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  • Entrepreneur’s Interview – Edu next ventures – A Finishing School business

    Sachi: Good Morning, Swaroop and Vivek, Thanks for coming in for this interview. Swaroop and Vivek are founders of “edu-next ventures”, which operates in the education space. 
     
    I would like to begin the interview with getting to know your background briefly before you could proceed with what edu-next does.
    Swaroop: I am basically from Bangalore. I am a graduate of KREC Suratkal, and then I did my MBA from IIM Bangalore. I then worked with Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) as a consultant for a short while and then I moved to Dell Analytics where I worked in their marketing analytics team. We are now running this venture called Edu-Next which essentially a finishing school for business graduates. We have been working with business schools in India, to provide a careercounseling and mentorship to help students decide better as to what job they would get into and how do they mould themselves to ensure that they get the job.
    Vivek: Hi, this is Vivek and I am a graduate of KREC Suratkal,batch of 2006.
    Sachi:How did the idea of finishing school come to you?
    Vivek: During one of us when brainstorming at IIMB we decided that we would work in the space of education and for obvious reasons we landed at the idea of finishing schools – because it is right at the surface. We wanted to skim the surface first and then see how we can work in the other areas in education.
    In terms of how we came to the idea itself – India being a very competitive environment does not give enough time to people to think about what they want to do in life? or how they move forward? where they want to grow? What they want to do for the rest of their life?
    They are in a hurry and experience enormous peer pressure – thisdrives most career decisions. People do not reflect and think what they done in the past, what they are doing now and what is the personality type, what are their carrier goals, what they can do, what they can’t do, what are the strengths and so on. They approach placement and interviews in a rather unprepared or underprepared fashion. We have also gone experienced similar things.
    Individually for me the dilemma was – MBA or no MBA? Should I stick to my own domain or move to something else?How do I shift?What do I need to make this shift? Where do I shift to?These questions are commonplace –especially once people start working. So we want to address this first at the post graduation level and then move to even more impactful level – under graduate and then Pre-University.
    In an education driven society like ours, it’s very important for people to make the right decisions about where they want to be, so that they can deliver the best and not be unhappy about where they are, or the decisions they made.
    Swaroop: One of the reasons why we got into this space is that I am personally very passionate about education.
    I have also seen a lot of heart burn with my own batch mates in MBA who honestly felt very lost!We took the job we got out of campus. But somehow the ability to say this is what is important for me, this is the kind of person I am and this is what I want to choose is lacking even in the best Institutes – We want to reduce that heart burn.May be say after 5 years of working post MBA, how do you ensure that you are doing the right thing? How do you ensure you are happy?
    Thesearenot easy questions to answer! And each one has his own questions and must find his own answers. We are trying to use different ways to get students to think and make them ask themselves these questions – we provide a platform for them to make the right choice. This was the primary reason we started this venture.
    We alsorealize that sometime it’s too late at the MBA level to take these decisions – Probably they are better off beingmusicians. But that is the question we will answer later. Given that fact that you are doing a MBA, how do we help them to make better choice?
    Sachi: It was pretty clear about how you went about starting it. 
    You are targeting the PG section of the education system, and you also realize that most of the career choices are made at the +2 levels.How are you addressing that at the movement?
    Swaroop: We are not addressing that at the moment, because we need to learn a lot in that space.
    The approach would be slightly different because we still are in a society that promotes engineering because it give a job that pays Rs. 25,000/- or promotes being a doctor. What about being a physicist or mathematician or an artist or a star. While there is increase consciousness that people can have different kinds of career choices, we still are not mature enough to accept some of these things. We have to still figure out a way to address this problem.
    There is a sufficient heart burn in MBA world itself for us to address the problem and establish ourselves as a provider of quality career services or career guidance and then we will work at scaling it to other sections of education.
    Vivek: Primarily post graduation is one venuewhere you are not left with many choices– a PhD or a job. So there are very few things that you can have to choose from after post graduation,and that is where we are saying what choices they have made; learnmore about these people and then probably move to under graduation and others.
    Sachi: What is your vision for Edu-next?
    Swaroop: The first,I really want Edu-next to be a respected name in the space as – providers of quality career servicesand career guidance/ counseling. We have some challenges I would like to address.
