INTRODUCTION:

As firms and organizations realize they must compete not simply on cutting costs but
also on their new ideas, creativity will find a new, welcome role in larger
organizations .Innovation is one of the hottest topics in business these days. More and
more, companies are coming out with new products and services designed to amaze
their customers and get them to dig deeper into their pocketbooks.

SOURCES OF GENERATING IDEAS AND HOW THEY ARE

INTRUMENTAL IN GENERATING IT:

INTERNAL SOURCES OF GENERATING IDEAS:

R&D: Almost all big companies have R&D department. This department is responsible
for developing new product ideas after proper market research and improve the existing
products. This department consists of scientists and engineers who work continuously
for new product development and provide valuable clues for product improvement and
new product development.

Manufacturing persons: Engineers, specialist and skilled workers who manufactures

products often have ideas about product modification and improvement. They do come
out with new product ideas, because they are in regular contact with product- its
performance, cost, quality, structure, etc. that makes them to give possible
improvement.

Sales people: Company sales person are good source of new product ideas. These
people know what customers are not getting and what customer wants. They are in
regular contact with customers and thus know the real needs of customers. So they are
the best sources of generating ideas.

Top management: In fact, it is the responsibility of top management to explore new

product ideas. Their idea can be good because they precisely know about company need
and resources. Moreover, they are the keen observers of technological trends and its
competitive activities.
EXTERNAL SOURCES OF GENERATING IDEAS:

SECONDARY INFORMATION: Industries department and other government

agencies published list of available licenses and new product developed, which provide
clues for new product ventures. Number of business magazines and newspapers has a
new product section, which provides important information about new products.

CUSTOMERS: Company sales person are good source of new product ideas. A
company can arrange meeting with customers to collect information regarding their
problems and solutions

RESELLERS: Resellers/middlemen are integrated part of firm’s marketing system.

They have close contact with customers and are well aware about the market changes.
Therefore, they can easily suggest fruitful ideas of new product.

FOREIGN MARKETS: E very country is known for certain products or products. EG:
GERMANY: STEEL &CARS, FRANCE: WINE, etc. Therefore for new product
development one can visit foreign market for new ideas.

COMPETITORS: Scientists, engineers and invention and other creative persons can
be key source of technological innovations and new product ideas from outside the
company. Most of companies remain in regular contact with the inventors for new
product ideas.

OTHER SOURCES:

 Individual consultants, engineering college and government research lab.

 Trade associations and advertising agencies.
 Supplier of raw materials, new product consultants.
 Brainstorming.

TECHNOLOGICAL SOURCES:

 Curiosity of researchers
 Serendipity
 Supplier-customer relationship
  R&D Networks

MARKET SOURCES:

 Customer demands.
 Customer services
 Sales representatives.

PEOPLE AS SOURCES:

Colleagues: Colleagues are usually a very approachable source of ideas. They may be
people within the same company, contacts within other organizations or former
classmates.

Consultants: Consultants are generally people who are experts in a certain area.
Although mostly paid for their expertise, many willingly will answer questions and
provide information as long as it is not in conflict with their commitments and doesn’t
require a great deal of time.

EG: Consultants can generally be located through word-of-mouth, professional

directories, yellow pages, educational institutions or the Internet.

Vendors: Although vendors typically are interested in selling their product, many
value the development of relationships and will therefore often be a willing source of
ideas and even samples. Vendors are an excellent resource as they often are current in
technology and have the opportunity to visit a variety of companies where they can
view different ways of doing things.

Customers: Customers are an excellent source of ideas. Often they have conducted
their own research before committing to working with a team of designers on a specific
project. They may have seen similar products in use and have ideas on different
concepts that could be employed.
Lead users: These people are those that had a need for a product long before the
general population. Lead users have often created adaptations or invented their own
solutions to satisfy their requirements until a new product comes along.

Friends/family: Many designers find ideas for projects when casually talking to
friends and family. Sometimes people who have little knowledge of the technology or
the specific problem to be solved may look at things from a different perspective and
propose creative solutions.

Non-profit laboratories and associations: Organizations such as the Canadian

Standards Association, Underwriters Laboratories, and American Society for Testing
and Materials, and American Standards Association can provides standards and
guidelines at a nominal fee. Often products must be tested against and comply with
these standards before they can be offered commercially.

Professional Organizations: Groups such as Association of Professional Engineers,

Geologists and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) and Society of Manufacturing
Engineers (SME) often have publications and Codes available. These organizations
typically can identify and provide Contact information for experts on a given subject.

