What is at the top of every company’s minds these days? Innovation. Fresh Ideas and innovative products have been tagged as the driving force behind creating a competitive advantage and, ultimately, company growth. Keeping your company on task in regards to your innovation is one of the most important factors that will help sustain long term growth. Project leaders should be encouraged to:

• Align Innovation and Business Strategies

• Oversee the Portfolio of the Total Innovation Effort and

• Track Progress Against Expectations

The first step towards creating and sustaining an innovative environment in your company is to make sure that your business strategies are in line with the strategies and ideas you have for innovation.

Strategic Alignment

There are several challenges that companies face when attempting to align their innovation strategies with their business goals.

• Technical/Feasibility Challenges – companies experiencing these challenges are generally seeing increases in sales, volume and market share, but are losing earnings due to reduced profit margins. Executives can combat these losses with tools such as Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and re-engineering of the product or processes.

• Market Desirability Challenges – this is generally manifested as high profit margins but low sales and market penetration. By providing expanding on existing services, offering new products, or expanding on current services, companies can realize new markets while maintaining profit margins.

• Brand Sustainability Challenge – generally defined as the challenge of maintaining high market share along with high profit margins, brand sustainability requires a large amount of focus and concentration from the brand executives. This can be achieved by developing product brands that can “stand alone”, similar to a commodity.

• Business Viability Challenge – here, both profits and market share are in decline, usually due to misplacement or misbranding of the company’s products. In order to right the ship and become profitable again, the company must choose a new target market, offer different or fewer costly benefits, or market themselves at a different point on the value chain.

Check back shortly for the next article in this series: Growth Portfolio Management, where we will discuss effective portfolio management as a strategy for creating and sustaining innovation in your company.

During the past several years, great strides have been made in improving the UKs energy efficiency ratings.  This is only the beginning of a long-term commitment for achieving a low carbon economy.  The nations gas and energy sectors are obligated to advance their efforts in the area of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while, at the same time, limiting the burdens placed on consumers.

The UK Government is calling for the development of gas and electricity energy programs that are sustainable well into the future.  Power stations contribute about 33% of the total carbon dioxide emissions, and residential and industrial emissions comprise another 33%.  Innovations in these three sectors resulted in a 4% decline in emissions from 2006 to 2007, with the bulk of this improvement attributed to conversions from coal to gas and renewable energy solutions.

Total energy consumption in the UK has decreased each year since 2005, with a 3% reduction in 2007.  A 3% drop in electricity usage and 4% drop in gas usage were reported.  In order to meet Government guidelines, the gas and electricity sectors must continue to accomplish improved energy efficiency each year.

The gas and electricity sectors must perform a delicate balancing act between the goals of energy efficiency and minimal financial impact on consumers.  Consumers are finding it difficult to keep up with some of the highest fuel costs in history.  Coupled with an unstable economy, this is a very difficult time for many.  Fuel poverty is a persistent problem in the UK, with 3.5 million households in fuel poverty, with a staggering 2.75 million of these being vulnerable households.  Households fall into the fuel poverty category if more than 10% of their income is used for fuel.  Although 2007 and 2008 findings are not compiled yet, estimates are that an additional .7 million households fell into the fuel poverty level in 2007, with another .5 million in 2008.

The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (Ofgem) oversees the coordination of the fuel markets efforts with Government requirements for sustainable development targets.  Ofgem safeguards consumers from unscrupulous practices by the energy sectors.  An ambitious goal of erasing the problem of fuel poverty by the year 2018 has been set by the agency.  Through new policies and programs, Ofgem is pushing the gas and electricity markets towards successfully meeting energy efficiency and emissions goals.

The energy sectors can be applauded for their impressive efforts directed at reducing energy usage and costs and greenhouse gas emissions.  The gas and energy markets have performed an incredible amount of work, and some of their positive results can be attributed to their guidance from Ofgem.  Maintained and increased efforts are necessary to reach the required sustainable development.

Crisis in World Economy and the proposed New Model for sustainable development.

The ongoing turmoil in world economy raised the doubt that present model of capitalism cannot be sustained for environmental and social reasons. Respected thinkers and scientists have pointed to this reality. Now we should look ahead to a new system that is sustainable and humane. Otherwise whatever wealth is created would be wiped out by environmental disasters and social upheavals. Whole system is complicated by lack of transparency. It is not clear where all the money gets invested. Hedge funds are cloaked in secrecy- even bailout money has disappeared with no effect to the economy. Even now nobody knows which are the real bad toxic assets, so stock market is also not recovering.