    Firstly there is always a distribution in terms of quality of students. Our challenge is to understand this difference in inputs and be able to cater to the difference needs that different kinds of student have. If you take a tier one B-school and comparing with a tier four B-school, the expectations from the course, what is available after the course are so different. We cannot apply the same logic everywhere. So for us able to figure out how to suggest the correct thing for a person is one challenge that I would like to address, and that would go a long way in building our reputation.
    The second thing is we are inherently a very people driven business. The biggest problem is how do you scale something like this? Can you build enough tools and bring in enough technology so that sitting out of one city in India we are able to reach a large population. How do you start adapting to different contexts – I don’t even want to restrict it to India, how do you address somebody in US or Brazil or NewZealand?We want to make it a very large forum for people to come and get this service. That is what I am really looking at from the ‘B’ school angle.As far as rest is concerned it is still work in progress, we will keep you posted.
    Sachi: This question is not directly related to edu-next but would love to ask you – What motivated you to be entrepreneurs?
    Vivek: I will be very candid about this. Soon after Engineering, it is a lot of multi pronged peer pressure that you see. Friends went on to do M.S, went on to do MBA and other things – some studied Mathematics, some stuck to their own domain and completed their masters and somebody else doing PhD and othersstuck to their own job. The people in the job would slog it out from 9 to 5 and go out on weekends – Even I went through the same things straight of college. We worked hard and but still like everybody else who has hungry to do more, especially from a college like ours. We had to do something more to satisfy – Probably do much more than what we are doing at present.
    MBA? M.S? I asked all these questions to myself and I could not answer most of them well – after a post graduation what next?And given the personal choices that I have made such as where I want to stay, what I want to do and amongst other things, it was not an easy decision to make. Entrepreneurship was also a buzz word during an early 2000, and is even now. We just dabbled with few things – trying to do that, trying to do this. It was more experimental, not knowing where the journey will go.
    Being a first generation entrepreneur, it is not very easy to push yourselfto quit your job or do something of your own. Soon I started enjoying the process and not knowing where I to go, itself was fun. You can push yourself that much harder in not in terms of effort but in terms of how much we can take? How many things you can give up?
    You generally compare yourself with peers who after MBA buying cars left right and center, Going to the Dalal Street and getting their pay packages. You are still stuck between a Volvo bus and a BMTC normal bus or even an auto rickshaw because you cannot afford to.So this is a hard decision to make. But that is what probably is the right choice! You know once you have made the right choice.I think you will have to experiment a little, not everyone is sure what they want to do unless they try different things. So I started doing whatever I have to do being my own.
    Swaroop: I am a crazy control freak!  I cannot work for any one. Money is an obvious issue, we will all make money eventually. A very close friend of mine says “we will all die rich”. I have immense faith in his statement. So money is a motivator, as is the immense wealth to be created as part of running your own business but I think the greatest kick is that “I decide what happens to my company, my fortunes”. That is the primary reason why I started off on my own. Opportunity wiseI didn’t have any problem; I could have gotten any job I wanted but that wasn’t what I was looking for.
    Sachi: In your journey of entrepreneurship, what are the learning that you havethis far?
    Vivek: I would like to keep it extremely crisp– In terms of the learning, know what you are trying to do, have the right people with you, stay in touch with all your friends especially entrepreneurs who have taken the off-beat route, because they are the one who can talk with and probably you can relate to. It is extremely important to prioritize as an entrepreneur.
    Swaroop: It is ok to not know really where you are headed to and you will figure out along the way. The most important thing is to ensure that working with people who are right for you. There are certain kind of people whom you can work with and certain kind of people you cannot!From personal experience I can tell you that it is very important to choose your team right. It is a good team that can pull off anything.
    The other thing is you have to build good will along the way. It is very difficult especially when you have graduated from a top tier Institute.You tend to come with this baggage of entitlement, I am from here, and I have to be given this. Very quickly I have learnt that unless you have something of value and you can prove it, nobody is going to give a damn that you are from certain Institute, or you have gotten a certain degree. It’s humbling in that sense and I am better off now. I am very happy I got rid of my excess baggage that all good institutes put on to you when you graduate and that’s been the best learning so far.
    Sachi: What is your message for aspiring entrepreneur?
     