Generate ideas from a wide range of internal and external sources

With the rapid spread of the concept of open innovation pioneered by companies such
as Proctor & Gamble and Philips, leading companies now recognize the value and
importance of generating a rich mix of new product ideas from both internal and
external sources. Such an approach ensures you consider a wide range of perspectives
and don’t get trapped in corporate blind spots. It also helps build a culture of innovation
in your organization. 
HOW IDEAS GET TRANSFORMED INTO INNOVATION
INTRODUCTION
No distance is too far and no dream is too large because the cycle of life keeps
changing. Certainly, changes bring improved lifestyle and technological progress,
consecutively to keep the momentum of improvements one has to really appreciate
innovation. But where does the innovation come from? An apple in Newton‘s head
sparked to deliver an Idea, which plays a vital role in everyone‘s life till today.
Innovation can be considered to be as creativity, i.e., to create new ideas and
knowledge creation.

However it goes beyond idea generation to putting those ideas into action. So it is
important to evaluate the ideas in order to yield good innovation. An idea that is
developed and put into action creates innovation. Moreover, ―seamless flow of new
ideas. Ideas is the vital source‖ for sustained innovation.

In order to gain advantage of sustainable innovation, we need to evaluate the ideas and
organization’s need to have some metric in place to access the progress. Metrics can be
customized by the managers to keep track on innovation success in their companies.
These metrics can help senior executives assess their company‘s innovativeness and
hence combat the insidious strategy decay that often afflicts a company‘s business.
Source ideas internally both top-down and bottom-up: Internal sourcing should be a
combination of a top-down directive and bottom-up, experimental methods such as:

 Setting up a website to promote, capture, sort and store ideas

 Allocating employee time to creative thinking – companies such as Google and
3M have maintained an innovative environment by doing so
 Creating brainstorming teams with distinct perspectives to shape raw ideas or
explore new industries / markets
 Assigning individuals and teams to examine customer, competitor and
technology trends in your and related industries
 Assigning teams to create alternate internally consistent future scenarios to
explore options and ideas.

Source external ideas from a wide range of stakeholders: External sourcing of ideas
is really about harnessing the collective knowledge of, or at best co-creating with,
partners, customers, suppliers, vendors, and even competitors. This encompasses a wide
spectrum of activities including:

 Working collaboratively with individual innovative customers

 Researching customer needs using “voice of the customer” tactics such as
extended observation, in-depth interviews, focus groups or advisory panels
 Seeking ideas from outside partners and vendors
 Accessing the external technical community through innovation communities
such as InnoCentive
 Seeking and rewarding submission of ideas from users, customers and other
external parties
 Co-creating products with customer, partners or vendors from start-to-finish
 Utilizing large group, web-enabled models such as open source or crowd
sourcing
Generating Ideas

Collecting inspiration is one thing. Generating ideas from inspiration or from within is
another. There are a few ways you can generate ideas and these are four that have
worked for me.

 Brainstorming – When brainstorming I usually just write down any idea that
comes to me as a word or phrase. The goal is to jot down as many things as
possible without spending much time thinking about any of them except to let
them lead to new ideas. Often with brainstorming my result is a long list, which I
later go back to and attempt to organize and cull.
 Free form writing – This is one of my preferred methods. It’s similar to the
above except I write sentences and sentence fragments. The act of writing tends
to get my brain working a little more and gets the ideas flowing. Sometimes I’ll
do this with pen and paper and other times it’s typing away in a .txt file.
 Sketching – Sometimes words alone aren’t enough and sketching is a better way
to generate ideas. I’m not as good at picking up a sketchbook as often as I should
and I tend to use this method when an idea begins to form visually in my head.
Sometimes it’s an idea for a new design and sometimes it’s just some concept
that occurs to me as an image rather than in words.
 Mind Mapping – I see mind mapping mainly as a way to brainstorm in a more
visual way by showing connections between similar and dissimilar ideas.

CONCLUSION:

These are the various ways of generating ideas. It is very clear with the above
evidence that it is instrumental in generating the ideas.
2. INNOVATION STRATEGY OF TATA AND THE WAYS OF
ACHIEVING THE OBJECTIVE THROUGH THESE CHANGES AND
INNOVATION

TATA

The Tata Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate company headquartered

in Mumbai, India. In terms of market capitalization and revenues, Tata Group is the
largest private corporate group in India. It has interests in steel,  automobiles,
information, technology, communication, power, tea and hospitality. The Tata Group
has operations in more than 80 countries across six continents and its companies export
products and services to 80 nations. The Tata Group comprises 114 companies and
subsidiaries in seven business sectors, 27 of which are publicly listed. 65.8% of the
ownership of Tata Group is held in charitable trusts. Companies which form a major
part of the group include Tata Steel (including Tata Steel Europe), Tata
Motors(including Jaguar and Land Rover), Tata Consultancy Services, Tata
Technologies, Tata Tea (including Tetley), Tata Chemicals, Titan Industries, Tata
Power, Tata Communications, Tata Teleservices and the Taj Hotels.

