GL – Mr. GowriShankar Paramasivam

Guest Lecture on ‘Innovation Demystified’

Date: 19^th July 2021

The students of the newly inducted IBA’s 2021-23 PGDM batch had an enlightening interaction with Mr. GowriShankar Paramasivam, Head of Maersk Accelerator – India & China, over a session titled ‘Innovation Demystified’ on 19^th July 2021.

Mr. GowriShankar is a Transformation Enthusiast with over 15 years of diverse experience in Logistics, E-commerce, ITES and Financial Research. He has been an Innovation Catalyst in multiple business initiatives and has a proven track record of driving Digitization in organizations with agile framework and working with Startup ecosystem in India & China.

The session started with Mr. GowriShankar asking students to name some recent innovation examples from industry. The students responded with an enthusiastic response with examples ranging from iD fresh to SpaceX and even Dil-Scoop to Alexa. To throw better light on more examples, Mr. GowriShankar clarified that innovation need not necessarily be associated with some new technology, a digital transformation or a new invention. It can be the simplest of the things that make a difference to the user. He gave the example of Gillette guard, a product specifically introduced by Gillette for Indian middle and lower income group customers. It was just about listening better to the consumer, what they wanted and at what price, and it led to an increase in Gillette’s share in Indian market by 12%.

He then gave the example of Ice and how we have progressed from harvesting ice in areas with freezing temperatures to industries that manufactured ice to refrigerators that is the source of ice any household now. All the forms are concurrently in practice without one causing the extinction of other, as they meet needs of different sets of users. So, innovation does not necessarily mean replacement of older technology with new one, it can even be about meeting the needs of a new market.

Mr. GowriShankar then went on to explained the concepts of closed & open innovation. He said, in a nutshell, closed innovation means innovation within closed boundaries or set guidelines and open innovation means innovation without any set boundaries or guidelines. As examples, he brought to light the concepts of Blackberry messenger, which was a platform for instant messaging & video calling between Blackberry phones, and GPS, which until 1999 was only used by military in its activities.

He then gave the concept where he quoted that ‘Evolution cannot lead to Revolution’. Explaining in simpler terms, he gave example of BMW, which has different R and D facilities for evolution and revolution. The evolution facility works on present car designs to make its features more likeable by customers and the revolution facility works on futuristic car designs & technologies that will set a new benchmark. The point being, that though both are innovations, but the thought process is different, evolution needs to make present designs better to delight customers, while revolution needs to make an innovation jump.

While concluding his presentation, Mr. GowriShankar said that every business needs to continue innovating to stay and thrive in the market, otherwise their products can become obsolete in no time. He referred to the downfall of Kodak and even Blackberry for this, both of who didn’t realize the future the emergence of smartphone was going to bring.

After this there was a Q & A session in which students asked a plethora of questions showing their preparedness as well as inquisitiveness. In the end, Mr. GowriShankar emphasized on the need to build awareness, not just for innovating, but even for being agile to innovations.