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  • Entrepreneurs’s Interview – Sen6

    Sachi: Good evening, today we have with us Smruti Parida. He is the founder of this company called Sen6 networks along with his batch mate from NITK Suratkal – Vinuth
     
    Welcome Smruti to this interview. Could you please let us know your background and then tell us about your company?
    Smruti: Hi, my name is Smruti; I am computer science graduate from NITK Suratkal, from 2005 batch. Immediately after my graduation, I was joined United Online.
    United Online was a small 400 people company in Hyderabad which works in the area of email protection, spamming etc. For two years, it was a very good experience working on the basis of internet infrastructure; and definitely a high learning phase. I really experienced the potential of internet and its ability to bring convenience on a scale unthought-of.
    After this, I moved on to Microsoft, where I worked for 3 year; I had the opportunity to work on “Bing” – the search engine. While working on this project I understood the way in which large projects are handled – how the efficient strategies could help achieve significant results. These learning were always happening.
    I also began thinking – what does ambition mean for me? What would be my vision for life etc? After 5 years of working for these companies, and thanks to circumstances – I decided to take the plunge into entrepreneurship.
    Along with my cofounders, I started Sen6. The idea of Sen6 has changed since the initial thoughts we had. All of us cofounders were technical people and with a background in internet technologies. We firmly believed that internet had the potential to break barriers and make people act smarter and more productive. Since one of the cofounders had an inclination towards arts, we decided to start working with this focus. Our objective then focused on empowering the artist so that the artists in remote areas can reach out to the rest of the world easily. We now envision ourselves as creating an e-bay like platform for Indian art.
    Through this platform we would be democratizing the whole art scene in India and get to the forefront many talented artists and their original works which are inaccessible otherwise. The platform would attempt to put the middlemen and advisors, consultants etc – this could thus disrupt the existing structure and make the whole scene transparent.
    Sachi: You told your cofounder was instrumental in getting to operate in this domain, Could you just tell us about how you met your co-founder and how it started off?
    Smruti: I didn’t do too much homework in choosing the cofounder – he was my batch-mate at my engineering college. Both of us joined United Online together and while there, we were also housemates.
    We found that our frequencies matched. We tried doing things part time, however since our interest would quickly shift from one to another, we failed. That is when both of us came to the understanding that starting off something would be only possible when we are full time on it.
    While there could be an analytical way to find a co-founder, for met it is the pre-established connections that helped. We used to complement each other well and that was something that helped find the right team for us.
    Sachi: Since you operate in the business that deals with Art Industry. Could you just brief tell us art and how the art work?
    Smruti: I would be very frank that we do not understand art industry completely. The understanding we have got is by reading, meeting artist, and people who deals with architect, interior designs, art galleries etc. So we would like to say that our understanding could pretty much be wrong but I shall talk about the problem we address.
    The consumers of art could be at any place, at your home, hotels, resorts, or art gallery – where you see paintings. It is generally the interior designers who really get these art pieces into these places. The kind of art that these interior designers get is called affordable art. But still art in general hasn’t been accessible to common people.
    One of the reasons for this is that Artists are generally not the people who would like to market their work – they are happier exploring their skill. There are people who purchase art at a value which is much lesser than the market value of the art and make profits out of the deals. The price differential between the 2 is extremely broad.
    There are lots of middle men who operate in this business, and generally art continues to remain accessible only to a small set of people. We want art to be accessible to common man – we do not want art to be considered as something that could decorate the walls of your home. There is lot of very talented artists whose work doesn’t get recognized – primarily due to the accessibility or lack of discovery platform. We want to be that discovery platform.
    Reports say there are nearly 30,000 not so noted artists and trough the online platform we intend to give them a larger customer base to derive value for their art pieces.