The group takes the name of its founder, Jamsedji Tata, a member of whose family has
almost invariably been the chairman of the group. The chairman of the Tata group
is Ratan Tata, who took over from J. R. D. Tata in 1991 and is one of the major
international business figures in the age of globality. The company is currently in its
fifth generation of family stewardship.
 INNOVATION OVERVIEW:

  A summary of Tata’s efforts to foster innovation in its companies and the way these

initiatives are being driven.

 
Innovation facilities

Innovation centres have been set up by Tata companies in various parts of the world.
Tata Group Innovation Forum
    Advinus Drug Discovery Centre
The Tata Group Innovation Forum facilitates interaction and sharing of ideas among
  Corus
managers and fosters innovation in Tata companies.
  Tata Chemicals Innovation Centre
    Tata Motors European Technical Centre

    TCS Innovation Labs

The 2009 annual survey by the Reputation Institute ranked Tata Group as the 11th most
reputable company in the world. The survey included 600 global companies.
TATA CODE OF CONDUCT

The fountainhead of the corporate governance of the Tata Power Company is the Tata
Code of Conduct. The Company is committed to abide by it, in its letter and spirit. And
the Company has earned the Tata Brand name by virtue of this commitment. It draws its
strength from the five Tata values:

 Integrity
  Understanding 
 Excellence
  Unity
  Responsibility
 
In Tata parlance they stand for –
Integrity
We must conduct our business fairly, with honesty and transparency. Everything we
do must stand the test of public scrutiny.
 Understanding
We must be caring, showing respect, compassion and humanity for our colleagues and
customers around the world, and always working for the benefit of India.

Excellence
We must constantly strive to achieve the highest possible standards in our day-to-day
work and in the quality of the goods and services we provide.

Unity
We must work cohesively with our colleagues across.

KEY INSTRUMENTALS OF INNOVATION:

Innovation is the key to competitiveness. This firm belief at the 49-year-old
Tata Refractories (TRL) has not only placed it in a leadership position in the
domestic market, but has also made it an aggressive global contender.

TRL began operations in Belpahar, Orissa in 1958 to meet Tata Steel’s

requirements of refractories. The company started with silica, high alumina
and basic refractories, subsequently expanded its product range and added a
dolomite plant in 1995 to provide customers with a globally competitive
range of solutions.

Today, it is one of the very few companies worldwide with the capability to
produce such a comprehensive range of refractories. (Refractories find
application in industries such as iron and steel, cement, copper, glass,
aluminium, foundries, petrochemical complexes, fertiliser plants, etc). TRL’s
two service offerings — refractories solutions and refractories management
services are aimed at customers in India and overseas.

Knowledge innovation
Over the years, TRL has grown through changes — not just of products and
processes, but also the business model itself.

The company’s innovation programme is inspired by two concepts namely,

there is always a better way and secondly production of knowledge is our
priority. These two mantras have been internalised by all employees in order
to achieve superior performance continuously. An intranet knowledge
management site which captures, validates and stores knowledge, and also
makes it available to users on demand, assists them in the process.
“Knowledge sharing is also done by directly sharing experiences in
departmental meetings, divisional councils and in share-your-knowledge
forums,” says Kamath(Director).

Product innovation
KN Das, a business development manager at Tata Refractories is one of the
executives responsible for product profile innovation. He is credited with
creating nine new products for the company. Das and his team recently won
an award at the Tata Innovation Day for formulating a groundbreaking
material used for lining the inside walls of containers holding molten steel. It
has the property of enhancing the life span of such containers by six times.

It’s not surprising then that customers started placing orders long before the
material went into production!

Business innovation 
The company’s global growth strategy is best exemplified by its recent foray
into China. “Their China project is also one of our
best examples of innovation”

The Tata group’s first ever greenfield manufacturing facility in China — a

30,000 tonne per annum (tpa) plant in Yingkou City for the production of mag
carbon family of products — was inaugurated in December 2006. The
primary drivers for this investment were the availability of magnesite in
China and the need to manufacture and supply cost-effective mag-C bricks to
customers.

They have adopted the mantra ‘Grow or Go’ and therefore TRL pursues a
strategy of aggressive and profitable growth.”
With change and innovation driving the company, it makes strategic sense for
Tata Refractories to be looking at the global marketplace for its new growth.

