MANAGEMENT SPECIAL..... Culture Change and Leadership: A New Badge of Honor

Culture Change and Leadership: A New Badge of Honor

We’re in the midst of one of the most exciting chapters in the history of aerospace. Engine production is increasing two-to-three-fold year over year, and we are on the edge of the industry’s digital revolution. While it took roughly 60 years to achieve the advanced technology we see in jet engines today, the digitization of our industry will move it much faster. It’s energizing to think of what’s still to come. And, we’re excited to be on the forefront of those changes.

Of course, with change comes the need to have organizational agility; be fast in our decision-making to meet our customers’ needs and expectations. Our employees must be empowered and entrusted to allow us to achieve that, and it’s why having the right company culture is vital to our future success. 

I’ve read countless articles about companies espousing their respective cultures. From my perspective, culture is the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, practices and behaviors. Organizations are driven by culture, and cultures are driven by people. At Pratt & Whitney, our employees influence our culture through their diversity of thought, herculean work ethic and the pride they take in what they do. Our inclusive work environment helps us develop innovative products and services for our customers around the world. And, our goal to hire 25,000 people by 2026 will bring in new perspectives to help us continue to innovate and positively impact how we position ourselves for the future.

Having a traditionally strong culture is not enough to succeed in today’s business world. We must relentlessly examine our environment and look for ways to disrupt traditional methods to remain agile. We must create an environment where learning, solid decision making and prudent risk-taking are valued, where people development is a core competency, where speed is a competitive advantage and where each employee’s voice is heard.

How can we do this? Simply, by driving transparency, trust and empowerment throughout our organization. Recently, I challenged 250 of our leaders around the world to relinquish just three decisions they make today to their teams. Because we believe every employee can help build a culture where it’s okay to make mistakes, figure out what went wrong and learn from it; a culture that entrusts and empowers at all levels, so the next generation is ready to lead us forward.

This kind of transformation doesn’t happen overnight, or on its own. It starts at the top. As leaders, we’re responsible for engaging the hearts and minds of our people to give them a higher sense of purpose.

Many of our leaders, including me, recently went through the Thayer Leadership Development program at West Point. The hallmarks of the Army’s culture – developing people, being a learning organization and having each other’s backs – really hit home for us. This is the culture we’re continuing to build at Pratt & Whitney.

I am incredibly fortunate to be able to stand on the shoulders of those that came before me. My job is to put the building blocks in place today, model the behaviors that will bring it to life, and let our employees take it from there so those that come after can continue the legacy of this company that I consider a national treasure. It’s a role I’m humbled and honored to play, and I encourage other leaders to do the same so we can “Go Beyond” for the industry we are so privileged to participate in. 

·         Robert F. Leduc November 16, 2017

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/culture-change-leadership-new-badge-honor-robert-f-leduc/

BOOK SPECIAL.... Are You a Self-aware Leader?

Are You a Self-aware Leader?

Most corporate executives think they know themselves inside and out, just like they know every detail about their business structure. But research shows that most people — from CEOs to regular Joes — are surprisingly not self-aware. Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich believes that becoming more self-aware can lead to greater success  personally and professionally. With that goal in mind, she wrote Insight: The Power of Self-Awareness in a Self-Deluded World. She bases her book partly on interviews with successful corporate leaders who have great stories to tell from their own journeys of self-awareness. Eurich talked with Knowledge@Wharton about her book on the  Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111. 

An edited transcript of the conversation appears below.

Knowledge@Wharton: A big part of self-awareness is how we come across to the other people in our lives, correct?

Tasha Eurich: I’ve spent the last three years digging in to the topic of self-awareness. What we found is that it’s made up of two types of knowledge. One is what people normally think of, which is that introspective awareness, seeing ourselves clearly, knowing what we value, what we aspire to do. But equally importantly and frequently neglected is the idea that we should also know how other people see us. What I found is there are quite a few people who possess one of those types of knowledge, but not the other. That’s really where it gets in their way. What we’ve learned through our research is that people who have both types of self-knowledge and balance them are the ones who are the most successful at work and in life.

