For Godrej, future runs through
this innovation cell
Bhaskar believes that when
customers get tired of the 'avalanche of features', appliance companies with a
focus on how `humans interact with appliances in their homes' will benefit.MUMBAI:
More than 25 electronic engineers, designers, business strategists and coders
were 'hacking' their way to new products over the weekend using 3D printers and
power tools, part of a new innovation drive at the appliancesmaker. Hackathons
and innovation bootcamps are all on the cards, spearheaded by a recently set-up
innovation cell. "This, for us, is a prototype. I am trying to introduce
startup thinking in the organisation itself. We will learn from this. Then we
can evaluate for ourselves whether we want to do it every month, once a year or
half a year. So, we will do this one step at a time. This will not be the old
thinking where we have a roadmap for the next five years," Nishant
Bhaskar, design specialist at the Godrej Innovation Centre, told ET.
Bhaskar has been loaned to the Appliances business to set up an innovation cell. He still reports to Navroze Godrej, who oversees all innovation at the more than a century-old Godrej Group. In Bhaskar's role at the group's Innovation Centre, he is also looking at the startup ecosystem to see how the group can engage with startups, though that process is at an early stage.
The innovation cell at the Appliances division was set up six months ago. It consists of six core members including designers and engineers, while the extended team includes the head of the appliances business Kamal Nandi and other Godrej top executives.
"We work together with the business, when we have ideas, we bring them in. We are also talking about changing the thinking in the business. In the recent strategic business plan, I suggested that we should not be product centric, we must move to capability centric thinking and from execution-based thinking to search and learning-based thinking," Bhaskar said.
Bhaskar believes that when customers get tired of the 'avalanche of features', appliance companies with a focus on how `humans interact with appliances in their homes' will benefit.
The weekend hackathon, which was held at the Makers Asylum, saw teams building products around concepts such as childcare, elder care and connected homes. Some of the products being built include a baby bottle that tracks feeding, a way to track electricity consumption at home to avoid blame games and a smart surface for older folks that could connect to the internet that can do everything Apple's speech recognition program Siri can do.
But even if no product makes it to the market, Godrej will consider the hackathon a success. "We can have inter an have interesting things come out of this. And even if we don't, we are cultivating the kind of people who can think in a more meaningful way," Bhaskar said. Godrej is one of the first conglomerates to hold a hackathon in a core business and the latest in a long string of old world companies to tap newer technologies such as the IoT. In October, Federal Bank held a mobile hackathon to develop `mobile-first' products in conjunction with IBM. Citibank also launched a mobile hackathon combined with an accelerator programme.
Bhaskar has been loaned to the Appliances business to set up an innovation cell. He still reports to Navroze Godrej, who oversees all innovation at the more than a century-old Godrej Group. In Bhaskar's role at the group's Innovation Centre, he is also looking at the startup ecosystem to see how the group can engage with startups, though that process is at an early stage.
The innovation cell at the Appliances division was set up six months ago. It consists of six core members including designers and engineers, while the extended team includes the head of the appliances business Kamal Nandi and other Godrej top executives.
"We work together with the business, when we have ideas, we bring them in. We are also talking about changing the thinking in the business. In the recent strategic business plan, I suggested that we should not be product centric, we must move to capability centric thinking and from execution-based thinking to search and learning-based thinking," Bhaskar said.
Bhaskar believes that when customers get tired of the 'avalanche of features', appliance companies with a focus on how `humans interact with appliances in their homes' will benefit.
The weekend hackathon, which was held at the Makers Asylum, saw teams building products around concepts such as childcare, elder care and connected homes. Some of the products being built include a baby bottle that tracks feeding, a way to track electricity consumption at home to avoid blame games and a smart surface for older folks that could connect to the internet that can do everything Apple's speech recognition program Siri can do.
But even if no product makes it to the market, Godrej will consider the hackathon a success. "We can have inter an have interesting things come out of this. And even if we don't, we are cultivating the kind of people who can think in a more meaningful way," Bhaskar said. Godrej is one of the first conglomerates to hold a hackathon in a core business and the latest in a long string of old world companies to tap newer technologies such as the IoT. In October, Federal Bank held a mobile hackathon to develop `mobile-first' products in conjunction with IBM. Citibank also launched a mobile hackathon combined with an accelerator programme.
Jochelle Mendonca |
ETR1DEC15
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