OVERVIEW OF INNOVATION IN TATA:

Tata looks at innovation as a strategic approach to global growth and has

adopted a three-pronged strategy to encourage it. The three key drivers are
better communication and recognition of innovative ideas and efforts;
facilities for learning from other companies; and support for collaborative
research and partnerships with academic institutions.

Communication and recognition A number of initiatives have been

launched to spread the message of innovation and recognise innovators:

Tata Group Innovation Forum (TGIF): This initiative brings together a

community of ‘innovation enthusiasts’ from across Tata companies. The role
of TGIF members is to assist their companies in experimenting with ideas,
propagate the relevant ones and spread them through the enterprise. 

Innovation workshops: Tata Quality Management Services invites experts to

talk about various aspects of innovation and share best practices with Tata
managers. Clayton Christensen, Langdon Morris and David Wittenberg are
among those who have held such workshops in the recent past. 

Tata Innovation Day: Instituted to encourage creative thinking, this annual

event and contest recognises and awards innovation among Group companies.

Tata Innovation Mission: Under this programme, senior Tata executives

visit global companies to study how they foster innovation. These missions
have visited companies such as Microsoft, Intel, HP and 3M in the US, and
Nissan, Fuji, Ito En, Olympus, Toshiba and Hitachi in Japan.

Tata Motors´ Innovation Strategy: Disruptive Innovation

Innovation Management Comment

 India´s car manufacturer Tata Motors is about to revolutionize the global car market
with its disruptive innovation strategy. At the Delhi Motor Show, which will start on
January 10, Tata Motors will present its disruptive innovation named People´s Car or
One-Lakh-Car. As of autumn 2008 this innovation is planned to be produced in India.
One Lakh is equivalent to 100.000 Indian Rupees. The People´s Car therefore
corresponds to a “Two-Thousand-Euro-Car”

Tata´s disruptive Innovation of the  People´s Car will turn the automobile market on its
head, and will result in a paradigm shift. As many other disruptive innovations (the term
was coined by Clayton Christensen) Tata´s innovation consciously sacrifices some
performance in order to be able to radically reduce the costs and the selling price

Renault and Nissan as well intend to make India their innovation centre for low-cost
cars. Other industries and companies such as the innovation machine GE or SAP or,
respectively, the innovation machine Cisco have already made the experience that India
is an interesting location for an innovation centre for disruptive innovations.

Because as far as offering a transport solution to the billions of potential low-cost car
customers in the emerging and developing countries of this world is concerned, Tata
Motors with its Indian innovation centre and its disruptive innovation “One-Lakh-Car”
is the first mover and has a leg up. India more and more becomes the leading choice for
placing an innovation centre that shall be globally responsible for low-cost cars. It can
be safely assumed that the Indian employees who are heavily influenced by daily
experiences of scarcity and penury will bring along a big amount of creativity and
innovation that will benefit the development of disruptive low-cost cars.
Tata leads the way to innovation and how

Self-discovery

The Tata Group, which has interests in such varied areas as automobile, information
technology, steel, chemicals, telephony, watches, jewellery, medicine, fertilisers, retail,
hotels, real estate, tea and coffee, has embarked on a journey of self-discovery. A
conscious effort has been made to nurture innovative ideas and create the right culture
for innovation. They are trying to see how we can increase the attention paid to
innovation, principally by creating a better atmosphere for innovation in our companies

Tata wants his team to be innovative

The Tata Group is no stranger to innovation. In 1907, Tata Steel became the first
Indian company to raise capital in India. JRD Tata set up Tata Airlines in 1932 and TCS
in 1968. Tata Motors made India's first indigenous light commercial vehicle, the Tata
407, in 1986 and the first indigenous car, the Indica, 13 years later. Ginger budget
hotels came up in 2002, small truck Ace in 2005, super-computer Eka in 2005 and the
world's smallest car, the Nano, in 2008.

Innovations at Tata Chemicals

Then there has been innovation within companies. Tata Chemicals, for instance, has run
on innovation from day one. "The company had converted processes that ran on sweet
water to sea water. Waste of soda ash was used to make cement. Iodised salt is a
movement that Tata Chemicals started. Finally, it got promulgated as a law by the
government. A premium has always been attached to newness in the group. Rallis, for
instance, has run a Freshness Index for some years -- the percentage of products in its
portfolio less than three years old. Yet the need was felt to raise the bar. And this could
happen only when creative ideas within the group were nurtured and taken to their
logical conclusion.

CONCLUSION:
Thus innovation and change strategy of TATA helps in achieving its objective. The key
instrumentals like product, business and knowledge innovation have led to the
achievement of objective and making TATA a successful firm.