My research has shown that 95% of people think they’re self-aware, but the real number is closer to 10% to 15%. I always joke that on a good day, 80% of us are lying to ourselves about whether we’re lying to ourselves. It can be problematic. A lot of times, the people who have the most room to improve are the least likely to know.

Knowledge@Wharton: Is this is making our society even more delusional than ever?

Eurich: I think so. There are many societal forces that are converging on us whether we want them to or not — social media, the self-esteem movement, as well as our natural tendencies to see ourselves through rose-colored glasses.

Knowledge@Wharton: There is this want and need by some people to know what other people think about them. For many, it’s an obsession.

Eurich: It is. There are some people with those two types of self-awareness who are so focused on how other people see them that they’re actually not acting in their own best interests. They don’t even know what they want out of life, for example. That’s just another reason that we have to balance both of those types of self-awareness.

Knowledge@Wharton: There’s really no difference [regarding self-awareness] in terms of the importance of work over life. You’re trying to make yourself a more well-rounded person in both of those categories.

Eurich: The benefits of self-awareness don’t extend just to work. It helps us make smarter decisions. It helps us form better relationships. It’s helps us be more successful in our careers. People who are self-aware are much better leaders. They also lead more profitable companies. Those benefits just reinforce in both our work and our personal lives.

Knowledge@Wharton: You talked with some CEOs and people in the C-suite from various companies. Alan Mulally [former president and CEO] of Ford was one of them. Tell us about him and what he recognized?

Eurich: Alan Mulally was just wonderful to work with. He’s very passionate about the topic of self-awareness. Maybe the best way I can explain what an impact it’s had in his life was, flash back to 25-year-old first-time manager Alan who had his very first employee abruptly quit because he was just a terrible manager in some ways. That served as a wake up call to him about how important it was to know himself, to know how he’s seen. Starting in the mid-2000s, he took Ford from $17 billion of losses to $20 billion in profit five years later.

Knowledge@Wharton: That’s interesting because CEOs today want to be connected with as many people in the organization as they can. It’s not just sitting up in the suite anymore.

Eurich: If Alan Mulally were here, he would agree. He talks about self-awareness, team awareness and organizational awareness. It’s each of those three systems. To have awareness of what’s happening in the organization, you have to be out there. He was famous for eating lunch in the employee cafeteria, for responding to almost every email he got from employees. You have to look at it as part of the greater system if you want to get the greatest benefits.

Knowledge@Wharton: Can self-awareness be a top-down philosophy?

Eurich: Absolutely. The team or the organization’s level of self-awareness in some ways is completely dependent on the leader. You can’t have a self-aware organization if the most visible and influential leader is, for lack of a better word, delusional. It has to start there, but it also doesn’t end there. There’s a lot of work that leaders have to do to instill that culture just beyond their own behavior.

Knowledge@Wharton: What was the greatest thing that Alan got out of it?

Eurich: His vision definitely involved money and the financial returns and shareholders, but it was so much greater. It was to be a true service to the customers and a good corporate citizen to the communities that they worked in. It was a broader goal, and that’s what I think is a great example of somebody who knows what drives them and what they value. If you look past or include the financial aspects but have a greater purpose to what you’re doing, it’s infectious to other people.

Knowledge@Wharton: You also talked with Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. Disney is considered to be very hard-running but gives back to the community. Pixar is a different part of the entertainment industry, but the bottom goal is the same, correct?

Eurich: It is. When Disney acquired Pixar and Ed Catmull had joint responsibility to lead Disney Animation and Pixar, he started to institute a lot of the beneficial cultural elements they saw at Pixar over at Disney. And they started to see the same benefits. There’s one example I give in the book about how in all the years that Pixar has been in business they have never had a single leak to the press. That’s such a great example of what happens when a leader has that organizational awareness, but also has a dialogue. In addition to hearing things from their employees, they trust them with the truth. In doing so, they have created a powerful culture where people keep information to themselves.

