24 Hour Contest for Vijay Govindarajan Webinar Ticket

This is only a 24 hour contest, so act fast!

You only have until midnight GMT March 17, 2010 to enter this contest.

On March 18, 2010 at 1:00PM ET, Vijay Govindarajan will be conducting an online seminar titled "Reverse Innovation: A New Strategy for Creating the Future".

HSM Global has graciously donated one (1) $99 ticket for this contest. One lucky person will be able to attend this special event for free.


To enter the contest, do one of these two things before midnight GMT on March 17, 2010:

1. On Twitter, send @innovate an @reply with "Reverse Innovation contest entry" in the tweet


2. If you aren't on Twitter, add a comment to this blog entry with an alternative way of contacting you (your LinkedIn profile URL or website contact form url for example)

There will only be one (1) winner, selected at random.

If you would like to skip the contest and attend the webinar, click here to register - use code H5MW3B and save $20.


Stay tuned!

In two weeks we will be starting an Innovation Scavenger Hunt for a chance to win a $2,000 ticket to the World Innovation Forum in New York City on June 8-9, 2010. In the meantime, as an added value for our loyal Blogging Innovation readers, we have also negotiated a $200 discount on this great event when you register with our discount code "INNOVATE".


Editors's note: The ticket for the contest is being provided by HSM Global, not Blogging Innovation, and is conveyed at their discretion not ours.


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Braden Kelley is the editor of Blogging Innovation and founder of Business Strategy Innovation, a consultancy focusing on innovation and marketing strategy. Braden is also @innovate on Twitter.

Reverse Innovation a Popular Trend

The Rise of Simplicity - The Reason Behind the Success of Reverse Innovation

by Yann Cramer

Thanks to a number of spectacular successes obtained by blue-chip companies in recent years, Reverse Innovation is becoming a popular trend. Examples include GE's portable ultra-sound equipment designed in China and sold worldwide, LG's low cost air conditioner designed in India and sold worldwide, Renault's Logan low-cost model designed for Eastern European markets and now selling on Western Europe, etc.

In an enlightening article, Vijay Govindarajan outlines a historical perspective from globalisation to reverse innovation, and highlights the key driver behind this evolution: the revenue gap between developed and emerging markets. But there are other drivers that may be less visible but no less powerful.


The Road to Reverse Innovation

In his article What is Reverse Innovation, Vijay Govindarajan outlines the following historical phases:

1. Globalisation: companies designing and manufacturing in developed markets products that are "de-featured" for export to emerging markets that can't afford the fully featured original product.


2. Glocalisation: companies still de-featuring products from developed markets but now localising production in emerging markets to take advantage of lower labour costs.


3. Local innovation: companies now designing in emerging markets products that are directly suited to the local needs. (Manufacturing continues to take place locally for costs reasons.)


4. Reverse innovation: companies designing and manufacturing in emerging markets for local use AND export to the developed markets (with or without some level of scaling-up).

It is obvious that the evolution up to phase 3 is driven by the revenue gap between developed and emerging markets, hence the need to scale-down the product features and leverage lower labour costs in order to reach the emerging market affordability threshold. But something almost invisible, just below the waterline, happens during the shift from phase 2 to 3: that is the realisation that there is only so much you can achieved by scaling down.


Simplifying Does Not Necessarily Make it Simple

When the beast is too complicated - some would rather present it more positively as 'sophisticated' - getting to something that is simple enough, may require to start from scratch rather than incrementally shave off features from the beast. This is an experience we all make every so often: the need to start afresh from a clean sheet of paper. When shifting to phase 3, companies realise that the incremental cost reductions achieved by scaling down products are reaching a plateau, and they take the radical step of starting from scratch and designing afresh in emerging markets for emerging markets.


We Do Not Need All This C**p

The driver that leads from local innovation to reverse innovation is even less visible - almost taboo. It is the realisation that customers in developed markets have been stuffed with increasingly complex product features that they actually do not need! The policy has enabled companies to maintain healthy unit margins in the face of intense competition, but an increasingly powerful undercurrent in developed markets pushes simplicity to emerge as something that is not just cheaper but also more reliable, more effective, more authentic, more beautiful, in short: desirable.

This trend is now making companies who have banked their success on high cost/high margin products vulnerable to potential new entrants that would disrupt the established cost structure paradigm. The success of low cost cars in developed markets - Renault's Logan today and Tata's Nano tomorrow - is there to demonstrate that radical simplicity appeals to a significant and likely growing market segment.


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Yann Cramer is an innovation learner, practitioner, sharer, teacher. He's lived in France, Belgium and the UK, he's travelled six continents to create development opportunities with customers or suppliers, and run workshops on R&D and Marketing. He writes on www.innovToday.com and on twitter @innovToday.

World Innovation Forum Posts (updated)

I recently updated some of my World Innovation Forum (May 5-6, 2009) posts to add slides for some of the presentations.

You can also download the World Innovation Forum Executive Summary from our site - lovingly assembled by business analysts from ExecuNet.

The conference lineup included - Paul Saffo, CK Prahalad, Vijay Govindarajan, Clayton Christensen, Fred Krupp, and Dan Ariely

Here is a list of all of the posts from my World Innovation Forum trip with the posts that have been updated with slides at the top:

• Paul Saffo (updated)


• Vijay Govindarajan (updated)


• Clayton Christensen (1st Session) (updated)


• Dan Ariely (updated)


• ?WhatIf! Innovation Field Trip (Apple Store and OZOlab)


• Interview with CEO Alexander Tsiaras of TheVisualMD


• Brightidea visit with Co-founder Vincent Carbone


• CK Prahalad


• Clayton Christensen (2nd Session)


• Fredd Krupp

A thank you goes out to HSM Americas and the presenters for the slides.


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)

Top 10 Vijay Govindarajan Insights - World Innovation Forum

Taking a slightly different approach than other World Innovation Forum bloggers, I've distilled 90 minutes with Vijay Govindarajan down into these Top 10 Insights:

1. Most companies spend too much time on Box 1 thinking and not enough on Box 2&3 thinking


• Box 1 is about closing the performance gap and restructuring


• Box 2&3 are about Closing the Opportunity Gap (projects for 2020) and Renewal


2. Strategic Intent is about dreaming big (other people call this a BHAG) - not creating a mission statement that nobody reads


3. Every company needs a growth playbook for three horizons:


• Horizon 1 - Core Business


• Horizon 2 - Adjacent Space

Horizon 3 - Entirely New Space


4. Horizon 3 projects are 95% assumptions and Horizon 1 projects are 95% knowledge


5. People at the top "Think" - People in the middle "Make Sure" - People at the Bottom - "Do" - If you want transformation - You must engage the "Doers" at the bottom


6. Huge entry barriers to keep competitors out can also prevent you from getting out of the fortress you've built when it's disrupted


7. Because the message is simple - It does not mean that it is easy to do - The future is now


8. India and China went from 55% of World GDP to less than 5% because they missed several productivity revolutions


9. Innovation in emerging markets coming to USA will be hard for American companies to compete against because low margins won't be attractive


10. Be the change you want to see in the company - If you get fired for it, find a new company

Finally, I'd like to leave you with a link to a Vijay Govindarajan webinar (Ten Rules for Strategic Innovators) where you can listen to a lot of the content and follow along with many of the slides.


Updated May 24, 2009 - Here are the slides from Vijay Govindarajan's presentation at the World Innovation Forum:

Vijay Govindarajan - World Innovation Forum

View more Microsoft Word documents from Braden Kelley.

What do you think?


Braden Kelley (@innovate on Twitter)