    Swaroop: Like they say, the fastest way to solve a problem is right through it.Unless you get in, you are never going to solve the problem.I know lot of people who sit at the dinner table and say, I have got this brilliant idea, I have got the excel sheets, I have got the ppt, I know the VC and all that – but you just frustrate yourself out! Sitting with all the plans and complaining about how corporate life is not or you.
    But If you are not goingto jump in and do it, it’s not going to happen. You have to have reasonable plans etc all that jazz would be there,but the tipping point is to say, I am going to get out tomorrow, I am going do this for a while and make sure it works.
    We have tried this part time and it doesn’t really work.We have to do it full time and give it what is due. And at least I realize, the faster you get in, the easier it is – because, as you get older, fatter and slower and richer, entrepreneurship becomes more and more difficult. It is like trek to Manasa sorovar. It is best done when you are fifteen. We could possibly do it only by 30. Anything later you might succumb to heart attack, so do it quickly.
     Vivek: I have two things,
    One – If you have worked in a corporate set up before, and learnt to de-jargonize. Big organizations jargonize to prove their worth! Keep it simple.
    Second- Do not fall into the trap of theory of entrepreneurship. If you have a good idea and you think you can pull it off and if you can prove to yourself that you can do it – Forget the scaling, forget everything else. I mean, how would it grow? Will it become a billion dollars business? All such similar questions – probably a hundred of them. The first starting point is you need to be convinced about the idea itself. These points might have been studied, but don’t go by the book at times, do it yourself. It is ok to go off the book that you can always come back and join later on.
    Sachi: Thank you Swaroop and Vivek for this wonderful interview.

  • Challenges in creating a system for organizational learning

    In the last blog, we looked at some of the definitions in the context of organizational knowledge creation. In today’s blog we begin understanding the challenge of how the organization would have to balance the system when creating a process for organizational learning.
    Organizational learning requires the organization to keep a sufficiently porous boundary that would allow the “flow” of new knowledge and ideas into the organization yet keep a strict internal focus for building on its current expertise. The fundamental issues for the organization at this point is that through existing processes they have a completely certain environment to explore, while the future for the organization lies only in exploring the new possibilities beyond what has been established already.
    If one is to ask why the organization should allow external ideas into the current organizational learning, well here is an answer – Knowledge creation is a product of organization’s capability to recombine existing knowledge and generate new applications from this existing base. However, radically new learning tends to arise from contacts outside the organization. These external contacts could be in the form of business alliances, network relationships, as well as new personnel into the company. 
    To sustain in the long run, organizations would have to “creatively destruct” that would allow them develop firm-specific capability and renew or reconfigure its competencies to address environmental challenges. This balance between exploitation of certainty and exploration of the future is a continuous challenge that requires a very good balance and coordination to be successful for the organization.

  • Organizational Knowledge, Routines and Core Competency

    In the last blog we looked at concept of “context” in organizational knowledge creation. In today’s blog we continue understanding these terms and also learn a few new terms in the process.
    It is always good to understand and look at an organization as a cognitive enterprise that learns and develops knowledge. In this direction there are some interesting terms that have been coined by management theorists. Understanding these is quite intuitive:
    Organizational Knowledge: This term refers to the shared cognitive schemes and distributed common understanding within the firm that facilitate knowledge sharing and transfer
    Organization Routines: A kind of collective knowledge rooted in shared norms and belief that aids joint problem solving and capable of supporting complex pattern of action in the absence of written rules
    Core Competency: Implies that learning and knowledge creation activities of a firm tend to be cumulative and path dependent.
    While all these talk about how organizations are learning environment, it is also true that in some cases, the same earning could be difficult to unlearn past practices and explore alternative ways of doing things – this many a times leads to what some management experts call as “competency trap”.
    At this point again it would be interesting to reiterate the importance of decision making in management. There is an inherent difficulty when organizations try to learn – to draw the boundary between external and internal knowledge flows is extremely crucial. We shall continue to discuss this in the next blog and it is pretty interesting to understand this.