    Sachi: In the last one and half year of operations, what has been the major learning? Do let us know some of the major mistakes you have done and how you overcome these?
    Smruti: If I am to look back and think if the work that I have done this far – I feel I have taken longer than usual to accomplish this.
    One of the initial mistakes was with us taking a long time to open up our minds – As said earlier, we were technical people and when starting off a business it requires a complete change in the thought process. It took us quite some time to get this realization. It would be of enormous help if this mindset shift occurs before you start your business.
    As a business man, you would need to get to meet various people; understand their minds and only then will you realize that the way your consumers perceive your business. You need to be a salesman of sorts. In our case, we had to meet a lot of interior designers who are comfortable with the current way they do their business, then you go to them and talk about the platform which has features they might not need! You need to be persuasive, and not expect that things would happen naturally. It always helps if you can make a strict routine.
    What we had done was building the product that we believed had to be the best in the world – but we now feel it would have been better if we began entering the market and showcasing the platform to people much earlier. Dividing the work and continuously being persuasive is what we learnt in this exercise. We are now smarter with this experience.
    Having said that, as an entrepreneur, one is generally curious and wouldn’t follow the book; it is only when he has attempted and learnt from the mistake that he really learns it. It is really this characteristic that differentiates them.
    Sachi: Your business has 2 parts to bridge – one is the artist and the other is the purchaser of these art pieces. How did you go about bridging this?
    Smruti: It wasn’t really a big problem for us, since our business was attempting to get a business model that had worked in the west, it was useful to learn from their experience and use it into the Indian context.
    We found quite a few Indians who use these international websites to sell their work – we wrote to them and able to get them signed onto the platform. The appreciated our efforts to target the Indian Market. There are nearly 5 lakh other people across the world who also used the same platform and when we started sen6, they felt there could be a good recognition for their creations.
    Given our culture and traditions, only an Indian could understand and appreciate Indian Art, the larger western audience couldn’t appreciate this to a large extent. So this problem wasn’t a very difficult one.
    Sachi: How did you get through to the paying customer?
    Smruti: Once the artists signed in, they asked their regular purchasers to use this platform to make the purchase of their art. So the initial set of our orders were received that way.
    We did some online marketing through Google Ads, Facebook etc and these campaigns helped us get a few more orders.
    We are currently working on building a B2B connect for the online portal.
    Sachi: How would Sen6 be in say three years time?
    Smruti: Our study indicates that there are 30,000 artists in India who constantly generate new art, so we are targeting having around 15,000 of these artists on this platform.
    We want to create a brand for our self in the home-buyer section of the business through the convenience that Sen6 intends to provide.
    We also want the large B2B buyers using sen6 for their business and professional needs.
    Sachi: the customer of you platform could be anywhere across the world, how do you manage the logistic if you do manage it?
    Smruti: Currently we operate only in the re-production print and fine art prints of original works business and not in the original painting sales. This is to keep our self in line with the affordability focus we have. In this model, the digital copy resides in our secure store and when a sale is concluded, we take care of printing and shipping the product. We accept the payment and then transfer the artist his share with a 15 day time period.
    For original painting, the costs of these would be much higher and we would handle the logistics when we get into this segment of the market. Currently we are staying away from this.
    Sachi: What is your message for the aspiring entrepreneurs?
    Smruti: If you are aspiring to be an entrepreneur, this is probably the best time for that in India. If you have a curious mind, you will find lots of problems in India, which need to be solved. Be patient and continue perusing – you will definitely make enough money – and in fact even more than what you could have earned otherwise in a job. It is all about taking the bold step of leaving your comfort zone and coming out. And then keep learning, be courageous, know your mistakes and adapt to the changes.
    Sachi: Thank you Smruti, for coming down to this interview

