GUNJAN BHARDWAJ

Gunjan Bhardwaj is senior editor and a member of the review team at Innovation Management. Gunjan is presently with the Boston Consulting Group and just prior to this he was the leader of the Global Business Performance Think-tank of Ernst&Young. Gunjan is also a guest professor for Growth and Innovation management at European Business School (EBS) in Germany and a member of the scientific advisory board of Plexus Institute in the US which researches on complexity in health sciences. Gunjan has published a number of papers and articles in various Journals and magazines and has been a frequent speaker in conferences on marketing and innovation related topics. The views and ideas expressed by Gunjan on InnovationManagement.se are strictly personal and have no bearing on BCG.

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IP Funds- a Potential Driver of Breaking the Radical Jinx?

Can non-industry specific IP funds help to push the innovation envelope? Can we bridge the gap between industries and geographies to provide a systematic breeding place for forward-thinking inventions? Gunjan Bhardwaj explores.

A Death Match of Ideas- Why Don’t Managers Place the Right Bets in Successful Companies?

How do managers of large and prosperous companies decide which ideas to embrace and why do they produce so few innovations? Gunjan Bardwaj explains how psychological decision making theories can shed some light on these common and complex questions.

Changing Mental Models to Make Innovation Work

We see a lot of programs being run in companies in the name of innovation. Of course some of the large corporations need to run innovation programs for name sake. They need some window dressing for analysts and industry observers lambasting the same for not being innovative enough.

Clusters Are Obsolete

Are Clusters or cluster initiatives really adding any tangible value to firms? Are they obsolete? Maybe not yet, but I believe if the present policy tools and institutional frameworks are not reformed they may very well soon become so. In the following blog I would like to focus on three areas that have not been given enough importance by policy makers: focus beyond geographies, new clusters and cluster performance.

Discover New Possibilities with Reverse Innovation

Before the radical shifts in technology disrupt the industry fabric, there exists a great potential to appropriate value from the market through incremental product and business model innovations. The less intense the competition, less matured the market - larger is the potential. The emerging markets of the world the BRICs (where s could stand for the plurality as well as South Africa), have long been projected as the markets to invest in.

Collaborating Downstream in Emerging Markets

Not so long ago, internal R&D activities were considered one of the most valuable assets a company could have. The rather “outmoded” concept of closed innovation, in contrast to open innovation, was built on self-reliance and on the principle that successful innovation required control and secrecy.

Innovating Products, Processes and Business Models in India

Over the past few years, innovation in India as a corporate theme has constantly gained importance, becoming a prerequisite for long-term success, or maybe even survival, due to the discontinuous pace of change of the environment. Thus, innovation has now reached for some companies as a corporate priority, affecting every single aspect of an organisation.

Co-Innovating for the Future

Realising the limitations of their own knowledge, and internal R&D capabilities, an increasingly high number of companies are currently making the decision of partnering externally to develop new technologies. Companies’ interactions with their business partners or even competitors are becoming more and more frequent.

Reinventing Knowledge Management to Innovate

There has been a shift from the emphasis on what people called the “information value chain” to “knowledge value chain” for quite some time. The environments are shrewd and unpredictable in this world of growing competition and rapid technological progress. The information value chain just served as a database of “best practices” whereas “knowledge value chain” emphasizes on the active sense making of human beings handling business.

Whether more R&D Investments brings more Innovation Output

Common sense says that if one wants to improve the innovation output, one needs to either (a) increase the size of the opportunity set that goes in the so called 'Innovation Funnel' ; (b) Speed up the throughput of the 'Innovation Funnel' and/or (c) improve the variety of the opportunity set passing through the 'Innovation Funnel'.

Market Orientation Supports Innovativeness Over Time

We know that clusters of co-located firms play an important role in supporting innovation and wealth creation. Spatial proximity can allow firms to take advantage of scale and positive externalities such as access to skilled labour, specialized subcontractors and rapid flows of information. Shared history, trust, and common understanding of phenomena may also enhance cluster members’ ability to interpret, and learn from, each other’s strategies. Yet location in regional clusters in and of itself does not guarantee success.

Innovating with CSR

I happened to learn about a new book by the legendary Charles Handy when I visited him a couple of months back at his home in Norfolk England ' the new philanthropists'. True to the title of the Book of probably Britain's most prolific management thinker (together written with his wife Elizabeth who is a portrait photographer), Charles talks about a new trend of successful young businessmen who don't only believe in giving money for just causes but by working on the spot with the needy so as to create a sustainable impact. He offers examples from entrepreneurs from South Africa, Ireland and Australia among others.

Interplay of Innovation and Complexity

We hear often that smaller companies innovate better as they are more flexible, faster and creative as compared to larger organisations. This is all but half true. Its not the size of an organisation that decelerates the innovative pace-rather complexity. Hence organisations seeking sustainable growth need to find the balance between innovation and complexity.

Collaboration is the New Hot Thing

Collaboration is the new hot thing. The idea is not new and one can trace its origins from the Silk route, to the old Italian Shipping cluster, to the Medicis, to the evolution of different industries, to the new age of globalisation to the new age we see today. However, we live in a business age with hype cycles and buzzwords serving as adrenalins. Everybody is talking collaboration. The new impetus has come because of three main reasons.