  • Designing the right context for organizational knowledge creation

    In the last blog we began understanding the concept of organizational innovation pretty closely – it also involved a very good commentary from one of our readers which enables us gain a significant insight into the way organizations foster innovation. In today’s blog, we look at the “context” of knowledge creation, how this functions and in the next blog, we look at what are the essential ingredients that would have to be taken note of to get this context to be working for an organization.
    In this blog we significantly refer to one – Nonaka – a management theorist who has done some significant work in the area of organizational knowledge creation. It is important to acknowledge that “tacit” knowledge is the origin of all human knowledge, and organizational knowledge creation essentially the process of mobilizing individual tacit knowledge and fostering its interaction to the explicit knowledge base of the firm.
    Nonaka, also illustrates the importance of a context for knowledge creation called “Ba”, this context provides the shared social and mental space for the Interpretation of Information, interaction and emerging relationships that serve as a foundation of knowledge creation.
    “Ba” is very similar to another concept “community of practice” that suggests that organizational members construct their shared identities and perspectives through “practice” that is shared work experience. This practice enables the sharing of practices and cognitive repertoires to facilitate knowledge sharing and transfer. 
    Hence a group placed at the intersection of the vertical and horizontal flow of knowledge within an organization, serves as the bridge between the individual and organization in the knowledge creation process. Thus even a semi-autonomous project team play an extremely crucial role in knowledge creation. 

  • Understanding Organizational Innovation

    In the last blog we defined the terms – Innovation and Cognition. In today’s blog we begin looking at organizational innovation in the context of Knowledge Creation.
    Innovation is a learning process by which new knowledge is created to solve the new problems that are defined. The core concept of study in all theories of Organizational Learning and knowledge creation is that of how organizations translate individual insights and knowledge into collective knowledge and organizational capability.
    Such collective knowledge could be the accumulated knowledge of the organization stored in its rules, procedures, routines and shared norms which guide the problem solving activities and patterns of interaction among its members. It resembles the “collective mind” or “memory” of the organization, it could also be the hard data that is “static” or could be “flowing” in the interactions. It exists between the individuals of the organization, rather than within them. 
    In some cases it could be more than the sum of the individual’s knowledge and in others it could be less than the sum, it’s a matter of how the mechanisms to translate the individual knowledge to collective knowledge are designed. Both Individuals and Organizations are learning entity and it is important to understand that any learning takes place in a social context and this is what makes every learning outcome different.

  • Entrepreneur Interview – Transitainment Ventures

    Sachi: Thanks Nithin for accepting to come down here, for this interview. I would like to begin the interview with a brief background about you and then explain about what you company – Transitainment does.
    Nithin: I am basically a computer engineer, Graduated from NITK Suratkal in 2007, and I worked for some time in product R&D with National Instruments. Post that I completed my MBA from IIM Bangalore. It was after the MBA that I decided to start something on my own. Right now I am running a start up called ‘Transitainmenet Ventures’. We are focused on the travelling consumer. A lot of people now are spending an increasingly large amount of time commuting to work and they are really not doing anything during that time. So we thought of accessing this customer while they are travelling and do interesting things around it.
    Sachi: You just told you “decided” to start off, was it that you all of a sudden decided to start off or you always nurtured the aspiration to start off?
     