Knowledge@Wharton: Is some of that the personal connection he has with his employees at Pixar, compared with sitting down in an auditorium and talking with the lot of them?

Eurich: It’s all of the above. He is so committed to having that time that there’s an example he talks about in his book, Creativity, Inc., where they closed Pixar for an entire day to have what they called Notes Day. It was an opportunity for people to help solve problems, to convey information that might not been known by senior management. He thinks big, but he also operates on a one-on-one level. It’s not uncommon for him to be in the lunchroom sitting with folks and just having lunch and chatting.

Knowledge@Wharton: Can people improve their self-awareness?

Eurich: They can. Even though many of us have more work to do than we think, I see this as a positive message for that very reason. There are a lot of myths surrounding what it takes to become more self-aware, and that’s largely why I’m so passionate about this. I want to help people bust those myths, to spend their time wisely. The benefits we can get are just unbelievably powerful, both at work and at home.

Knowledge@Wharton: What’s the biggest myth?

Eurich: There are so many, but one example I found shocking was that the act of analyzing or reflecting on ourselves does not always produce insight about ourselves. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in this deep psychological excavation of our innermost workings and motives that it actually confuses us. It takes us away from the greater issues, and it negatively impacts our mood and well-being. One way to combat that is instead of going deep, going wide. Look at the themes and patterns between the events in your life. If you’re trying to figure out your ideal work environment, think about your last three or four jobs and what you liked about them, what you didn’t. You’re not doing that deep Freudian excavation, but you’re looking for those patterns, which can be so much more informative.

Knowledge@Wharton: In an office setting, there are times when people don’t feel like they can be forthright and honest with their manager. That is part of the problem that develops with helping people be more self-aware, correct?

Eurich: It’s true. One of the things I tell people is that other people’s self-awareness journey is not yours to own. If someone is saying, “Gosh, my boss is so not self-aware; I don’t even know what to do” — it can do more harm than good if you decide to take that on. But if we flip the coin and you are the leader that we’re talking about, there’s a lot of things you can do to instill a culture of truth-telling.

There’s a lot of ways you can get feedback in a confidential way. Many people are familiar with the 360 process where it’s a numeric, anonymous survey by which you get the results. But what I’ve found is there have to be certain building blocks in place before leaders can say, “Why don’t you just tell me the truth about how you see me,” because not only will people feel uncomfortable doing that, they might just sugarcoat everything.

Knowledge@Wharton: Having this understanding about one’s self and being able to discuss these things in the corporate culture makes for a better overall operation.

Eurich: When Alan Mulally was telling me about Ford’s turnaround and his journey, he told me the single moment that was the most important part of that process was when his executive team started being comfortable telling him the truth. In that case, it was the truth about what was going on in the business. Mulally had a weekly meeting that he called the Business Process Review where his team would come in and give him reports on all these metrics. They were losing $17 billion, and everyone came in with green metrics week after week. He was able to instill that culture of truth-telling. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t overnight. But when they got there, that’s when the turnaround had begun.

Knowledge@Wharton: You also talk about the fact that people who are self-aware probably do things differently than the norm. In the case of Alan Mulally, it changed him.

Eurich: One surprising characteristic of self-aware leaders is humility. One of the ways to build trust with your team is to be vulnerable and not give the impression that you’re perfect, to engage them with questions that rely on their expertise and leverage that. There are a lot of traits, but I think that is one that I really saw in Alan Mulally that helped him instill that culture of self-awareness.

Knowledge@Wharton: Who are some other executives that have figured this out?

Eurich: There were quite a few examples from the startup community. There’s one leader I’m thinking of in particular whose name is Levi King. He leads a company called Nav, and I think it’s his eighth successful startup. He has a journey very similar to Alan Mulally’s, where he started off with a pretty rude awakening about what his leadership style was to other people.

