Importance of Goal Setting in Innovation

"It doesn't matter where you are coming from. All that matters is where you are going." - Brian Tracy

Innovation is a journey of challenging one’s own limitations and finding new ways of approaching a situation or solving a problem. We believe that it is paramount to set impossible goals to innovate. By setting impossible goals we put ourselves into a challenging situation and only by challenging ourselves to find new ways of doing things can we truly innovate. I would like to share an example to demonstrate my point of view.

Example:

An Israeli inventor Mr.Gafni created the first commercially sold cardboard bicycle which costs $9.

His Goal – Why not make a bicycle out of cardboard?

His Inspiration – Gafni was inspired by the news that a man had successfully built a cardboard canoe.

Although he was told by many of his friends and peers that it’s impossible, he decided to challenge it. He bought the thickest cardboard to test for durability. Taking inspiration from Japanese Origami, he folded and bended each piece into the required shape. 

He kept on working on his prototype till he achieved his final goal.

Today, this innovation has become a game changer in the bike world as this bike is going to be cheap and available for any child in the world.

This example clearly illustrates the power of setting an impossible goal and following it up with relentless effort.

- by Anuj Chaudhary

DISCLAIMER: H2I has referred the following website to get the images. http://www.businessinsider.com/izhar-gafni-has-invented-the-first-cardboard-bicycle-2012-8?op=1

Innovation in the Radio Taxi Services in India

Cabs and Taxi services always existed in Mumbai. One could hire a private cab or avail the services of our popular black and yellow taxi, however; one fine day an entrepreneur sensed an opportunity in providing private cab services that delivers a new experience to the consumers. Started with Meru Cabs and the market is now stormed with radio taxis.

Objective of this article is to analyze opportunities for the radio taxis by uncovering the existing potential in the consumer base through segmenting.

Black & Yellow Taxi’s are not easily available for a door to door pick up nor are they (fiats) as convenient as radio taxis, plus we don’t trust the driver. 

On the other hand, radio taxis have managed to garner an imagery of comfort, convenience, trust and availability through phone.

Having said that, lets take and e.g. of Meru Cabs and lets see how we can innovate in-terms of the offerings they can have in the market.

What has Meru done to the consumers?

They have managed to establish trust in the minds of the consumer w.r.t their service and the kind of drivers they have. People are ready to pay a premium because they trust Meru and their drivers.

If we notice, a lot of parents do a car pool or taxi pool to send their children to school or sometimes they don’t have the car to send their children to certain places and they won’t send the child alone. How about Meru4Kids? An offering that caters to the kids, an experience design to take care of the kids and obviously Meru leverages trust through the drivers they hire and train.

Pushing it further, Meru4Emergency and Meru4Weddings/ Parties – Service is customized as per the offering. So the experience is inline with the need of the customer.

A lot of Business Professionals hop between one meetings to another, so we could have Meru4Businesss. Cab is equipped with all the things that a business professional might require e.g. a charging point, business magazines, etc.,

Lastly, this is not directly related with what Meru is offerings but is more to do with leveraging the TRUST that people put on Meru cab drivers/cab….. What if Meru offers driver on demand and driver on contract for personal cars.. These are trained drivers and are certified by Meru.

There are many possibilities when it comes to offerings, so i would request people to share their point of view on this topic.

- by Anuj Chaudhary

Disclaimer: Views expressed are solely from the perspective of stimulating a discussion on how Radio Taxi's can service the needs of different segments of their TG. It is not on behalf of any of the brands mentioned above.

Power of Reduction in Innovation

Innovation is about doing something new, thinking something new or perhaps challenging the set decorum to design a new process altogether. Most of the time we think that Innovation is something very far off thing, good for people with a lot of grey cells.

Power of Reduction clearly challenges this by proposing that anybody can think different by just removing the obvious and the most important element of any process or thing.

Let’s understand this by an example of airlines booking. What if I remove the most important element of date from the airlines booking site?

Now, think, what would this website do?

If I don’t need dates for a holiday then what all could I do?

•  Lets say you gift a holiday to some one…
•  Corporate purchase of holidays for employees
•  Future booking at cheap cost
•  Meet new people Travel – once a set number of people signs up, you decide a time period. Itinerary is already pre-defined.

Point being, that the moment I played up with the most essential element for travel then it gave me a plethora of options to evaluate in terms of an innovative offering.

Having said that, I would urge people to apply this technique to come up with more ideas for a holiday without dates.

- by Anuj Chaudhary

9 Brilliant Inventions Made by Mistake

Request you to please click on the link below to discover these inventions which have become indispensable in our day to day life.
http://www.inc.com/tim-donnelly/brilliant-failures/9-inventions-made-by-mistake.html?nav=pop