  • Risk of Opportunistic Behavior in Outsourcing model

    In the last blog, we looked at how Outsourcing enables a diversification of risk for a supplier company amongst its customers. In the current blog we continue this discussion of supplier and consumer in the context of outsourcing but moving beyond the benefits and considering the case of an opportunistic behavior by the customer.
    Many a time, when it comes to the decision of making it in-house or buying it from outside – we rush through our decisions. Is there a possible framework for these things? Yes there is definitely when you consider the whole process in economic terms – however that is not what we shall discuss here – In case someone might be interested in this, it is best to read the whole paper “Outsourcing: Practice in search of a Theory – by Prof Sourav Mukherji and Prof J Ramachandran”. In this blog we focus on the possibility of an opportunistic behavior in an outsourcing transaction.
    A specialized supplier would be more efficient at producing than the organization producing it in-house. The underlying premise is that there would be a strong binding contract that could be well enforced. However if there is lot of information asymmetry, uncertainty and almost no competition, the transactions might not get through pretty well. It is in these situations that the opportunistic behavior – “self seeking behavior with guile”. This would also need to be factored in while drafting the contract.
    In a supplier makes a “transaction specific investment” to meet the buyer’s demand then the possibility of opportunistic behavior is higher. The supplier in such situations where he makes a transaction specific investment would ask for a price premium over the competitive rates to guard himself from the opportunistic behavior. 
    So the next time you intend to look out at an investment that is transaction specific do look at the possibility of an opportunistic behavior and hedge yourself.

  • Looking at Outsourcing from the angle of risk

    In the last blog, we looked at outsourcing from the ability of the organization to leverage the resources for the better. In today’s blog we look at the concept of outsourcing from the aspect of risk.
    To understand this, let’s begin with a small example. Let us assume a bank decides to set up a small team towards building a system to handle all the banking related tasks that could be automated. The estimated time for the project for a team of 100 people was 20 months. Around 6 months after starting off the project, there is a huge banking slump and the bank now has issues which threaten its very existence. The project of computerization of its activities invariably would take the back seat. If the software system being developed was done by a larger software company – the risk of the banking slump wouldn’t be too high for the software company. The software company possibly has a larger portfolio of clients and would be able to manage these sorts of risks better than the bank that took up the project of developing the software system in house!
    To summarize the learning – a supplier aggregates demand from multiple customers and therefore can diversify risk better than the customer can on their own – creating higher value for the customers. The supplier’s ability to aggregate demand across businesses and industries would have to be a set of uncorrelated risk profiles. This uncorrelated risk profiles of the suppliers create a portfolio of companies which resemble in many ways to a mutual fund. The fund mitigates the unsystematic risk of an organization or an industry by associating it with customer-portfolio diversification.
    An organization would have to think if would increase its risk by keeping the function in house or would be better off by outsourcing the function.

  • How outsourcing assists organizations leverage their resources better

    In the last blog we looked at the access to resource that outsourcing enables. In today’s blog we look at how organizations are able to better leverage their existing resources and there by create an advantage for themselves.
    To understand what resource leverage means, let’s begin with a small example – having almost every established company today has an HR department within itself – catering to the various human resource related issues. Some leading organizations today have looked at their human resource department more from a value adding angle and have decided to outsource of the non-value adding aspects. Pay roll processing for example is an activity of the HR department, however this is one aspect that is extremely standardized but still consumes a lot of time. These sorts of activities are now being outsourced to other companies offering these sorts of services; this doesn’t just add in the lower cost factor but frees the HR department of these large organizations towards addressing the more challenging tasks that are more organization specific say – cultural transformation or building the leadership pipeline etc. 
    In the above discussion we saw that in addition to cost minimization, the companies have now begun looking at the task that could be outsourced as a value-maximization perspective. By outsourcing the “non-critical” functions that the organization performs, the organization sharpens it focus, channelizes the resources it has towards achieving excellence in the “crucial” functions. 
    This ability of organizations to leverage their resources also provides a long term benefit of channelizing the research in the crucial aspects of business and gain a competitive advantage of the future.