But one interesting thing that he talked about is just because you get feedback about something you’re doing poorly as a leader doesn’t always mean that you have to or can or should change it. One thing he talks about is how his journey was to learn that he’s just not a great communicator. He read so many books about brain science and communication, and he concluded that he wasn’t going to make a dramatic improvement. What he did instead was be honest about it, tell his employees what his intentions were and that he really was trying his best. I think that’s such a great example of why it’s never as simple as it seems. Sometimes we get feedback and the knee-jerk reaction is to try to change our personality. But that’s not the only option we have.

Knowledge@Wharton: Are more organizations aware of why these elements are important to the culture and success of the business?

Eurich: I’m a little conflicted on that. What I see in a lot of companies are platitudes about self-awareness. What I mean by that is people just parroting, “Oh, self-awareness is so important.” You go into their organization and talk to their team and they say, “I can’t tell the truth to anyone or I’ll be fired.”

It’s a lack of consistency between what is said about the importance of self-awareness and what is actually seen and done. That’s where it just goes back to that individual-level statistic. Most people think they’re self-aware so they can brag about how important it is, but what they’re missing is how much work they usually have to do in that area.

Knowledge@Wharton: What is the most common reaction when they find out they’re not as self-aware as they think?

Eurich: In my job as an executive coach to the Fortune 500 world, I am often hired to tell very senior, very powerful people the truth when everyone else is afraid to or they don’t want to. I’ve seen every reaction in the book. I’ve seen silence. People have literally run away from the conference room I’ve been in with them. I’ve seen crying. I’ve seen anger. But the important thing about this, and what I’ve learned from studying highly self-aware people, is we have to see that as part of the journey. It’s a moment that is scary, but that ultimately is giving us an immense amount of power.

Knowledge@Wharton: Does it matter whether you’re talking about a CEO or a mid-level manager?

Eurich: The research shows that the more powerful you are, the more senior you are, and even the older you are as a manager, the less self-aware you’re likely to be, which I found shocking. But people who are in senior leadership roles are more removed from the day to day. They have more visible roles.

You look at someone like Oscar Munoz of United Airlines, where one single misstep can spell disaster. Frankly, they have people that are less likely to tell them the truth. Even though it’s true that at every level of an organization there’s a lot of work to do, it seems from the research that the higher up you get, the more of an issue it might be.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/going-wise-helps-us-make-smarter-decisions/?utm_source=kw_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-06-15

INNOVATION SPECIAL..... Disruptors Need to Continue Innovating – or Be Disrupted

Disruptors Need to Continue Innovating – or Be Disrupted

In the digital era, even companies that have distinguished themselves as disruptors cannot afford to rest on their laurels. If they do, they face the chance of being disrupted themselves. Saikat Chaudhuri, executive director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management and an adjunct professor of management at Wharton, examines this issue in his latest white paper, co-authored with Mack Institute research associate Pragna Kolli, titled: “Navigating Digital Disruption: How to Thrive Through Innovation Management.” Chaudhuri recently discussed the paper’s conclusions on the Knowledge@Wharton show, which airs on SiriusXM channel 111.

An edited transcript of the conversation follows.

Knowledge@Wharton: Tell us about the paper and what you were looking to accomplish?

Saikat Chaudhuri: If I may take a minute and just let people know about the Mack Institute, it will give the context. [Our focus is] on innovation management. Our mission is to promote thought leadership on managing innovation but also applied to practice…. What we really focus on is less the startup phenomenon, and more what the established industry leader faces. All these firms you hear about that are at the top, including the likes of Google, are no longer the agile disruptors but are being challenged by others. I have to give a shout-out to Pragna Kolli, who’s a research associate at the Mack Institute and an MBA alum of ours. She did a lot of the heavy lifting for the paper. Now, to your question.

