Term Paper

Innovation Management Project

Course:
Innovation Management

Submitted for Term-8

(PGDM-PT: 2008-11)
by:
Sangeeta Mishra,
Roll No. U208049
Facilitator: Prof. (Shambu Prasad C)

1
Objective (as per the assignment guideline):

Review and plan an innovation strategy for your company, division or organisation or your
hobby society using some of the ideas in the book and the discussions in the class.

My Objective:

To give a re-look to the innovation strategy of my company (Tata Steel) in line with the class
room learning and see if some the concepts can be incorporated to further strengthen the process.

Background:
Tata Steel, a part of the Tata Group, has been in the business of steel for over 100 years now; it
was the first integrated steel plant in Asia with steelmaking facilities and captive mines and
collieries. The vision of the founder, J N Tata, has always guided the company through these 100
years. His vision helped Tata Steel overcome several periods of adversity and strive to improve
against all odds. Tata Steel initiated several business concepts particularly in the areas of
industrial relations and corporate social responsibility, which were followed by the business
world many years later, although at that point of time the word INNOVATION was not so
popular, but deeper in its meaning, these are the real innovations which has benefitted the society
as a whole. Few examples are quoted below, there are many more beyond this list.
Tata Steel Enforced by
Area Legal measures
Introduction law
Eight hour working day 1912 1948 Factories Act
Free Medical Aid 1915 1948 Employees State Insurance
Act
Establishment of Welfare 1917 1948 Factories Act
Department
Formation of Works Committee for 1919 1947 Industrial Disputes Act
handling Complaints and grievances
Leave with pay 1920 1948 Factories Act
Workers’ Provident fund scheme 1920 1952 Employees, Provident
Fund
Technical Institute for training of 1921 1961 Apprentices Act
Apprentices and Engineering
graduates
Maternity Benefit 1928 1946 Maternity Benefit Act
Profit sharing bonus 1934 1965 Bonus Act
Retiring Gratuity 1937 1972 Payment of Gratuity Act

With the growth & globalization of this company, Tata Steel has now become Tata Steel Group
with the spread of its business across several continents. Its vision statement clearly articulates
the need for innovation, where one of the elements clearly mentions its intention as “we make the
difference through our Innovative Approach, by developing leading edge solutions in
Technology, Processes & Products”.
Although this century old company never had a formal, structured innovation strategy in place,
but there has been lots of innovations right from the shop-floor Jugad to high end technical
applications & business processes which have been of great value.

2
Current condition:
With the growing challenges on the business globe, Tata Steel has realized the need to have a
structured approach for innovation which could help in conscious, purposeful search of
opportunities to keep its pace with the fast moving competition & with this objective, a
structured innovation process has been introduced in the current financial year (FY: 11) as a part
of the existing Knowledge Management process which has matured in the company over the last
ten years. The new process has been rolled out just few months back (fortunately I have been
involved in the roll out process being a part of the KM team) & it broadly talks about the
following five steps.

2. 5.
1. Generate 3. 4. Standardize /
Identify Ideas / Select Develop Commercialize /
Opportunity Possible Maximize
Solutions Benefit

Since this process is being driven through the existing Knowledge Communities (community of
people from same / similar processes), as a first step each process has tried to identify at least
two opportunities for innovation from its existing road blocks & challenges. Overall more than
fifty such challenges from different areas have been identified so far, & different groups are
planning their strategies on how they would like to proceed on step 2, 3 & 4 as per the process.

The most popular tool for idea generation in Tata Steel is Knowledge Manthan (very similar to
brainstorming & story telling session), and the reason for its popularity is that this company
being a hard core manufacturing organization, the ratio of Executives versus Shop-floor
employees is 1:8. While our employees at shop-floor are highly skilled & competent, but
educationally all (especially the old timers) are not very highly qualified. In order to involve a
larger mass in the idea generation session the Manthan tool comes very handy and it is being
vastly used here since 2004. As a culture people are quite open to knowledge sharing so it helps
in generating a lot of ideas which are carried forward through various improvement initiatives
existing in the company. Many Knowledge Communities are using the same Knowledge
Manthan tool for ideation sessions related to their innovation challenges also; few of them are
using some different techniques as per their requirement.

Goal:
Most of the elements for success of innovation (key success factors) as we came across for
different companies in the classroom have already been incorporated in the new innovation
strategy (the success of which can only be judged after a certain period of time), but yet there are
two key learning’s (as mentioned below) for which I would like to pay special attention during
the ongoing journey of innovation in which the step 2 & beyond (as per the innovation strategy
steps mentioned above) is in progress.
1. First of all I would like to pay special attention to “cross pollination of ideas” in the idea
generation & development stage & my facilitation (being a core member of the KM team)
would be more directed towards ensuring this.
2. Secondly, although the ‘Brain writing’ exercise (that we practised in class) is more
inclined towards capturing insights from educated people who can articulate their
thoughts well in writing & it may not be fully applicable across the diverse workforce of
Tata Steel, but yet, I would like to try it out with a small group to see how it works in our
organizational context.
These are the two targets that I wish to take forward as my IM project in the next fifty days.