    Nithin: I think everyone in India has an aspiration to start a business of their own. Rather than a question of “If”, Its more a question of “when?” A lot of people have reason that this is not probably the right time to start; I will do it later, when I have some money and  when I am more secure etc… My reason was very simple. At this point of time I really don’t have a lot of personal commitment and the hunger is there. Also India is growing market now with tremendous opportunities everywhere. Very soon get a lot of these opportunity will get closed up. Right now there is a lot more room to do funky things. You go a decade later and I think the number of opportunities would be much considerably less than now. I maybe wrong, but I guess if it helps me keep my mind clear, so be it.
    Sachi: I understand that you started off from a personal angle of saying it is ‘NOW’. How did you team receive this? How did you go about forming your team that way? 
    Nithin: When I started really? The idea hit me in a bus. When I was just going around in a bus, I was really bored and I saw the other 50 people in the bus were just staring into the blue sky. I said there is something here.
    Then, we thought “OK, In that case, What can we do around it?” and we discussed it out. But then the current team that we have now is different than the team we started off with. Lots of things happen and the team kind of evolves over a period of time. Right now, what we have is a well evolved team I would say. It had come together in a process of time. The team I don’t think happens one day or overnight – It never does. A lot of conflicts of interests happen and it needs to mature after sometime, interests have to align. So it takes some time, for us I think it took about six month to eight months. That is when the team actually came together
    Sachi: So how did the team actually evolve?
    Nithin: There were three guys actually to start off with. There was me, and there were two other people from IIMB. When this idea came in they also got interested and they said there were some people whom they knew who could pitch in. Then we started working for some time and technology was kind of evolving. As the technology evolved, what I did was I got a lot of people with whom I worked with, I went to my school with and went to my college with to informal chats about the idea, during lunch, dinner etc..I wasn’t asking if they would join. I was just getting their inputs. You kind of involve people, they also evaluate your idea, and you also get comfortable with them. So this is kind of how we evolved.
    As I said everyone has an aspiration to be a part of something exciting, It is just a question of finding the match. So more you can talk and more you kind of work with people, the more chances that you hit the right people . That’s exactly what we did.
    Sachi: Fine, That’s one part of it the puzzle, So the next one is the money part it.  I understand that your business is an extremely different kind of business – in terms of it being extremely innovative, So I see that money would be a challenge. So how did you go about fixing the money aspect of it?
    Nithin:  Money… humm…I have a belief that early stage business in India, the early stage finance ecosystem in India is not very well developed.
    I think it’s got be the interest rate arbitrage. In the US, it’s a 4% reign, or it’s really a 0% reign and in India it’s a 10% reign. All these banks and VCs etc have access to capital from the developed nation, where the expectation of returns is very low. When it comes to India, even if you put the capital in a risk free bond you get 10%. So what happens here is that you have access to alternate lower risk investments, where the VC industry can actually make money from. So the money that actually trickles down to early stage start ups, which are really high risk high returns kind of a game, is very low. So there are very few players around. It is more or less the incubation centers in the IIMs, IITs etc and some small funds that are around. So we are kind of working with a few people right now. I don’t think the change will happen immediately in India, it will take some time.
    Sachi: With the Money aspect taken care of let me get to the consumer aspect of it. Could you talk about the end consumer of your platform and the intermediary that comes in your business? How did you about acquiring in that? 
    Nithin: That I think we had much less problem here because the  need was there. When you are travelling you are really stressed out and really wanted do something.
    But in our business, you will have to build partnership in multiple places. But that it was much simpler than what we thought it would be. You go and tell a story, the value proportion, in a simple crisp manner.
    But the real deal in this start up is not getting the one customer, it is really getting the entire partnership going together. You go and sell to one guy one story, to another guy another story and third guy another story. But the only person who knows the entire story is you and you got to put it together in a manner that everyone is happy, that is when the value is created.
    Sachi: Ok, So that covers the 3 portions of any of business you can think off – the money, the people and the paying customer. Let’s get to saying what the biggest challenge is that you faced in the way you formed the business. Being around 10 months old what are the big challenges you have faced?
    Nithin: The first thing is that the wind blows in some direction right? Currently the wind is connectivity. You are on the Internet – everything is connected. Our business is kind of disconnecting it! Our business is to disconnect it and make it cheaper. Disconnect the content   purely from a delivery point of view and make it cheaper.
    The technology is not really not going with wind per say. We are challenging lot of thing. It will take a lot of time for people in the ecosystem to omprehend. It’s the same thing for everybody. When Flipkart started, people said that … e-commerce is dead etc, noone saw the larger story of what they were trying to do. There is a certain amount of conviction that you need, in your idea, in the thing you are doing.. Its also imp not be bogged by someone telling you that the story is not right. Because he/she is not supposed to understand the story, only you are, the complete story atleast. And if the story is that obvious people would’ve done it already .It is a nice dichotomy actually: “if there is an obvious business around, I don’t think there is business there, because someone has done it already.” and if there is no obvious business around, then lot people will oppose you. So the very fact that a lot of people are telling you and opposing you means that you see something that they don’t.  And if you see it, that’s where the value is. That is where the challenge really is, You have to be that convinced, you have to be head strong sometime, that stubborn sometimes, and tell that ‘NO’ this is there – kind of thing. You will finally find the partners it will just take time.
    Sachi: How are you going about the vision that created for your company? What is the vision, If may I ask you that way?
    Nithin: The vision is really is, we simply started with a need and vision is really not the technology. Our vision is still the need, that – “go and engage the travelling customers” that’s it. A person, who was travelling now is doing nothing – engage him. That will reduce the stress and it will make travel all the more comfortable and it’ll increase the quality of living. It will make money for everybody. That is the real value we are trying to create. In Technology we are doing multiple things. And I am pretty sure that technology will change. We cannot stick to one technology. We say stick to the customer and do whatever possible to engage the customer that’s it. That’s our motto.
    Sachi: That is pretty interesting. If I may ask you, what is your biggest inspiration to start off that way?
    Nithin: I really don’t think that’s hard! It’s Money really…  You know finally everyone wants to make a lots of money and retire early and all those things. that is always there. But then also things like working for your own. There is lot of fun in doing something, that actually challenges you that much.  It is extremely challenging and  mentally exhausting – this start ups. You are  fire fighting everywhere and at the same time fighting a lot of people… There is a natural high there.
    Sachi: What would you like to tell to any aspiring entrepreneurs? 
    Nithin:  “Stop aspiring start doing” that is the only way of starting anything – People can you tell you hundred different things. The fundamental thing about a start up is that you need to do something different. The moment you are following somebody you are doing something wrong. You are not doing justice to entrepreneurship. Just start and figure things along the way, its good fun.
    Sachi: Thank you Nithin for taking time for the interview thank a lot.