I think that delving into it, digital disruption is something that’s across the board, across sectors affecting all kinds of firms. What do we mean by that? We have the cloud, we have big data, we have automation, we have artificial intelligence, robotics, additive manufacturing, mobility. What’s important about that is they are fundamentally changing the nature of products, processes and business models across different firms and industries, thereby posing a challenge but also an opportunity.

Knowledge@Wharton: But if you look historically, this disruption is not something that’s catching people off guard. If you go back 30, 40 years when the computer was just coming out, that was disruption. That truly was catching people off guard. Isn’t this something different?

Chaudhuri: It is. I think you’ve hit upon two points that would seem perhaps paradoxical to people. On the one hand, digital disruption is another form of disruption. In that sense, there’s a lot we can learn from past disruptions. Disruptions happen from time to time. Each one has its unique flavor, and this one happens to be based on digital technologies. When we moved from vacuum tubes to semiconductors, that was a revolutionary technology that changed the course of the semiconductor industry and computing. What’s different about this is we can see it happen. It is nonetheless challenging.

In some sense, people would argue it is more challenging because the pace at which the developments are occurring are different. A lot of incumbents are being displaced. Just look at the taxi industry and what Uber is doing to them, or the hotel industry and Airbnb. That’s just on the front end. In the medical fields, we have things happening. In fintech, you’ve got peer-to-peer potential through social media, which is challenging to the banks because it may disintermediate them. What’s good about this for the incumbents is, as you note, we can observe what’s happening.

Secondly, in many areas you could imagine an ecosystem of players emerging. It’s not going to be just get rid of the old and replace with the new. In finance, you’ll see that. It’s unlikely due to compliance and regulation that all the banks are going to disappear. But what might happen, and we see this happening already, is partnerships between banks and small startups, or acquisitions of the like or relationships of that sort. Whole ecosystems may compete, but both have to combine. Same thing in the auto industry.

Knowledge@Wharton: It means the companies have had to shift quickly on their expectations, their growth strategy, what their focus is 10, 15 years down the road. There are so many other competitors trying to get into specific sectors and surpass what something like Google or Amazon have done.

Chaudhuri: Yes, I agree with you entirely. A lot of it is about shifting mindsets. It’s always been like that when you have a challenge. I want to give credit to the participants of a conference we hosted at our San Francisco campus last year on digital disruption. The participants there informed a lot of this white paper. The insight that came from it is that, indeed, you have to shift your mindset. But more than that, maybe reshift the priorities and mission of the firm. Nissan, for instance, thinks of itself more as a mobility solutions company now as opposed to a carmaker because the way people consume cars or use them might change in the era of autonomous vehicles and ride-sharing. They have to re-conceptualize what they do and add the services for it.

Knowledge@Wharton: You mention Kodak and what they could have been if they would have made the shift to digital and not continued to rely on the traditional film camera. They had the technology waiting for them, ready to advance it, and they didn’t do it.

Chaudhuri: Yes, that’s part of the pain. Oftentimes the innovators are the ones that come up with things. The auto industry has that example, too. GM and others were the ones who worked on alternative sources of fuel. It was the Japanese makers who really took that and commercialized it. But coming back to Kodak, that’s the classic example of disruption. We go back to it not only because it displays all the dynamics of the difficulty — we call it the inertia of not only observing but also reacting to the changes — but it was literally a digital disruption because we moved from chemical imaging to digital imaging. This played out over about a decade. The power of digital didn’t really come into being in photography until we got the internet because then sharing became more important than image quality. What’s unique about that case, and why it was both sad but also gives hope, is that Kodak could have responded at many junctures.

The other example here is Blockbuster and Netflix. It’s been a number of years now since we’ve had Netflix around. But it’s not that old in the grand scheme of things. Blockbuster had the opportunity to buy Netflix at one point, but they chose not to. Their offering online didn’t work out. Netflix did, and that’s more the decision-making that led to problems.

Knowledge@Wharton: Let’s just theorize for a second that Blockbuster does buy Netflix. Does that combined entity become as big as Netflix is now, or would the structure that Blockbuster had in place taken down both of them?