In this treatise some key issues in this crisis are discussed and a new  model is proposed that will engineer a balanced global society  globally conscious, active and sustainable.

Regarding overpaid CEOs

Let us ponder over some news those captured the attention across the globe. Washington Mutual Chief Executive Alan Fishman could walk away with more than 18 million dollar in salary, bonuses and severance after less than three weeks on the job as golden parachute from flight WaMu in danger, according to the terms of his employment agreement. Lehman Brothers was handing out 23 million dollar to three executives just days before it collapsed. It paid 2.5 BILLION dollar bonus fund after failing. CEO of American Express saw his pay go up much more than double although shares price nosedived. Hewlett Packard CEO destroyed half the wealth of her investors and yet still earned almost 100 million dollars in total payments. Exactly same is the case with Informix Software CEO. The list goes on and on. It means what?  This isn’t a diatribe against CEO pay. Point is failure has become a recipe for financial success of CEOs especially in America by virtue of their intelligent manipulation and abuse of power.  Martin Whitman, economist and the great advocate of capitalism opined that apart from corruption another reason as to why a free market situation is probably doomed to failure is very exorbitant levels of executive compensation.

Regarding free-market economy

I do not think free market is really free. Those who say they favor a free market are speaking in a relative term.  In an absolutely free-market economy, all capital, goods, services, and money flow are unregulated by the government. There is simply no free market yet, given the degree of state intervention in even the most capitalist of countries. For example US government took an 80% stake in AIG in return for an 85 billion dollar investment to save the company. Recent news of Citi bank is being given a bail out package of 326 billion dollars and Jaguar’s requirement of 1 billion pound for sustaining economic meltdown are significant. Under pure capitalist theory, none of these actions should’ve been taken; the government should have stood by idly while the economy tanked. So how can a free market be free if it’s regulated?  The fall out of free market economy such as black Market, underground economy, Drug trade essentially justifies government’s intervention to remedy the situation and establishes the argument against free market as an impractical ideal that engenders vested wealthy interests. Experiments in absolute adherence to free market principles evince signal failures in Military, Road, Health Care, Civic Amenities, Education, R & D etc. Free- market economy is a fantasy – outside of the bounds of reality in a complex system with opposing interests and different distributions of wealth. Time and again world is realizing this fact is a harder way. Hence I align with those critics who are in favour of a planned economy  as advocated by socialism and who associate markets with greed  as the basis of capitalism. I believe it is inherently immoral. More over one practical objection is that free market economy does not take into account the externalities i.e. effects of transactions that affect third parties, such as the negative effects of Global Warming that brought world to Apocalypse in foreseeable future. I guess that in well-run industrial economies like Japan, Singapore and China, there is marriage between government and the private sector, each benefiting from the other. Any temporary prosperity on an extremely austere free market concept can crumble like a pack of cards, like it happened in USA.

Regarding Nationalisation and regulation.

What does the US federal government taking control of financially crumbling mortgage holders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with a bail out package of staggering 800 billion?  Why on the earth Fed and other regulators are coming into the picture particularly for some of those that got overextended with the subprime and other kind of mortgage debt? Nationalization occurs when full or partial control is taken of private financial institutions, usually to avert a crisis. Scandinavian nations successfully averted an economic meltdown through nationalization in the early 1990s, and in recent times. US government is taking similar actions. It looked at the global fallouts and how politically they will be viewed by the world powers. So they bailed out finance industries, but not agreeing so easily to the auto industry. these issues are interlinked with power, military, oil.

Regarding mortgage financing

It was the proponents of Capitalism who supported advantage of loan facilities and low interest rates for houses to be owned by people at low income group. There was enormous marketing effort to dupe people into it.  Logic was simple. If one buys house, he will also buy complimentary household goods like furniture, Fans, AC, Cars etc. creating a demand pull in the economy. Banks also extended the moratorium on interest and principle up to 5 years to convince the borrowers. When crisis occurs, should we brand common people as “lazy bummers”? Similarly it is unfair to blame the common investors for lost speculative fortune when Stock Market is institutionalized by system as a socially and ethically valid means of income.

