Saturday, September 4, 2010

Markathon January 2010



Dear Readers,

Innovation! A lot of theories and concepts have been proposed to understand and practice innovation in and around organizations. UK even has a ministerial department to deal with and promote innovations. It has now become such a loose term with every second organization setting up an innovation wing and fooling around with impotent products and services. But the twist in the tale is that they have been able to market it very precisely and have also become successful. I began a small expedition to unravel the truth behind this most talked about term. I came across a book called Innovators Solution that convinced me how a small idea can become a big innovation just by altering your lenses that is used to see the market. It talks about disruptiveness in the innovation process and how it differs from other forms of innovation (Continuous, sustaining, radical or incremental). Instead of focusing on the need of the customer, it provides a time bound solution for her job to be done. Customer hires the product or services to get her job done. This means that marketers need to understand the jobs that arise in customers’ lives for which their products might be hired.
This month we decided to discover the presence of disruptiveness in the Indian Tourism through analysis and case studies. Is there any state or company following the emergent strategies to sell their exquisite locations to the desperate tourists? With the highest number of public holidays adoring its calendar, India has gained a rare distinction of being a country of holidays. But except for greeting card companies, shopping malls, multiplexes and K’ series soaps, nobody has been able to cater to these cohort of customers, who just want to get their single job of killing time to be done productively during holidays. Thus, a lot of room exists for tourism companies/states to get hired by these customers and create value for each other. A perfect example of such disruption is found in the Indian rural tourism. Indians do travel, but most of them like to visit their native places/relatives in rural areas. So why would they go to some other village instead of their own? Here come the perfect urban folks and foreigners devoid of the rustic charm, ready to empty their wallets for a nights stay in an earthen or bamboo compound of Gujarat or Meghalaya.
We are entering a new decade and obviously wish it to be more exciting, prosperous and full of happiness. We too wish the New Year to bring more capital to the economy, encourage people to spend more than before, increase the bottom-line of companies, propel the Sensex and motivate companies to invest on new product and services and finally enable an impeccable analysis of these developments by our spirited writers. So let the wheel of innovation keep rolling.
Wish you again a very happy new year from our whole team of Markathon.

Asit Kumar Jain

No comments:

Post a Comment