Chaudhuri: You’re getting to a subject that’s close to my heart, which is external sourcing of innovation. Whether you do partnerships or acquisitions, it’s not easy to implement those. If they had not been able to manage them properly, that would have been an issue. So, it’s not that simple. You’re getting to another underlying point I want people to realize, which is that we often talk about these incumbents who fail. RIM with BlackBerry is another example, and Nokia and Borders and the like. But it’s not about managerial stupidity or foolishness. It’s about how do we respond, and it’s tough. It’s about trade-offs. If you’re an established firm, you’ve got customers, you’ve got standards, you’ve got scale. You can’t just leave all that aside and go after every new thing, especially because it’s hard to distinguish the noise from the actual signal. There are thousands of new ideas and promising new things that come — 999 of which won’t go anywhere.

Knowledge@Wharton: BlackBerry has shifted to being more of a technology company. Do you think they can do that and be that strong company they were 15 years ago?

Chaudhuri: That’s a great point. Reinventing yourself and how you transform in the face of these challenges — there is no one answer or right answer. What’s sad about the BlackBerry case is that they had the corporate market, which is the lucrative one, and people still love the keyboard. Apple originally was a consumer company. They made a lot of money; that’s what they’re good at. BlackBerry could have just simply learned how to do the good features from Apple and perhaps kept the corporate angle, which people loved so much. Many people, myself included, moved to the touch screen, but we really loved for email purposes the keyboard.

Now on the positive side, the firm has got a lot of patents and technologies. It’s got a focus on software now. It was always much stronger because of its corporate focus on the security side, which is key in smartphones. I think your point is very valuable. The way we define core capabilities in a company is very fundamental, so it’s not necessarily to do with products and services. BlackBerry could have a good future. Look at IBM. IBM started as a computer maker. They sold their PC business to Lenovo and even sold their server business and have refashioned themselves as an e-business company. We don’t use that term anymore, but really to be a service provider for all these global corporations takes a lot of guts.

Knowledge@Wharton: General Electric also shifted from being in retail, selling light bulbs and fixtures, to what they are now. They’re very big in the digital space. They’re a great example of how you go about embracing change. It makes you think about whether we could see a recovery in manufacturing if a lot factories are making that shift to the internet of things. Will we see that growth come back at some point?

Chaudhuri: Yes. There’s a whole political debate around this, which I don’t want to get into, but what I will say is I think that manufacturing is going to enter a new age. We’re moving to automation. We’re moving into smart factories. This is the advantage that the advanced economies have because not everybody can be in the services sector. Not everybody can go to Silicon Valley and be a programmer or work on the latest app or work at Lyft or wherever. Whether in 3-D printing form or otherwise, we will have manufacturing. It might be smart manufacturing and a lot of robots in there, but we will need people to do that. I absolutely think it’s necessary to move to that level. Germany has something called Industry 4.0. A number of firms are moving in that direction. Smart factories are a big priority that’s mandated by Germany. All these big manufacturing powers are looking to really strengthen and advance and move to the next level. I fully agree with you.

Knowledge@Wharton: But also talk about how mobile technology has invaded this sector. We all live on our smartphones, so mobile technology has the opportunity to have so many of these sectors explode over the next decade or two.

Chaudhuri: Absolutely. Mobile has become the ubiquitous medium that has enabled so many things — whether it’s communications connectivity around the world, including the emerging markets, but every single application you can think of. We can monitor your vital statistics and help you manage your health better, especially if you have a chronic disease. The health care firms and the patients are benefitting from that. We’ve got apps to do all kinds of things. And now look at a different area: financial inclusion. In emerging markets — take China, India and Africa — it would be tough to build up the banking infrastructure like we have it elsewhere. By having the mobile medium, you can have essentially virtual banks and peer-to-peer lending, even by the traditional banks, and cover that so beautifully. Just like the internet for us was absolutely revolutionary — and you and I got to see the pre-internet era and the post era — mobile is doing the same thing, which is why a lot of firms like Facebook and others are shifting more of their effort now in the mobile platform.

