Learning from CII Innovation Conference

Gravity

  • Organizational Gravity
  • Industry Gravity
  • Country Gravity
  • Cultural Gravity
  
Organizational Gravity
Walt Disney created history by creating the animation movie ‘Three Pigs’. The success was phenomenal. What was the natural way to repeat the success ?? PIGS – Part II happened and it bombed miserably at the box office. Walt Disney and his team came back to the drawing board , brain stormed extensively, they realized PIGS do make money and PIGS – Part III happened. Again it failed miserably. The gravity here is to stick to a success formula, what worked earlier is no guarantee that it will work in the future. Disney being Disney did not give up and then Snow white and the seven dwarfs happened. What are we doing to change PIGS to SNOW White ?? Break out of ‘More of the same’ approach. Local examples are Tata’s entry into jewellery by means of Tanishq and ‘Steel Retailing’ by Steel Junction
  
Industry Gravity
The circus industry was facing a big threat and it was on the verge of closing down. Cirque de Soleil redefined by using humans as performers. It uses a story line for each performance and made it into a format that can be taken to anywhere both in terms of physical mobility and in terms of emotional content offered to audience.

Country Gravity

Singapore when freed from Malaysia was in need of huge image makeover. They wanted to create the best airline in the whole world out of nothing. They could not afford new and stylish planes. Instead they decided to bring on something called ‘In Flight Experience’ and that turned the definition of passenger experience in flights completely 360 degrees. Singapore Airlines has managed to keep that leadership in ‘In Flight Experience’ from inception
  
Cultural Gravity
Samsung wanted to create the world’s best experience in consumer products. Culturally Koreans always took the best of everything from the best in the world (example : Best of designs from Italy,US) and assembled their product. Suddenly someone asked ‘ What is korean’ in this and that turned on the heat. They decided to be the best designers in the world and hired the best in the world to educate, train their people on design and today their products are competing among the world’s best in their design.
Some of the above are forces that we need to get out and when we say ‘Out of the box’ we need to think which of the above boxes we are stuck inside and then move on.
What some companies then do to get out of these gravity ?
Stay Tuned and Have Fun.