Innovation is one of the key drivers to commercial success today and must be embraced by the management as a whole and not restricted to product and technology, Wipro Limited Chairman Azim Premji said on Monday.
Addressing the two-day WOFreescale Technology Forum (FTF) here, Mr Premji said, “innovation is not a boardroom policy or investment.”
Over the years, companies which were not innovative enough have lost out in the race. “There is too much change today and you cannot take the success of leading companies for granted”, he said. There is innovation happening in process, technology, delivery, supply chain and even business models and this is critical. Today the technology innovation bar is being raised higher and faster than every before, Mr Premji said. Stating that the needs of customers cannot be predicted or ideated by product engineers, he said, in the semiconductor industry specially, it is adversities that have led to innovation.
Competitive milieu
On innovation in semiconductor industry and electronic systems, he said in the 1970s it started off with fully integrated device manufacturers that gave rise to specialist systems manufacturing companies in the 1980’S followed by “disaggregation of semiconductor industry” into IP providers, design services firms and foundries due to market pressures and cost.
He emphasised the need for structural innovation and co-innovation in the eco system to take “brilliant ideas off the ground,” while, however noting that it is difficult for successful organisations to “develop disruptive innovation that threatens their very success.”
Energy efficiency
It is smaller firms that focus on innovation and could put larger successful companies out of business, he said, adding the need to increase energy efficiency was the biggest challenge.
What is imperative in today’s competitive environment is encourage entreprenuership at all levels, welcome aggressive commitments from customers, understand customers and go beyond need fulfilment, looking for new opportunities. “Therefore challenge yourself and keep bettering yourself because the only competition you will survive is competition with yourself”, he added.
