A range of management perspectives have been propounded by different management theories.These management perspectives highlight key areas of focus for a manager.An inadequate perspective automatically translates into inadequate action and results.No amount of ,"Excellence in implamentation" is going to make up for an inadequate perspective.Hence the importance of perspectives and mental models.
An inadequate level of innovation can attributed to faulty mental models propounded by management theories and the subsequent teaching of these theories to believing and unsuspecting management learners.Saddling them with outdated and ineffective theories is akin to maiming them for life.
The managers perspective depicted by one of the earlier management theories is depicted below as Model 1.
In the beginning of industrial society , the centrality of management was production , since Demand outstripped supply.
Thereafter as supply caught up with demand , management began to revolve around marketing , thereby giving it a halo.Hence ,marketing became the epicenter of the managers perspective.It replaced production as the core focus area in the management model.
In the fast changing environment of today , whereby the market structure is changing continuously because of globalization and the furious flow of information to the customer , none of the above models suffices. The failure of model II , is depicted by the failure of large number of dotcoms built around the marketing paradigm.
These dotcoms could have succeeded if they were not metoos. There were too many mirror images floating around without any significant or unique value provided to the customer.
There are obviously some blind spots in the perspective of creating and sustaining a successful enterprise. Taking into consideration that the initiators of these dotcoms were knowledge workers who are obviously well read , there seems to be a serious flaw in the management perspective of these knowledge workers.
Models I & II have proved to be inadequate for the current business , technological and organizational environment.
A management model for the current environment necessarily needs to have Innovation , quality and customers as an integral part.
The management model 2001 , has customer as its bull's eye. The enterprise or organization is designed to fulfill the needs of customers. Even the government as an organization is supposed to be fulfilling the needs of the people of a country with respect to the Law & order , security , health , economic prosperity etc.
The prime tools to satisfy customer needs are Innovation and quality . Quality is focussed on delivering a specified standard of customer satisfaction while Innovation is the prime tool which enables the growth and evolution of mankind and its aspirations.
Both these tools have to integrate with all management functions , i.e Production , Materials , Finance,Marketing, Human resources etc. Though in the last decade there has been considerable focus on quality ; Innovation has been neglected. The bursting of the dotcom bubble was one of the costly outcomes of such neglect.The phenomenon of a lot of organizations having ISO9000 certifications without any impact on organizational performance is another outcome of such neglect.
If organizations and managers adopt the management model 2001 , it would not only ensure maintenance of current performance but would also enable continuous regeneration and growth.
The biggest mental block to innovation is the belief that innovation is related only to products . Innovation is equally relevant to anything that exists physically or conceptually. In order to validate this , we shall examine some innovations in software and sales.
The impact of innovation on the Innovator , whether it is a country or company , is evident from the phenomenal success of Israel in this area.
Some of the innovations that they have created are :
These innovations became successful because they satisfied dominant unfulfilled needs of consumers.On the other hand , there are examples of product extensions , which have been projected as Innovations. A lot of PC-based software has been targeted to satisfy an increasing set of needs through utility of the same already defined process. This has resulted in the software becoming 'Bloated' in terms of the resources being used without any significant impact on the 'Needs satisfied' . Hence , there is an increasing need for innovation and paradigm shifts in software industry. This can only happen if company's work out specific , ' Innovation Strategies , processes and structures'.
This is too important an area , to be left to chance and brain waves. It needs to be systematically addressed. Without conscious application , most software companies would continue to exist an low end service providers which function within pre defined boundaries.
Why is it that inspite of understanding the importance of Innovation , few software companies can claim to be innovators ? This is so because paying lip service to the concept does not yield product and process innovations.
Everybody talks of Innovation . However , how many of us , actually make the effort to build innovation related skills and to create organization systems that support innovation or to create and implement an 'Innovation strategy'. The result is a lot of talk but no output. What happens to a dotcom that chooses to grasp this tool ? I want to share a personal experience as a consumer in order to find a suitable answer to the above question. I identified 3 executive search sites for accessing C.Vs of candidates in order to fill vacant positions. Out of these 3 , I found that 2 of them say site A and Ste B had sufficient number of resumes of potential candidates. I used to visit site A , 80 % of the time and site B 20 % of the time. Thereafter site B added more functionality to their site,thereby satisfying two of my unsatisfied needs :
It is not difficult to assess as to which of these sites is on the road to success . If site A does not innovate , it is bound to fail.
The inventor of Java was tired of the inadequacies of C language. There was a long standing unsatisfied need of "Platform independence and security".
The software written for a particular platform had to be rewritten for other platforms which led to loads of repetitive and mind breaking work. Hence ,he invented Java which was platform independent and secure.He went further by giving it the attribute of 'reusability of code' , known as the "Object orientation", which satisfied the unfulfilled needs of software developers.
These 3 features of Java made it an ideal language for the Internet which connects diverse computing platforms. Hence , it is a major success.
The same innovation process occurred earlier in the software languages era when the C-language was formulated . Though C is a powerful language , there were difficulties associated with its utilization in large scale projects.
These problems triggered the creation of C++ , which is a object oriented language and hence more suitable for large projects.
Thereafter , inadequacies of C++ in terms of security , platform independence and program error handling capability triggered the creation of Java.
The pattern of success is :
If software developers follow this pattern , there is an enormous scope of Innovation with respect to software.
The applications of Innovation to sales remains by and large an unexplored phenomenon. The reason for this is evident in the statement of the C.E.O of an FMCG Company ,"There is no magic in sales . If we keep on doing things properly , sales will happen". A faulty mental model of management and Innovation seems to be source of such failure prone statements.
Coupling this with the tendency of the subordinate staff to believe and mouth what the C.E.O says , ensures the decline and death of experimentation and innovation in sales.
Innovation in sales is symbolized by the case given below :
A pharma company faced unrest from market representatives of a particular zone. Demands were unreasonable along with limited accountability. The company transferred some to other areas and terminated some . The Company evolved a system of sending samples and literature to doctors via courrier along with a personal call every quarter from the sales manager. The Result : Sales and profits increased while costs declined.
All these cases illustrate the requirement of Innovation in the managers perspective.Thus, adoption of The Management Model 2001(Fig.3) in place of Management Models I & II is an imperative for survival and growth.