Mathew J. Manimala

Organizational Constraints on Innovation and Intrapreneurship: Insights from Public Sector

Research on organizations has shown that the survival and growth of enterprises in dynamic business environments would depend largely on their ability to promote innovations within their organizations. The innovation process with its various stages of idea conception, development, implementation, and integration to the existing business portfolio is naturally an organizational process which inevitably requires intrapreneurial orientation among the employees. Above all, the entire process calls for an enabling culture and appropriate systems so that employees are motivated to take up intrapreneurial ventures. The aggressive efforts by companies from developed countries for capturing global markets, encouraged by the liberalized economic policies of the Indian government, have drastically changed the business scenario in India and probably the worst affected by such changes are the public sector companies in India. Whether in the private or public sector, companies are faced with only two options: innovate or perish! It is in this context that the present study was undertaken in large public sector corporations in India. The major objective of this study was to identify the organizational constraints against innovations. The best way to understand such issues is to interact with the innovators themselves because it is they who have experienced these constraints. The first step in the methodology, therefore, was to identify a few highly innovative projects from public sector organizations which was done by rating the innovativeness of 162 projects submitted for an innovation award in the petroleum sector. Thirty-one highly innovative cases were thus selected for a detailed study. A qualitative analysis of the cases brought out the following organizational constraints against innovation: Absence of failure-analysis systems (100%) Lack of patenting initiatives (97%) Lack of recognition for innovations in non-core areas (94%) Poor handling of change management (90%) Informal team formation (81%) Low emphasis on dissemination and commercialization (77%) Inadequacy of rewards and recognition (65%) Procedural delays (58%) Poor documentation and maintenance of records (58%) Easy access to foreign technologies (55%) Unclear norms on linking innovations with career growth (48%) Lack of recognition for contributions by support functions (45%) Ambivalent support from the immediate supervisor (39%) Inadequate systems for the promotion and management of ideas (35%) Lack of facility for pilot testing (29%). The study clearly shows that Indian organizations are yet to institute many systems and procedures required for supporting innovations. Although many of these organizations have formal R&D departments/divisions, it appears that R&D without the necessary organizational support is merely a ritual rather than the part of a proactive innovation strategy. R&D facilities and organizational support for innovation are not to be treated as independent arrangements but have to emerge from an overall innovation strategy as complementary systems supporting each other. Absence of such an integrative perspective and strategy seems to be the overarching constraint against innovations in Indian public sector organizations.

Sustainability of the Indian Railways Turnaround: A Stage Theory Perspective

Turnarounds are like exciting thrillers which describe dramatic recovery of declining organizations. Since such recoveries have great relevance for the economic development particularly of developing countries facing resource scarcity, researchers with increasing interest have enriched the turnaround literature, especially in the last four decades. Research has highlighted many facets of turnaround. These include turnaround actions, strategies, types, elements, stages etc. Though the research covers largely the private sector entities, but effort, though little, is not nonexistent for the public sector. The paper examines a large complex departmental commercial organization of the Government of India and its much-talked about turnaround in the theoretical perspective of stage theory. The paper not only fills up the gap of research in public sector but also uses the established stage theory model to answer the question of sustainability of the Indian Railways turnaround. The analysis goes back to the theoretical propositions which are by and large supported by the analysis of the turnaround of the Indian Railways.

Successful Turnarounds: The Role of Appropriate Entrepreneurial Strategies

Objectives: All organisations are set up with an objective to create value to the society. This necessitates organisations to generate revenues to support all its stakeholders. However, in the rat race to succeed, most organisations are unable to generate revenues for sustainable operations. It is obvious that organisations cannot survive without profits/surpluses and the inability to generate surpluses would lead to industrial sickness. Bringing such organisations back to health requires entrepreneurial strategies at two levels, namely, from the negative to the breakeven and from breakeven to the positive. Hence, the turnaround management is a doubly entrepreneurial act. The objective of this paper is to understand the strategies used in successful turnarounds and compare them with those of the failed ones and thereby help turnaround managers to increase their success rate so as to enhance the value of these organisations to society.