  • Innovation, Organizational Cognition – definitions

    In the last blog, we looked at the Industrial Economics angle of Organizational Innovation. In today’s blog, we begin looking at the relation between Organizational Cognition, Learning and Innovation. Since these terms sound too “BIG” for a first time reader, the attempt would be to really set the context in this blog and build on it over the next few.
    Let’s begin with the most familiar term – Innovation. While we all intuitively we all understand “innovation”, management theorists like to define it as “a process of bringing new, problem-solving, idea to use” some also look at it as “non routine, significant, and discontinuous organizational change that embodies new ideas that is not consistent with the current concept of the organization’s business”. Innovative output is a product of prior accumulation of knowledge that enables innovators to assimilate and exploit new knowledge – hence organizational learning and cognition begin to play a significant role.
    “Cognition” or “Cognitive” refers to the idea that individuals develop, mental models, belief systems, and knowledge structures that they use to perceive, construct, and make sense of their worlds and to make decisions about what actions to take – I refer here to another theorist Weick and also to Walsh. One could also extend this analysis to the level of group and organizations and we would find out how organizations & groups would behave. 
    Organizations develop collective mental models and interpretive schemes which influence the decisions the organization takes as well as the actions it performs. – We could call this Organizational cognition. It however differs from Individual cognition in terms of the social dimension. 
    Hence we would talk about socio-cognitive connected, and understand how it accounts for the social processes in the formation of collective cognition and knowledge structures.

