‘Jam’ begins to pay off

It’s one thing to get thousands of people together to brainstorm and quite another to translate what came out of it into profitable business. IBM’s, rather the largest ever innovation exercise, that started in 2001, and a follow up jam session in 2006 to translate the outcome into business ideas, seems to b paying off.

In an article titled ‘An Inside View of IBM's Innovation Jam’ Osvald M. Bjelland, chairman and founder of Xyntéo Ltd and Robert Chapman Wood, professor of strategic management at San José State University, in the latest issue of MIT Sloan Review, say that “The Jam was successful to a considerable degree. It uncovered, solved problems in and mobilized support for substantial new ways of using IBM technology.” The process involved 150,000 IBM employees, family members, business partners, clients (from 67 companies) and university researchers. Participants Jammed from 104 countries, and conversations continued 24 hours a day. Incidentally, "Jam" was IBM's term for a "massively parallel conference" online.

Here’s a list of businesses to come out of the Jam process:

Smart Health Care Payment Systems: Overhauling health care payment and management systems through the use of small personal devices (such as smart cards) that will automatically trigger financial transactions, the processing of insurance claims and the updating of electronic health records. This business has "graduated" from the in cubator stage, and its products are now part of the IBM Healthcare Industry Solutions product offering.

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Go Kiss The World

The resurgent India has given Indian professionals optimism and a tad of arrogance as well. Nothing wrong with that! While the new-found wealth is always welcome, the challenge before the professionals – young and not-so-young is to find a sense of direction, purpose and some guiding principles to lead them as they head into the chaotic, unforgiving and demanding world.

Subroto Bagchi, who now calls himself a ‘Gardener’ at IT services company, MindTree, is shaping himself as a master coach and mentor. In his second book Go Kiss the World: Life Lessons for the Young Professional l (Penguin Portfolio June 08) through personal anecdotes, he brings lessons on working and living, energizing ordinary people to lead extraordinary lives. Bagchi urges Indian professionals to recognize and develop their inner strengths, thereby helping them realize their own, unique potential.

For those who constantly worry about building careers and successful businesses, Bagchi has this to say: “Our lives are like rivers – the source seldom reveals the confluence. Does a river fret over the long journey and about its end just as it is about to spurt? It simply does not do that, caring instead to fl ow, to begin its journey, and on its way builds a beneficial relationship with anyone who comes in contact with her.”

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The Tata Way

Tata companies today are in the news for big ticket acquisitions of global companies and brands. Yet, the group has not lost its fulcrum, and remains a pioneer in its thinking on how future organizations are run and managed.Decades before terms such as ‘Sustainability’ and ‘CSR’ became fashionable, the founder of the Tata Group, Jamsetji Tata was crystal clear when he said: “In a free enterprise, the community is not just another stakeholder in business, but is in fact the very purpose of its existence.”

While community-centric corporate philosophy was indeed spoken about and practiced all these years, the Group is now making the inherent sustainability element more explicit, and evolving policies and systems to institutionalize it. In fact, corporate sustainability is boldly acknowledged as business strategy by the Tatas now. Dr. J.J.Irani, Director, Tata Sons, is, in fact, insisting that sustainability professionals in the Tata companies should be seen as business strategists. What’s more, sustainability is turning into a serious career option here.

Understandably, the much-used phrase ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) is passé at the Tatas. It’s ‘Corporate Sustainability’ from now on. What this means is Tatas are broadening their agenda beyond communities, to include the environment and bio-diversity. For a conglomerate that’s got its feet soiled in carbon intensive industries such as steel, chemicals and automobiles, this would surely mean a highly challenging commitment to sustain. For the Tatas now, ‘the business of business is sustainable value creation’ and they are busy institutionalizing it across the Group.

The transformation

All this while, the Tatas have co-ordinated their CSR efforts at the Group level through Tata Council of Community Initiatives (TCCI), and gone about building CSR capacities through several initiatives across the Group. They’ve made CSR agenda a part of KRA’s for their managers and integrated CSR with business excellence.

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Growth lessons from Nature

The Oak Tree

The oak tree grows by accretion – every year, it adds a ring to its trunk and becomes thicker and thicker, until it becomes a giant. This is actually the most common way a company grows – become bigger but essentially along the same lines, always. We add markets, add products, the way an oak tree adds rings, over time, without changing any thing in the basic architecture of the organism.

What are the special issues of managing such a growth pattern? What makes an oak tree strong?

• A strong trunk: i.e., a strong sense of ‘core’, great clarity on what is our business and what isn’t
• An equally strong sense of values
• And operating processes

As more and more businesses are added, the older businesses should not require attention. Their environment should be stable and unshakable.

The Banyan Tree

The Banyan’s pattern of growth is totally different from that of the mighty oak. It creates replicas of itself, increasing its span, until, in the end, you cannot even tell the daughter from the mother tree. Each tree is self-sustaining, yet bound to its mother and its siblings, and ever ready to spread out again.

To follow this model, a company would keep creating self sustaining businesses over time, and yet retain a strong sense of connectedness. Perhaps a company like Matsushita would answer to this description, with its penchant for spinning off new divisions, each held together only by finance, and a shared value system.

How does one manage such a growth?

• Creation of an infinite pool of entrepreneurs, each of whom
can run a business independently
• Who are yet held together by shared values
• A commitment to support each spin-off with nourishment
from the center until it stabilizes

When would such a model make sense? Clearly, where the environment creates new opportunities, each of whom are unrelated to each other, yet need to be part of a common ‘umbrella’ brand. Perhaps GE is another example of such a model.

The Beehive

More accurately, the Swarm of Bees. The beehive is created by hundreds of independent workers – no one of them has the knowledge and capability or even intelligence to build a hive, yet, together, they do it effortlessly. Where, in business, do we see this model in action? Perhaps the now-famous dabba wallas of Mumbai. Some religious organizations have this capability, perhaps Al Qaeda does, for all I know!

In a company, the closest I have seen to this model, is Polaris Software’s Lakshya process – a visioning exercise involving every last employee in the firm (all several thousand of them!), which tries to tap the collective consciousness of all of them. The result is not a business plan or even a written document, it is simply a collective consciousness.

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