development by innovating the new concept called “technology innovators”. These people act as scouts and trawl through universities to locate the latest breakthroughs and P&G teams up with these bright minds in bringing these ideas to the consumers the world over. This innovative concept of connect-and-develop has been helping P&G to forge ahead of many of its competitors.

So, to conclude, I must say that it is very difficult to list the most innovative companies on the basis of patents filed. Innovation has now enveloped the whole universe of commerce where customers are not buying products but an entire gamut of services. The time has come to innovate a new way of perceiving what innovation is.

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