Regarding targeting CEOs

In our capitalist system, you’re free to earn what you can, and what the market will bear- this logic does not hold water since big companies are increasingly depending on public money for a bail out. Hence I support newest trend of shareholders in raising questions and putting pressure on boards and compensation committees to make sure compensation is fair but not excessive. The interesting News was that US Law Makers asked blunt questions to CEOs like Wagoner, Nardelli, Mulally of GM, Chrysler and Ford who came to the Capital Hill with a begging bowl for 25 Billion of Tax Payers money, when each one of them preferred to fly in their individual Private Jets, when as many as 24 non stop flights fly daily from Detroit to Washington. Lifestyle and salary should definitely be a valid question when companies are using public money. That is why companies are facing “say on pay” resolutions from shareholders. The board of directors should have taken this role, but instead they normally abdicate it. Most CEOs considers keeping board members happy as their primary duties. For example taking the board members on an all-expenses paid trip to a five-star international resort, allowing his compensation to spiral out of control, which is nothing but intelligent corruption and abuse of power.

Myth regarding the CEOs’ ‘sheer value-add’ in the corporate world.

For a company to become successful entails billions of variables, which are oftentimes beyond the ambit of human ability of one individual. Even with our full regard on Narayanmurthy’s ability, we must accept Infosis’s success was primarily on account of flattening effect of world by Internet revolution in 92.  Jerry Yang, co founder of Yahoo, considered to be a great CEO, had to step down amid mounting pressure from investors after he botched takeover talks with Microsoft Corp. and failed to broker an online advertising agreement with Google Inc. Many CEOs were rated highly for certain techno bubble, which turned out to be utterly divorced from any business purpose whatsoever. Of course there is positive effect too- it attracts lot of investment and accelerates the pace of innovation. The trophy cases of HP CEO with so many industry awards and accolades were crucified for her destructive reign of terror with “Silicon Valley greed.” Hence it is fundamentally wrong to empower one individual so much for the success and failure of an organization. In Japanese and Chinese model, system is ascribed more powerful than an individual.  Once CEOs become all-powerful, their executive staff is reluctant to challenge them. Instead, the natural tendency is for these dominant leaders to become cocooned from reality. They are told only what they want to hear and hear only what they want to be told. Sequestered from the rest of the company, they lose the pulse of the business eventually.

Regarding Capitalism vs. Socialism

By virtue of the extremely clever indoctrination, a spin-off of media advertising especially of US kind, our thought process is getting clouded driving us towards more personal interest, freedom and power than social responsibility. Do we really need large waves of money sloshing daily around the planet for benefit of only a few, waves often generated by speculation capable of dislocating economies? Do we need larger and larger corporations which concentrate economic power into fewer and fewer hands? When seen in this light, capitalism has a shadow side. Economy in its root sense means acquiring the basic material things we need to lead a human life: food, shelter, energy, etc. But this is something quite different than a quest for a so-called higher standard of living. This really is the unending quest for a higher level of consumption. Our material needs are finite. After a certain point we are simply embellishing them. Then we begin to distort them making them the carriers of our own disordered desires.  Recent news of bra and panty for men in Japan is the right example for such disorder. We need shelter but we don’t need 50,000 square feet trophy homes when billions of people can’t even afford a shanty. Now we are living in a time when we don’t even feel shame. We have become so much closeted within ourselves that even with the back up of enormous fortune, we feel unsafe with the slightest possibility of economic meltdown.  Capitalism propels us to become shameless consumers and run our lives according to the design of the contemporary social machine, which foreshadows world destruction, whereas our true nature favours a life closer to nature. If American Capitalism is a kind of religion with its own dogma, then its God is Money and its driving force is Greed.  The fall out of this ruthless system is obscenities of unemployment, homelessness and economic insecurity and hence is not sustainable in its present form. The whole system is designed to make fewer and fewer people richer and richer at the cost of resources of the multitude. It definitely operates below the level of consciousness and no longer works for us.  I understand one very simple thing – goods and services generated in an economy must be shared equitably in a population. Otherwise those who will be deprived will take resort to unethical or socially unacceptable means- theft, dacoity, terrorism, drug, killing, cheating, narrow politics and what not.   Recent examples of everyday terrorism, Piracy, Mao attacks, dark killing are the pointers to this fact.