  • Industrial Economics angle of Organizational Innovation

    In the last blog, we did look at the concept of organizational innovation using the classification of Contingent Theories. In today’s blog we look at organizational innovation using the lenses of Industrial Economics.
    The micro-economists in the field of strategy consider organization structure as both cause and effect of the managerial strategic choice in response to the market opportunities. The central argument here is that – certain organizational types or attributes are more likely to superior innovative performance in a given environment because they are more suited to reduce transaction costs and cope with alleged capital market failure.
    The theory of “the innovative enterprise” focused on how strategy and structure determine the competitive advantage of the business enterprise. The theory postulates that over time, business enterprises in the advanced economies have to achieve a higher degree of “organizational integration” in order to sustain competitive advantage. The model most supported by the success of the Japanese against the American companies.  However it is important to note that such an integrated approach would be best suited in case of incremental innovation, but there isn’t sufficient proof that it works well in the cases of radical innovation as a means to competitiveness.
    Another theory by Teece suggests that the formal (governance modes) and informal (culture and values) structures, as well as firms’ external networks powerfully influence the rate and direction of their innovative activities. He classifies innovation into “autonomous” and “systemic” and relates it to the organizational structure. The definition of these 2 innovations is itself pretty clear and helps understand the relation:
    1. An Autonomous innovation is one that can be introduced to the market without massive modification of related products and processes. – A classical example is that of introduction of power steering where no much modification had to done to the existing set up to introduce this change.
    2. Systemic Innovation on the other hand, favors integrated enterprise because it requires complex coordination amongst various subsystems and hence is usually accomplished under one “roof” – The introduction of front wheel drive requiring the complete redesign of many of the automobiles is an example of such systemic innovation.

  • Organizational Innovation in the context of Contingency Theories of Management

    In last blog we began our discussion on organizational innovation and also mentioned about the 3 classifications of the study one could do. In today’s blog we look at the first category of the classification the one relating organizational structure to innovation and specifically the group of theories under “contingency theories“
    The contingency theory generally argues that the most appropriate structure for the organization would be the one that best fits the operating contingency in terms of scale of operation, technology, or environment. Mintzberg is one of the most noted of the contingency theorist and we have already discussed him in this earlier blog. We have also discussed about the Mechanistic and Organic models in this blog. 
    Just to summarize and complete the discussion relating organizations it could be said that Organic structures would be a more fluid set of arrangement, adapting to conditions of rapid change and innovation. It would be interesting to note that both mechanistic and organic structures can coexist in different parts of the same organization depending on the demand from the functional sub-environment. We could also call such structures as “ambidextrous structures”.
    In the next blog we move on to the next class of theories – Industrial Economics and see how they relate to organizational innovation.

  • Organization Innovation and streams of thought


    In the last blog, we talked about some of the tests that anyone who intends to redesign his organization would have to take note of. In today’s blog, we begin our discussion on one of the common reasons for forcing an organization redesign – Organization Innovation.

    Organization’s ability to innovate is a necessary precondition for it to successfully utilize the inventive resources and new technologies. It could also be seen that many a times, by introducing a new technology, the organization is often pushed into complex puzzle of opportunities and organization challenges. These in turn lead to change in management practices and sometimes lead to the emergence of new organizational forms. Clearly organizational and technology innovations could be seen as being intertwined.

    A simple generic that the term “organizational innovation” could refer to would be – the creation or adoption of an idea or behavior that is new to the organization.

    Broadly as a field, the study on Organizational Innovation could be classified into 3 broad streams of thoughts

    1. Organizational Structure and Innovation
    2. Organizational Cognition, Learning and Innovation
    3. Organizational Change and Innovation. 

    Over the next few blogs we shall talk bout these and some of the constituent theories these streams might find.