Training Needs of Small and Medium Enterprises: Findings from an Empirical Investigation:

While small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are acknowledged by researchers and policy-makers alike as the major source of vitality in an economy, they are also found to be extremely vulnerable especially to the vagaries and turbulences of the external environment. It is therefore recognized by policy-makers in most countries that SMEs need special help for their survival and growth. Traditionally such help was offered by way of facilitating the external environment. Such facilitation will be effective only if the SMEs have the internal capabilities for taking advantage of the external facilitation. This is why the experiments with external facilitation have not met with much success especially in developing countries, where SMEs are inherently weaker than their counterparts in developed countries. Strengthening the internal capabilities of SMEs therefore has become a top priority nowadays and is positioned as an alternative or supplementary strategy for SME development. Training is recognized as an important tool for developing the internal capabilities of SMEs. However, research in the Western countries has shown that even though trainers, consultants and policy-makers consider training as an important tool for SME development, the SMEs themselves do not feel so. It is against this background that we launched a survey in Bangalore (India) to assess the training needs of SMEs, as perceived by themselves. This study is especially relevant as there are no other similar studies undertaken in India so far. The survey was conducted among 300 randomly selected SME units in Bangalore. The survey questionnaire enquired about the perceived need for training and the preferences for the topics, duration, timings, costs, training providers, etc. The findings show that the training-related attitudes and behaviour of SMEs are not very different from what is observed by the Western researchers. The overall finding of positive relationships of enterprise characteristics and the ‘acquired’ characteristics of entrepreneurs with the perception of training need suggests that training need perception is more a function of the developmental stage of the enterprise than the personal preferences of the entrepreneur. Specific findings of the study are discussed and their theoretical and practical implications are explained in the article.

Emerging Economies: Muddling Through to Development

Though ‘emerging economies’ is one of the widest used terms in discussions on global economies, it takes different meanings in different contexts to suit the main issue under discussion. An operational definition that could serve as a general description of this group it that they are low income, rapid growth countries using economic liberalization as their primary engine of growth under severe constraints of institutional deficiencies. The size and character of this group kept changing to accommodate the needs of the issue under discussion. Currently there are two main sub-groups within the conglomerate group of Emerging Economies (EE), namely: the developing countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East and the transition economies in the former Soviet Union and China. While it is often predicted by ‘economy-watchers’ that EE will be a major economic power in about 30 to 50 years, their growth and development are constrained by institutional deficiencies, which are summarized in this paper (based on a comprehensive survey of the literature) under the following sub-headings: (1) Underdeveloped institutions, (2) Unclear and inconsistent policies, (3) Inadequate governance, (4) Disjointed infrastructure (5) Limited funding options (6) Inhibiting culture, (7) Personalized networks, (8) Ill-funded and ambivalent education system, and (9) Reluctant internationalization. The overall impact of these inadequacies is that entrepreneurs have to overcome several constraints for setting up and growing their ventures. Hence much of their innovativeness would be exercised on devising the means to overcome these constraints rather than in designing, developing and marketing innovative products and services. Thus they tend to develop a style of muddling through towards venture creation and growth.

Technology Business Incubators (TBIs): A Perspective for the Emerging Economies

Technology and entrepreneurship are often reckoned to be the twin-horses pulling national economies towards their developmental destinations. Technology based enterprises (TBEs) are specially attractive to policy-makers because of their higher potential for job creation and wealth-generation through business growth as well as their lower disappearance rates compared to non-technology based firms. As new technologies are often developed in R&D institutions, it was such institutions in the Western nations that first took the initiative of providing incubation facilities to transfer these new technologies to the market. The model was later used by public and private agencies for facilitating technology development for new ventures. Such initiatives are now known by the common name of Technology Business Incubators (TBIs), some of which are focused on technology transfer and others on technology development for new ventures. Though TBIs are generally considered to be a major facilitator of TBEs, the experience of their effectiveness has been mixed, especially in the emerging economies’ context. It is against the background of such diversity of experiences that we have undertaken a comprehensive review of the literature on TBI performance. Our findings suggest that, while in the developed countries technology development drives the incubator movement, the process is reversed in developing countries, where the incubator movement is trying to push technology development forward. For this reason the success of TBIs in developing countries would depend largely on the public support available for them.

