\u201cInnovation is beyond creativity\u201d – stated Mr Harsh Mariwala, CMD of Marico India, at the Keynote address of the Retail Leadership Summit 2013. , where he used Marico\u2019s journey as a design blueprint to the process of creating and sustaining a perpetually innovative organization.<\/p>\n

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Consumer insighting is the starting point:\u00a0 <\/b>While all FMCG companies invest in customer research, the fact is that consumers don\u2019t always know or can articulate what they want.\u00a0 The genesis of innovation is sometimes about being able to tease out the relevant strands of consumer insight which get buried in data.<\/p>\n

Culture is a competitive advantage<\/b>: As a business, Marico\u2019s journey has been about moving into businesses with high pricing power from bulk oil to branded hair & cooking oils and then on to a range of health and beauty products.<\/p>\n

Similarly, the company\u2019s innovation journey can best be summed up by the focus on culture as a source of competitive advantage. For example \u2013one of the cultural values of the company is to \u201cbring the outside in\u201d \u2013 managers are encouraged to travel and visit internationals fairs and expos. At one such expo one of the managers found that the packaging industry had developed a mold which was both tamper proof and drip proof, and more importantly, because of the high initial capital cost \u2013 not easily replicable. Since at that point of time one of the strategic priorities for the company was finding a way to discourage \u201ccopy cat\u201d innovators in the market \u2013 this created a significant advantage by providing it enough time to leap ahead in-terms of market share – without having to fight the drain on time, energy and resources that copy-cats can be.<\/p>\n

Rewarding intelligent failure<\/b>. \u00a0Since nothing kills the spirit of innovation more than the fear of failure Marico has a policy of rewarding, what they call, \u201cintelligent failure\u201d. In other words, if you\u2019ve done all you can in terms of preparation and execution, and the market simply won\u2019t take up your innovation \u2013 it doesn\u2019t make you a failure. So, Marico ensures that failure is routinely discussed in \u201cinnovation labs\u201d and employees are not penalized in terms of increments or romotions simply because they have not been part of a success story.<\/p>\n

Prototype small: <\/b>\u00a0As Marico grew \u2013 there was a realization that scale creates \u201cescape buttons\u201d. When employees are expected to tend to new initiatives in addition to day-to-day operating responsibility, innovation gets diluted. So the company created an \u201cincubation cell\u201d \u2013 a single person team \u2013 reporting to Mariwala which scouted and triaged new ideas for implementability. For example, one of the initial ideas presented was \u201claser hair removal\u201d. But the process of scouting found that the underlying opportunity was in a larger range of skin care services. India has a inherent cost advantage \u2013 dermatologists do not cost much in the market, but their services can help customers achieve better looking skin. This lead to the launch of Kaya. By prototyping small, the time to market was reduced to 12 months.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the biggest insight from the session was that Innovation is not one individual having an \u201ceureka\u201d moment and then moving mountains to translate his ideas into reality.\u00a0 Innovation is more than creativity \u2013 its about persistence, rigor and above all \u2013 execution.<\/p>\n

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