  • Resource Access as a reason for outsourcing

    In the last blog, we attempted to understand the rationale of outsourcing from the dimension of cost minimization. In today’s blog we look at the second dimension of the logic of companies outsourcing – Resource Access.
    To understand this aspect of resource access, let’s assume a product company is intending to enter a new market territory. When a company makes at attempt to enter this new territory it has 2 primary tasks to take care of 
    • creating the brand awareness
    • having a good support of the distribution network

    If the company is to be really successful in the new market, both these aspects have to be dealt along well. What the company would always aim to do is to enter the market quickly – its focus would be a very short time to market – and it is this that would be the key to its success. If the company attempts to do both the tasks in-house, it is extremely possible that the business could be slower to enter into the market! So it is seen that companies find logic to outsource one of these 2 tasks from its kitty. 
    In outsourcing of such a nature discussed above, it is also that the company is able to access the resources that their partner company would have already created. This could potentially give rise to a win-win situation to both the parties involved in the outsourcing agreement.
    There is also another dimension, if we have a careful look at the possible reason for outsourcing. Though might not be the case with all outsourcing of the nature of resource access – in some cases it could be seen that the resource these companies would need to use for the specific task is only transient in nature. It would definitely be efficient to outsource a sporadic or one-off activity given that the recovery of the overhead expenses could be difficult when conducted in-house

  • Entrepreneur’s Interview – BrizzTV

    Sachi: Good Evening Amar, thank you for accepting to come on to this interview.  
     
    Amar is the founder and CEO of Brizz TV. Brizz TV is an innovative platform that delivers internet content directly to the television using set top box technology.  
     
    Without further adieu I would like to ask Amar to briefly tell us about his background and then about the idea?  
     
    Amar:
    Thank you. My name is Amarendra Sahoo, I am a 2004 Computer Science Graduate from NITK Suratkal. After graduation from Suratkal in 2004 I worked across various companies like – Cisco, Juniper, and Lucent for about 5 year. Then I joined IIM Bangalore in 2009, and that is when I started the company – 2009 December.
    Clearing the CAT I would say was an accident, and I joined IIMB – also to fulfil the dream of my parents, wife etc – not many could get a selection to IIMB and not join it. In all this, I was still a “Techie” at heart. Neither the work as an IT professional nor the MBA knowledge was able to satisfy the void I felt. There was a period of self introspection and the meaning of the MBA and the work that would be of interest to me while at IIMB.
    I was also reading some very interesting technology and entrepreneurship blogs at the time, – the achievements of people seems to push me to believe I could do something too. I felt I had quite some time at my hand and I should consider starting off.
    I come from an embedded system, networks background and that probably fed me to believe I could do something more challenging than a e-commerce site. At the point I was thinking of all the idea I consciously stayed away from it even though ecommerce sites were getting a lot of funding.
    While all these questions were popping up at the back of my mind, one day while sitting in a case discussion on Reliance Big TV – as part of the Marketing Course; It struck me that I could be very interesting if we could show Wikipedia on the television without any complex internet stuff in it! A regular TV but with Internet content in it – That is how BrizzTV began.
    At BrizzTV, we show selected Internet content directly on your TV – Example, if we are pushing facebook on your TV you could watch it, unlike internet where you can pull the content. Just like you cannot watch a cricket match on ESPN unless it has been broadcasted, you wouldn’t be able to watch unless we broadcast it. So the data that we transmit will be available on the TV just like any normal channel.
    Our focus is to keep this medium affordable, accessible and easy to use. The problem that we are solving is pretty interesting – in a country with a large rural population, an investment into a PC wouldn’t be economical. Added to this would be the cost of internet. Internet is also not all pervasive, and also costly for a rural consumer.
    In addition to the cost of purchasing the PC, the other barrier for people to adopt to PCs is lies with the additional learning of the usage of the operating systems, brower etc that are  a sort of barrier for adoption.  Also the rural person could run his life without an internet connection!
    Given these thoughts, I wanted to give an affordable, accessible and simple solution – that would have to be the TV. There is not much complexity to using the TV too!
    Facebook which I used as an example earlier is just to make a mention – our focus is on providing quality content that would be mass consumed like; say Wikipedia, or Exam preparation etc. The facebook example was primarily to relate with the present generation J.
    Simply put, Brizz TV enables you put selected internet content on TV, available on a channel interface – say channel 931, 971 etc.
    Sachi: Could you tell us how you managed to put your first team together, and how you managed your finances?
    Amar:
    I never thought I was heading this company, and hence there was no thought of putting up the team as such. I discussed the idea with my friends, and whoever felt that the idea was good I believed we could form a team.
    The first friend I found this way was my batch mate from Surathkal – Jeetu. He was working with Cisco at that time. So we both came together to start this venture off. None of us were from the broadcast domain, and our limited understanding wouldn’t give us a real picture of the technical constraints we might face. We approached an expert – Krishnan who at that point was working at Philips and understood the set-top box pretty well. He encouraged us, and after some calculations and suggested this could be possible if a broadcaster like Airtel or Tata could agree. This was how we formed the first team.
    Coming to the point of Funding part – Both Jeetu and I were basically programmer, and hence we believed we didn’t need any funds to start off. We had a product bent of mind and hence finance was something that we didn’t bother much about. We began working on the product in December 2009 and by April 2010 we had built the prototype. We next had to move towards meeting a broadcaster.
    We approached NSRCEL with the thinking that they could help us connect with the broadcast companies. At NSRCEL we met Guhesh who thought the idea was cool enough to try – he had a friend at Airtel and we were able to get the traction. With this prototype demonstrated, Airtel was willing to work with us. Other things began to move ahead – we were funded by NSRCEL in December 2010. 6 months post the VC round of investment from NSRCEL, we got our next round of investment from Ojas.
    Sachi: Could you tell us how the discussion with Airtel happened, how was the experience? 
     