Even in USA people are facing dark side of capitalism when blue collar Americans have been losing jobs because of outsourcing and off shoring in the mask of progress for real intention of more profit.  What is the social damage? Skills for manufacturing a certain product developed over the years are getting lost in the society.  Capitalist countries use capitalist ideals as a matter of convenience.  When Government owns hospitals, libraries, transportation systems, utilities, army, Navy, Air Force, forests and national perks- yet, who would call these institutions examples of socialism?  Socialism means a government in which the people collectively own and democratically operate the industries and social services through an economic democracy by ending the waste, duplication and inefficiency of capitalist industries. Under capitalism the industries operate for one purpose – profit maximization. As per Capitalism profit is also a cost, cost of staying in the business. Under Socialism goods are produced for use and to satisfy the needs of all the people. Under this system everyone could live comfortably with no giant gaps between rich and poor. Is it not really humane? Just because a system is not strictly as per lower merits of human nature say greed, it should not be rejected. Socialism talks about higher sense of our human values and existence.  After Industrial resolution act 1956 in India, socialistic pattern of economy in India has produced wonderful developments in sectors till seventies. Hence we can infer that Socialistic system can produce wonderful results under certain conditions and social environment.  However I do agree classical form of Socialism may not take into account of the Individual brilliance and creative pursuit, which is probably its one of its weaknesses.

The New Model

Having said this, we should find out whether there can be a balance between the two systems and what kind of mechanism society should develop so that one can approximate the ideals of good life in his individual life and in the life of community of which he is a member. I feel it is possible to have our modern global economy while being socially, culturally & environmentally responsible at the same time. Society has go through a difficult paradigm shift in personal values, which will instill a degree of awareness in our mind as opposed to the blind, materialistic way we are living.

I have thought of one model that will engineer a balanced global society that is globally conscious, active and sustainable. Way out is to lead humanity by the collective wisdom of most talented people in a society or country- a kind of meritocracy.  Mechanism to harness collective wisdom will be -say for any policy and contentious issue, opinions of most eminent people of the country will be  collected by a network of computers and looking into the wisdom of eminent people who are most knowledgeable on the subject under consideration, decision can be made in real time. Their services can be hired at a cost; they can be selected based on the track record etc. Decisions can be taken in National forum if discussion and debate are warranted. Experiments, research and its implications can be interpreted by eminent people only and that is why collective wisdom as instrumentality for decision support system may be a model worth trying for. One may argue country does not need only dry knowledge culled from books. There must be leaders to make certain things happen. Yes leaders are required. But a leader can be chosen by collective wisdom, which should be supremely empowered. A leader will resort to collective wisdom for at least for major decision. The collective wisdom is likely to veer country to right direction. Humanity has to go though different experiments and whatever evolved as better model will be accepted and perfected in course of time. We should never be blind to state that capitalism or the socialism is the right system with dogmatic finality.

Sustainable development

Dr.N.C.Martin, Ph.D

Lecturer – HOD

Department of Social Work

Shree Chandra Prabhu Jain College

Minjur, Chennai.

After independence several development efforts in India created a lot of mess with misguided policies. The immediate task in front of us is it to clean up this mess. We have 50 crores of people living in rural areas excluding rich-to do households. These people live in mainly rain-fed areas. The resources are limited for these people. From a population of 100 crores 70% of are poor. Majority of the lands owned by them are categorized as wastelands where yields are about 0.5 to 1 ton of grain per hectare Forests and pastures have been highly degraded, and the top soil has been eroded or deprived of nutrients. Usually one crop per year (with poor yield) is cultivated in these areas due to inadequate irrigation facilities. On the whole, the present natural resource endowment in this region appears quite bleak. Even though we talk about privatization, there is no real investment in agriculture, especially in these rain-fed areas that are outside the much hyped “Green Revolution” areas.  That is why the theme of this talk is “turning the present crisis to an opportunity.” In fact, by the combination of a scientific and participatory approach to land improvement and micro-watershed management a sufficiently large bio-mass surplus can be achieved in these areas.

The basis of industrialization is energy. We need to identify the energy needs based on “end-use.” This is the departure from Western calculations of energy needs. The main departure is we must look at energy in the following areas:

Materials: Steel, metals etc.

Synthetic Polymers: PVC, polyethylene, adhesives etc.

