Insanely Interesting People who Influenced Me: #10 Clayton Christensen

For the rest of the year, I would like to take a moment and thank the people who have had a significant impact on me as an individual. The way they have lived their lives and their body of work has had an outsized impact on how I think about life in general and and work, in particular. Some of these are contemporary thinkers and some of them are just a memory. Some of them are famous in their own rights and some of them are yet to be found by others. Some of them are young and some of […]

What stops Us from Creating Breakthrough Innovations

Have you ever been part of an innovation project that started off with big ambitions and dreams about coming up with disruptive innovations which are expected to be game changing and end with a me-too or a watered down incremental innovation to an existing product category? I have been part of a few such projects which start with much fanfare and later on become run-of-the-mill projects with no breakthrough’s to show for. I was always interested to understand why is this so? Why do well-intentioned people, who have all the motivation and incentives to create breakthrough innovations, end up watering […]

Building a Culture of Innovation by Creating A Structure for Unstructured Innovation

The need for innovation has never been more acute for businesses than it is today. Every CEO of any sizable business is worrying about which startup from which garage is going to change the rules of their game and disrupt them. They are looking for ways to find (internally, within their organisation or externally, through acquisition/partnership/investments) innovations that can give them enough breathing space to grow their businesses and give their shareholders a good return on investment (and in the process make a lot of money for themselves :-)) However, what most organisations don’t get is that there is only one […]

Superman, The Klu Klux Klan & Disruptive Innovation

I recently stumbled upon a short film which chronicled how one single individual (Stetson Kennedy) went under cover and fought and plotted the demise of the Klu Klux Klan. You can watch the entire video below. You can also read the book Superman versus the Ku Klux Klan: The True Story of How the Iconic Superhero Battled the Men of Hate. How Superman Defeated the KKK by CrimeInc2 What was most interesting to me in the entire story was how he brought about the demise of the klan. The Klan had influence over every known source – police, judiciary, political system […]

If I were the CEO of FedEx

If I were the CEO of FedEx..

One of the most important and most talked about topics in the recent times in business circles has been “Disruptive Innovation”. Thanks to the book written by Clay Christensen – “The Innovators Dilemma” and his ability to explain the phenomenon in a few industries, the concept of disruption and disruptive innovation has become a common lexicon in the business circles. One of the industries that is on the verge of being disrupted is the logistics industry. The entire logistics industry is based on the assumptions that production and consumption happen at different locations and hence there is a need for […]