    Amar: 
    Airtel is a very partner friendly company, most of their activities are outsourced. They weren’t very aggressive in the negotiation too.
    I wasn’t looking for a negotiation too; I always thought that the product I was building had to see the light of the day. I approached it with an open mind.
    Airtel wanted the technology evaluation and proof of concept – all this happened extremely quickly. The approach seemed to be that we (Brizz TV) could do a lot of value add if the young team was taken care off. Airtel has been a fantastic organization to work with. Given their long term vision with Brizz TV, they offered what they generally offer to anyone else without much negotiation.
    There was some bit of luck and the remaining worked with the technical strength the team had.
    Sachi: You have been funded at a very early stage – it would be interesting to understand the experience? 
    Amar: We are a pre-revenue product company – any VC who would invest in us wouldn’t be looking at any revenue for at least one year. It was pretty interesting if we look back at the instance. None of the factors seemed to be favoring us – I was studying, and there were 2 other members in the team. The product was just taking shape, and the company we were working with – Airtel was thought to be as someone whom a start up should be scared off. The technology that we were building was however a very interesting one.
    We went about looking at many VCs in search of funding. The IIMB – NSRCEL connection helped us get a ear from the people we met. Though the technology was interesting, it want something that was tested – they weren’t sure about the monetization prospects of the company.
    I was again luck that I came across to the Ojas investments – Mr Rajest. He was also an NITK alumnus, which helped connect better with him. The team seemed to have struck chords as well. The perspective of looking at Airtel being interested in us also seems to have worked for us. And I think he was willing to take the bet on us.
    Though initially we went about just meeting folks, we began to feel the pinch towards May 2011. We required the money for supporting the operator lab that was crucial for the testing of the final product. Again I believe it was luck that pulled us through.
    Sachi: Out of curiosity, did Airtel help you? Did they co-develop the product or did you get an infrastructure support ?
    Amar: 
    Airtel provided free access to their labs, but given their schedules etc they couldn’t co-develop the product with us. We suggested that we would take care of the technology, and Airtel could help test the product in the lab.
    I should say they facilitated everything around technology development and that help  for us.
    Sachi: Most of your team is from NITK. What do you think excited people to work with you??
     Amar: At college we were always perceived as being friendly guys, we were not considered geeks. People knew us as these are cool chaps and straight from heart. They do things right and they don’t lie. When they say something they mean it. I think this reputation seems to have paid off. So our friends are always willing to work with us.
    The open approach we have followed has helped us all through.
    Sachi: How do you envision yourself in the next 4 or 5 years?
     