Liquid fuels

Cement

In developed countries, energy needs are looked as the availability of “gas and/or gasoline” and electricity. There can be a major leap in rural infrastructure (villages & small towns), economy and livelihoods if 5T of coal-equivalent energy supply is available per family per year. We currently make available only 0.5-1 ton. However, there is capacity to provide this level of energy with 50% from solar and other 50% from materials such as bamboo, small timber chemical intermediates from plants (such as non-edible oils, phenols, starch, ethanol) etc. So far we have been neglecting solar energy. Currently, from the point of end-use, 40% of energy from coal is in the form of steam (or heat). Steam can also be produced at low-cost by solar-thermal systems. An overhead of a low-cost, high-performance solar thermal equipment, fabricated at Bhusawal (Maharashtra) was shown.

Bamboo as a material for infrastructure

In Andhra Pradesh a large arched-roof community-hall type structure using engineered bamboo elements was built three years ago taking the local conditions as part of the design (overhead shown with the structure). In fact this structure, while built as a cyclone resistant structure, turned out to be the optimal design after exhaustive CAD studies.

Another example is in the case of village/small-town roads, where bamboo-grid reinforcement of the road base, (along with natural or synthetic fabric under layer for preventing water entry from below & sides) has enabled the construction of very durable roads (overhead shown).

A side note: There are instances in China, where bamboo used for some applications have survived 2000 years.  The point is that preservation treatment of bamboo is not a major issue, particularly so with modern techniques. We glorify traditional knowledge only because times tested lessons are the only ones remain for us to glorify from traditions and they deserve to be studied as sources of knowledge.

Using modern knowledge of structural engineering, and the inherently superior properties of bamboo, engineered wood-bamboo composite structural members with innovative joining techniques have been designed which are as strong and durable as reinforced cement columns and beams (overhead shown). Of course, these do need skilled labor. But, then local artisans can be trained in rural areas, leading to rapid increase in livelihood opportunities and the capacity to build excellent rural infrastructure at very low cost. The main point is that we need to look at the approaches of using traditional resources to meet our energy needs. Fortunately, there is a small but important segment of people who do want to look at eco-friendly resources for alternate energy needs. The question to ask is “if we can not provide something do we have the right to use it?” The science has given us the ability to make otherwise worthless material into valuable products. (E.g. silicon for computer chips, optical cables in stead of copper as medium).

After all, all mining activity basically involves converting mud or rocks into materials to which we attach greater value. If we can use modern knowledge properly, half of the energy needs have deprived rural areas and small towns can come from solar-thermal energy, while the other half can come from in the form of high-value materials and chemical intermediates from biomass. But to achieve this we need a different world-view. We need to look at the concept of producers & users (or consumers). These are all part of the same global system. Ultimately, economics is all about value-addition, whether the value-addition is in the form of primary production (agriculture, fishery, forestry), manufacturing, services or the arts.  However, “ADDING VALUE WITHOUT A VALUE SYSTEM IS NOT SOCIALLY OR ECOLOGICALLY DESIRABLE”

How do you plan to reform current education system in India with alternate energy emphasis?

We need to have programs such as “education at work place” and options such as Open University. In fact if we have a life-time partnership between producers and students with real world experience, we can hope to train students better equipped to handle these activities.

Are there structural studies done for bamboo?

Yes. In fact there are many studies including computations of Young’s Modulus, specific gravity etc. done and classification and categorization work is also being done. It is indeed possible and being done in terms of modeling and analyzing bamboo as a building material. We are rapidly moving towards development of quality standards for engineered bamboo at levels required for ISO certification.

Consider the following scenario being looked at currently:

Suppose we have 20 students per teacher, with 10 teachers helping out 20 days per year. They are given 1000 Rs.. Then there will be a post graduate student working in one village first year and expand to three villages next year. In one district we want to select two areas of 5000 hectares each and create a network of the above mentioned set up and encourage the concept of open learning. A possible scenario is a practicing ITI student with real world experience can challenge an academic IIT an equipped with no practical knowledge. That will be the ultimate achievement of bringing users and producers together in the education system.

Activity

Forest Village: Produce primary products i.e. bio-mass, wind and hydro energy; avoid unproductive water losses and erosion. Forest fringe settlement: Processing of bio-mass & local mineral to produce intermediate products. Village Producers: Grain pulses etc. for food security. Small Town & Rural neighbors: Fabricate equipment & produce material required for infrastructure and energy sector to serve entire population. Urban fringe settlement: With Internet connectivity & market opportunity, we can convert intermediate products according to consumer demand. Metropolitan cities & large energy intensive industry: These can become major demand centers. The consequences of this activity are:

Reducing distance between produce and consumers, thereby reducing prices, creating more livelihood opportunities in rural areas, and enabling better governance & conflict resolution through convergent community action.