Evolution of the Bangalore ICT Cluster: The 'Crystal Growth' Model

In about twenty years, starting in 1984, Bangalore has become the fourth best ‘Global Hub of Technological Innovation’, according to Business Week. This article reviews the major milestones in Bangalores development and the interactive roles of government, universities and private entrepreneurs. The author offers a new model: innovation is not a state but a process, comparable to the chemical process of crystal formation and growth.

Talent Acquisition and Retention in Social Enterprises: Innovations in HR Strategies

Over the years there has been a phenomenal growth in the number of social enterprises in India. This is partly a consequence of a new policy of the government to gradually withdraw from social development activities. The gap thus created is being filled by social enterprises. A social enterprise can be a ‘for-profit’ or ‘not-for-profit’ venture engaged in income-generating activities with an agenda of bringing about a positive change in the society. While social enterprises are engaged in the development of people, it is rather paradoxical that they experience a variety of problems with respect to the management of human resources within their enterprises. It is common knowledge that social enterprises perennially struggle with various critical human resource issues such as getting employees at low rates of compensation, providing growth opportunities for employees within the organization, retaining talent especially in the middle management, providing clearly defined roles and tasks to employees, etc, leading to high attrition and increasing the cost of acquiring and training new employees. It thus, becomes critical for social enterprises to think out-of-the-box and try a variety of innovative strategies to overcome these problems. This paper discusses a few such innovative HR strategies adopted by social enterprises to attract and retain talent, such as offering jobs to people with vision and value congruence, enhancing the credibility of the organization through brand building, providing opportunities for personal growth, creating a sense of ownership among employees through participation in decision making, creating sense of ownership among employees by giving equity shares, creating entrepreneurial opportunities within the organization, finding employees from among beneficiaries, attracting employees to serene lifestyle in peaceful and scenic location and providing attractive fringe benefits to employees. Collectively these strategies seem to suggest that social enterprises adopt a ‘partnership paradigm’ for managing their employees.

Circular Social Innovation: A New Paradigm for India’s Sustainable Development

Although there has been a growing focus on social innovations and social enterprises in India over the past decade, the country’s high economic growth based on the linear economic development model is getting clouded by increasing environmental damage, resource scarcity and, paradoxically, persistent poverty for a significant section of the population. Policy makers and businesses around the world are increasingly looking towards the ‘circular economy model’, which aims to enable effective flow of materials, energy, labour and information so that natural and social capital can be rebuilt. This chapter examines the numerous opportunities for social enterprises to contribute to the journey towards a circular economy in India through the paradigm of ‘Circular Social Innovation’ (CSI). It begins by delineating the scope and potential for social enterprises in India by looking beyond the conventional ‘social impact’ domains, given the spectrum of social and environmental challenges in India. Subsequently, it analyses in depth the role and interlinkages between social enterprises, social innovation and circular economy in the context of sustainable development. Next, it proposes and defines CSI as the new paradigm to address the challenges against sustainable development by combining the forces of social innovation, social enterprises and the circular economy. The distinguishing characteristics of this paradigm are illustrated using suitable examples of CSI enterprises from diverse sectors. In conclusion, it highlights the relevance of pursuing the CSI paradigm, given the intensity and interwoven nature of sustainable development challenges in emerging economies like India.

Organizational Support Systems for Innovation and Intrapreneurship A Comparative Analysis of Innovative Cases from R&D Centres and Operating Departments of Large Corporations

The research literature is rich on innovations in R&D-specific organizations and provides useful information on support systems and other organizational features associated with such specialized organizations. An implied assumption of many studies is that R&D exists as an independent entity, without controls or influences from the other functions of an organization. While this may be true for purely R&D organizations, the picture is different when R&D is organized as part of a larger system in which the core activities centre on operating departments. This is the pattern in developing countries like India, where most R&D activities are carried out in departments/divisions of companies that were established primarily for operational purposes. In this study, 31 cases of innovation (15 from R&D centres and 16 from operating departments of large corporations in India) are analysed using a qualitative method of content analysis of data collected through in-depth interviews. While this comparative analysis highlights the need for specific organizational support systems to cater for the specific requirements of the two groups, the most prominent findings on intrapreneurship are that it is facilitated primarily by the flexibility of the R&D scientists to work in their core as well as related areas and the continuous and issue-based interaction between the R&D centres and operating departments.