    Amar: I think I should be still be rocking. Doing something that excites me something in the tech space. Hopefully Brizz tv, will be a much bigger company – more than just in terms of revenue. We intend to create something meaningful out of India that world finds useful.
    Sachi: If I could mention, you represented India at the Intel UC Berkeley Challenge. Could you tell us how that experience was? How did it help? 
     
    Amar:
    The trip gave me a free trip to Berkeley – I saw a parking space “Reserved at all times for Nobel Laureates” – that excited me as I had never seen a Nobel laureate. I felt extremely excited about the concept.
    The competition was good too, we didn’t win the competition but the experience was pretty good. The exposure was pretty useful for us.
    Some of the competitors from China were doing a bio-oil business – this got me to think of the Indian context where we do 90% business and 10% technology. The kind of innovations from these countries seems to be more technology focused than us. It was a feeling like we could see the future being built here.
    Sachi: You are an MBA and an Entrepreneur – It is generally felt that this combination doesn’t work best. What do you have say about it?
    Amar: 
    It is like telling people who have pistol are dangerous because they can fire!!
    MBA to me is a tool; it is good to have that. It tells you something beyond technology that you could use – you could value add.
    To me personally I have seen If I am not having MBA, things would have been little slower.
    It gives you a market focus, structures your thought.
    If there is a question is “Does the MBA make a better entrepreneur?” I cannot answer that question. But I  am going to  say it  never going to be a harm  it only helps as long as you know how to use it like a tool and it works in  some person’s hand and does not work some else.
    Besides the large network that an MBA provides if you have graduated from a top institute, it gives you a different way of looking at things you know. I am personally excited of doing an MBA.
    It definitely adds value to my team, my company – but I am still a techie at heart. If you consider MBA to be a tool it would be a good perspective. – It never harms, it helps
    Sachi: What message would you like to send across to all the readers?
    Amar: Since I am a techie at heart, I would talk about technology. If you are a technology person, build your technology product first. Build it so well that world just cannot ignore it. People just cannot take their eyes off it.
    If you look at Indian web companies, there is lot of things as an engineer I never liked. The scope to improve is vast. You can make it 50% or 100% better than what it is today.
    Keep your eyes open. Don’t listen to the markets. The market’s foresight is pretty short – a quarter of a year.
    Do not believe when any one says you need leadership and all of that. All these are secondary. If you are good person given a chance, you can be a good leader.
    Build your character and just keep building a good product.
    Sachi:  Thank you Amar, taking your time to this interview. Thank you once again.

  • Cost Minimization and Organizational Innovation

    In the last blog we began understanding the relation between innovation and outsourcing. In this blog we move to discuss the first of the various factors that influence the outsourcing choice – Cost Minimization.
    Cost minimization is one of the most common motivations towards cost minimization. Cost minimization is derived from economies of scale which help spread the large fixed across a larger customer base. It works best when the market has a large number of buyers and seller – indicating that there is high competition in the market. The market therefore would have a large pool to choose from for the vendor who would give them the product at the least cost and therefore benefit from outsourcing.
    One would also need to think of a globalized context in the present context. The globalization in the present context enables the companies to source the product from a larger pool and also benefit from the lower cost of factors of production the not so developed locations of the world – This is how the IT Enabled services industry has developed. The large fixed cost that these companies incur is spread across the large number of clients that these companies serve.
    Let us take the example of Bharat Forge and understand this better – 
    Bharat forge is an Indian company focused on forging – it is the second largest in the world. It has made significant investments in fully automating the forging processes and has instituted an IT enabled knowledge management system to capture and leverage the intellectual capabilities of its engineers and brought about improvements in the forging process that enabled it produce superior products at competitive prices.
    The above example also indicates an additional advantage that a company that invests in cost minimization through specialization – by aggregating the demand of multiple customers – the company also begins to innovate. By doing a relatively narrow set of tasks, the company would be in a better position to figure out superior ways of performing the task and hence are able to innovate greater than a generalist organization. 