Income generation in dispersed town so that common people benefit from reduced cost of land and infrastructure.

Overall reduction in transmission and transport cost as well as associated losses.

System Management and Policy

System management can be improved by setting up service enterprises for energy generation and distribution. A joint sector leasing and financing company with participation of the state renewable energy development agencies, private enterprises, professionals, user groups and cooperatives of artisans is an attractive prospect. This will help to separate the ownership and service functions. A pre-requisite of success is social acceptability of a two part tariff system where basic service will be provided at affordable price by availing of existing generation of distribution facilities and concession for development of renewable energy sources.

The elements of sustainable development have challenged and stretched our thinking as we’ve worked with it the past eight years in pre-collegiate school setting. It’s relatively simple to develop environmental education materials or lessons to teach economics. It’s not even that difficult to put them together. But to add the equity leg of the stool, which is rarely addressed in school settings, and to ask what fairness issues also need to be addressed not only makes the curriculum developer stop and think, it excites students who have a natural passion for fairness. It moves the lesson from simpler to more complex thinking. It calls for creative solutions to some of our species’ recalcitrant problems. The increased difficulty for the lesson writer is paid back manifold in the engagement of students in real issues and growth in the treatment of open-ended controversy. Students join the global community of international bureaucrats, governmental representatives, business executives and union members, environmental professionals and local citizens in a stimulating, sometimes frustrating, but always energizing ride on an accelerating learning curve.

What is sustainable development? The full answer’s not in yet, and probably never will be. But the direction toward the answer is getting clearer all the time.

References:

K.R. Datye, Mass Utilization of Renewable Energy: Scenario for 2025, Society for Promoting Participative Eco-system Management (SOPPECOM)

John W. Twidell & Anthony D. Weir, “Renewable Energy Resources” National Academy of Sciences, “Energy for Rural Development”

World Commission on Environment and Development. Our Common Future. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987

One way to establish market differentiation is through introducing innovative new products to market. Establishing market differentiation is one thing, maintaining it is quite another. Here we have put together a ten-part series on how businesses can generate higher returns from innovation investments.

From our series of highly informational articles, companies will learn: how to treat innovation as a cross-functional business process, how to align innovation execution and business strategy; how to create sustainable innovation; how to train your senior executives to successfully execute innovation initiatives; how to effectively manage process and project management; how to measure performance of your processes; how to ensure broad stakeholder buy-in; how to understand the importance of product roadmaps; how to provide the tools necessary for successful product innovation; and finally, how to ensure that portfolio management coincides with process management.

Here is one of the ten practices that leading innovators use to increase the payback from innovation spending: Creating Sustainable Innovation by Looking beyond the Financial Data.

Creating Sustainable Innovation by Looking beyond the Financial Data

Innovation does not equal short-term gains. Companies that take a longer view of innovation are more likely to achieve sustainable market differentiation. For instance, Parker Hannifin, the world’s leading diversified manufacturer of motion and control systems, wanted to achieve higher levels of organic growth over time by introducing more new-to-the-world or new-to-the-market products. In support of this goal, Parker implemented a single, structured innovation process across its 125 divisions worldwide. It also introduced leading-edge product innovation management software to automate that process. As a result, the company realized a 500% increase in the net-present-value of its product portfolio.

Much of Parker’s success can be attributed to the ability of its cross-functional teams to critically evaluate innovation projects at various stages and gates in the development process. Decisions are based on more than financial considerations.

Parker’s project managers also ask the following questions:

1. Does the product fit with corporate strategy?

2. Is there an attractive market for the product?

3. Will the product’s differentiation and value proposition ensure competitive success?

4. Do we have the resources to produce it?

5. What’s the risk vs. reward ratio?

Another company that is generating much higher than average returns from its investments in innovation is Pall Corporation, a $2 billion supplier of filtration, separation and purification technologies. Recently, Pall deployed a new product innovation process along with software that both automated the process and enabled ongoing measurement of performance. According to the company, these investments paid for themselves in a little more than a year and have increased the net-present-value of its product portfolio by more than $26 million.

So, what is it that sets these companies apart from those that are not realizing returns on their innovation investments?

For more information on the top practices that leading innovators use to increase their returns on innovation spending, look for the next article in our ten-part series: Training Your Senior Executives to Successfully Execute Innovation Innitiatives.