Knowledge@Wharton: How much do you think we are going to see growth come because of mobile in other parts of the world, places like Africa and South America where we have the opportunity to use that technology to build up many different pieces of economies?

Chaudhuri: I think that’s going to happen, and we already see it happening. In fact, Kenya is one of the leaders when it comes to banking on mobile platforms and applications in simple ways through SMS, text messaging and the like. I think that’s absolutely going to enable the world to be more connected in these applications. There’s no doubt about the potential of this technology and this platform, more importantly.

Knowledge@Wharton: You talk in the paper not only about the companies being the innovators but the companies taking advantage of their consumers, who are another level of innovator for them.

Chaudhuri: Yes, and you can look at that in multiple ways. Users provide a lot of data and information. We can aggregate all that information from these apps based on your usage. That’s what these Ubers do, that’s what the Amazons do to recommend things to you. That’s what all these health care apps do to improve your lifestyle. That’s more of a process side. In terms of product, we have that, too.

A great example of user innovation is Lego, which may be more familiar to people. You can send them your ideas, and that’s really powerful. It’s part of this iteration. We were talking about earlier how things are moving fast now in the era of disruption. All the sources you can get in your ecosystem — your stakeholders, your suppliers, your customers, maybe even competitors — they are very much a part of this exercise. And it has to be iterative. You can’t foresee the world and where it’s headed; you have to respond and react quickly.

Knowledge@Wharton: One of the big topics with companies right now is shareholder value. Are we seeing conflict between what the shareholders expect and what the company expects?

Chaudhuri: This has been an age-old question: To what extent can shareholders see the long term? That’s really the problem with this quarter-to-quarter system and the pressures on the CEOs. I think, though, that shareholders are a little bit open because they, too, realize things are moving very quickly. When GE says, “Listen, it’s going to take us 10 years to figure out a solution on energy,” or “It’s going to take us three years to really get these IIOT (industrial internet of things) initiatives going before you see the actual returns,” they’re willing to go with that. I think what’s important for shareholders is you actually come up with revenue streams.

Google’s challenge has been that they’ve got the search business and related businesses, and all of it is geared towards advertising. They have one business model. They make some money off of the website and Android site. But it’s others, like the handset makers and the service providers, the AT&Ts and T-Mobiles, who make a lot of the money and capture a lot of that value. So, they’ve been looking for ways to commercialize a lot of cool products and services. That’s why it was very smart for Google to divide into the mainstream Google and have the Alphabet portions, which don’t yet have the commercialization ability.

Cisco is another great example. It’s a great firm, a total market leader when it comes to telecom solutions and leveraging external sources of innovation like acquisitions very well. But in the era of software invading the networking space, they’ve got to reinvent themselves. They’ve got to strike that balance, you know? How do we keep the cash flow going today but also show we’re active in cloud, on the software side, and in other areas we need to be to remain in the market-leading position in the future?

Knowledge@Wharton: Going back to the example of how IBM shifted from being a computer retailer to what they are now, what’s that industry going to look like? We all have a smartphone or a laptop or a tablet, so are the companies that make PCs going to morph into what IBM has tried to do over the last decade?

Chaudhuri: Absolutely, because what you see is the convergence. It’s not clear to us in the internet of things, where everything’s connected, whether it will be the software platform manufacturers who will dominate. Will it be the hardware makers? Will it be the chip manufacturers? Everybody’s vying for that, and they’re working on that.

Let me take that vision a little further. I see no real reason for us to have a tablet and a laptop and a smartphone. The only reason is physical limitations. As soon as the materials are there and improved, you’ll be able to unfold your smartphone so it has a keyboard and a larger screen and use it as a laptop and as a tablet. Then you can fold it all up, stick it in your pocket again and go about your business. I’m waiting for that day.