  • Innovation and Outsourcing

    In the last blog, we summarized the various classifications of theories that we had discussed over the last few weeks. In the current blog we begin looking at a very interesting study conducted by 2 Professors at IIMB on the concept of Outsourcing and the decision making process associated with it.
    Through the blogs on innovation, we haven’t explicitly mentioned the underlying common understanding – It is specialization that eventually enables innovation. The range of activities that an organization has to take is pretty broad and, this makes innovation a difficult task for organizations. But it is essential for the organizations to innovate constantly to stay ahead of competition. Given this need to innovate and the pre-requisite of innovation in organization the company would like to focus on a specific activity while procuring the remaining from the market. In other words – “Outsourcing”. It is important to understand that specialization and outsourcing are complementary business imperatives.
    The generally held opinion about outsourcing that companies generally outsource activities that are “non-core” while conduct the “core” functionalities of the company in house. The opinion should be reconsidered if we look at the choices that companies like “Nike”, “Dell” and even “Bharti Airtel” have done. While “Bharti” and “Nike” have decided to focus on “marketing” as a core area “Dell” has focused on “Supply Chain Management”. 
    In order to understand the manner in which the organizations can make a choice we would have to look at the decision made on the following:
    1. Cost Minimization 
    2. Resource Access
    3. Resource Leverage
    4. Risk Diversification

  • Summarizing our understanding of Organizational innovation

    In last blog we attempted an understanding of the strategic adaptation theory and its implications to organizational change. In this blog we would attempt to gain a summary of some of the discussions we have had on organization change and innovation. 
    A careful look at the kind of words we have used over the last few blogs would get you to realize that we have dabbled between organizational change and innovation at various points. This blog primarily looks at this question. 
    “Organizational innovation” as a term is pretty ambiguous. The meaning is pretty broad and means innovation or innovative behavior in organization or organizational adaptation of innovation. The relation between organization and innovation is complex, dynamic and multilevel so getting a precise definition is pretty difficult. The concept of organizational innovation is pretty loose and slippery too!
    In the discussion this far – we have looked at 3 interrelated approaches to understanding organizational innovation. 
    The first focused on understanding the effects of organizational structure on the organizations ability to learn, create knowledge and generate technological innovation. The approach however, doesn’t continue the aspects of internal organizational dynamics or environmental forces factored in. The second approach used the organizational learning and knowledge creation was an approach to understand the possibility of organizational innovation. And the third approach focused on the organization’s capacity for change and adaptation. 
    It would be good to note here that none of these approaches individually help understand the concept of organizational innovation completely. It is very important to have an overall perspective of these approaches and apply it when the situation requires it.

  • Strategic Adaptation and Continuous Change

    In the last blog we attempted to understand the punctuated equilibrium model and attempted to associate the organizational innovation component to it. In today’s blog we look at Strategic Adaptation and Continuous Change. 
    The theories of Strategic Organizational Adaptation and change emphasize on the role of managerial action. The strategic choices that managers make shape the organizational change. It is the choice of the actors that decide the outcome rather than passively accepting the environmental selection. Though we cannot claim that the organizational actors have a complete autonomy, the theory talks about a “bounded autonomy”. These organizational actors through their actions and “enactments” are capable of redefining and modifying structures that open up new possibilities for the future.
    Organizational change in this approach would be seen as a continuous process encompassing the paradoxical forces of continuity and change rather than an abrupt, discontinuous, episodic event described by the punctuated equilibrium model. The continuity maintains the sense of identity with the organizational learning, and factors in the political legitimacy and increase the acceptability of change among those who live with it.
    It has also been argued by the management theorists of this school that consistently successful organizations have used a combination of “induced” and “autonomous” processes in strategy to initiate an organizational renewal. The induced initiatives work on the tasks that have an internal scope while the autonomous focus on tasks that have an external scope.