“The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‘why not?’” – Thus spake Jeff Bezos, the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer of Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer. Innovation is the final answer of the question –‘why not’!
Being innovative is actually a mindset. It is fundamentally about building your attitude towards issues and glitches and undauntedly striving towards solving them with new techniques. Innovation is not easy; the path is arduous and needs focused intent, willingness to accept failure while being strong-willed to carry on trying.
Innovation Creates Distinct Brand Identity
In this age of aggressive market competition, the sure-fire way of establishing oneself as a key player with distinct brand identity, is unequivocally through innovation. However, to be innovative, our thinking process has to be like that of a child – where we sleep at night taking account of the day’s work and wake up the next morning free from all bias, free from all precedence. Where unlearning from learning and learning from unlearning, like a child, becomes a habit. In a way ‘being child’ is the culture that entrepreneurs should inculcate in their journey of life.
Innovation is essentially the outcome of imagination; and imagination is the outcome of your passion to solve the problem upon which you are working.
Here are two delightful instances of how innovation through entrepreneurship ventures helped solve existing social problems –
Most Of Existing Tools And Resources
We think that 65% of Indians don’t have consistent access to medicines. Moreover, 25% of medicines sold in India are fake and 60% of dietary supplements sold in India are fake. 75% of diagnostic services are unorganised, leading to quality deficiency and unequal access. 57% of prescriptions are written by people who don’t have medical qualifications out of whom 31% have passed only the secondary examinations. 60% of deaths in India are due to chronic diseases. India is the world capital of diabetic, cardiac and hypertension-related diseases. This is in spite of the fact that India is one of the largest producers of medicines in the world and we have talented doctors. We take pride in the fact that people from all over the world come to India for high-quality treatment at an affordable cost.
B L Mittal, founder, SastaSundar perceived an easy solution for this which involved the leveraging of efficient digital connectivity. Therefore, to solve one of the biggest problems in India, he decided to launch SastaSundar.
Founded in 2015, SastaSundar.com is an innovation which is now solving the puzzle that in spite of resources, majority of India don’t have consistent access to basic healthcare. The platform is India’s leading digital network of healthcare. SastaSundar manages efficient pharma and wellness products’ supply chain and connecting doctors, diagnostic services, healthcare clinics and health information services. The company has since then shown tremendous growth and currently has an annual turnover of INR155cr (US$23.5mn) and is handling more than 1.5lakhs orders per month.
Taking A Fresh Approach
Innovation is also not about re-inventing the wheel; it’s about being able to look at an old problem in a completely new way. It’s the difference and combination (as oxymoronic as it may sound) between finding a new approach to a problem or completely eliminate the very process that causes the problem. It is often about bringing a new solution to an old or existing problem.
The demand for water has increased by more than 300 percent in the last 50 years, while the supply remains the same. With the ever-approaching threat of exhausting the world’s supply of fresh water, India based entrepreneur Navkaran Singh Bagga has created AKVO Atmospheric Water Generators to tackle water problems worldwide and provide safe and pure water from the air.
AKVO has worked over the last 18 Months in developing atmospheric water systems and has built a robust R&D working towards making this new source of water a wide-spread one.
In the 21st century, innovation in product design development through manufacturing is also taking a rapid transformation. Budding entrepreneurs today should identify their market, try to enter it early, find gaps and loopholes that can be utilized and capitalized on and blend innovation, design, engineering and manufacturing with lean startup business logic.