Knowledge@Wharton: We talked about the importance of the consumer and how they can be an innovator in this process. But that takes the company understanding and listening to the consumer and improving what they do. That’s one of those core things that really hasn’t changed over the years.

Chaudhuri: No, it hasn’t, and why it’s important is that today data supports us. It’s not me necessarily observing what you’re doing in physical form, but it’s about me gathering all your data about your usage and then tailoring products and services on that basis. But there is a limitation. The limitation of users is they don’t necessarily see what’s far out there. There’s a limitation to what we can envision. That’s where the ingenuity of someone like a Steve Jobs is necessary, who dangles something like an iPad, which got very negative reaction initially. People said, “Oh, that’s just a bigger iPhone.” Then you start seeing how you might use it. He had the vision to see what might be out there. So, the truly revolutionary changes that are going to happen will still be a bit more push than pull. Then they can be informed and refined by and with the customers. It’s the company that will have to take a fundamental role, still.

Knowledge@Wharton: You have a section in the paper titled “Innovate Innovatively.” What does that mean?

Chaudhuri: It was meant to be catchy, but the point is about ultimately how any organization is going to stay ahead. It’s not possible to predict the future and where things are headed. It’s more important to track what’s going on and adapt. The message that we want to send is it’s OK to leverage all kinds of sources. Procter & Gamble had this crowdsourced model called Connect + Develop in order to get problems solved by chemists and scientists around the world. Cisco buys a lot of firms. Intel has been good at investing in firms. Google and others do the same thing. It doesn’t just have to be your own in-house engine. You can’t come up with every new technology or every new capability yourself, so you have to look outside. The challenge with it is you have to be good at everything now. You have to be good at deciding, “Here’s when I use organic, here’s when I use partnerships, here’s when I use acquisitions.” And you have to be good at implementing them, so you really have to innovate innovatively. Ultimately, if your processes and your organization are not up to the task, then even with the best strategy of wanting to stay ahead of the curve all the time, you won’t be able to execute on it.

http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/navigating-digital-disruption/?utm_source=kw_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=2017-06-20

STARTUP SPECIAL .....10 Health and Hygiene Matters

10 Health and Hygiene Matters

Mohini Health and Hygiene Ltd. has gone miles ahead and setup a world class facility for production of health and hygiene products on a large scale, with a view to provide best quality products at affordable prices to Indian & world market.

Avnish Bansal took up the task of setting up a production facility that adheres to international standards like the Conformity European (CE), ISO 9001:2015,14001:2015,British standard OHSAS 18001:2007, Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) and Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) by Food & Drug Authority of India, which certify them for export to Europe and beyond. They produce absorbent cotton wool and healthcare products and adhere to strict environmental guidelines. All the water that they use in production is recycled & purified to the standards of drinking water. There is no waste generated that can harm the environment.

Adopting stringent quality processing policies, the company has reached to new heights. The country lacked an organised and advanced facility that would produce high quality standards. But Mohini Health and Hygiene's foray into the industry completely changed the dynamics of the industry and soon became one of the largest manufacturers of the absorbent cotton wool in the entire South East Asia region. The state-of-the-art facility operated by extremely talented staff, makes it one of the few companies that has been certified by even the end users.

Products Offered

Hygiene category

1) Personal care hygiene products

2) Household hygiene products

Health Category :

1) Basic wound care products

2) Advance wound care products

3) Surgical consumables

4) Rehabilitation devices

5) Diagnostics instruments

6) Bandages & First Aid kits Avnish Bansal aged 32 years, is the Managing Director of the Company having an experience of more than 7 years in the cotton industry. He holdsa degree of Bachelor of Commerce from Veer Narmad South, Gujarat University. He has been awarded with COSIDICI National Award for Outstanding Entrepreneur, 2016.

Mohini Health and Hygiene Products which is in the business of producing Health & Hygiene products will hit the capital market soon with its Initial Public Offer (IPO).

For more details log on to www.mohinihealthandhygiene.com