What could enable lasting success for companies?

If we look to individuals, families, and companies, the commonly accepted measure to deem these units as successful is based on its financial status and the possession of material wealth. For E.g. Higher the revenues, profits and market capitalization, would mean the individuals, families, and companies are successful.

For a lasting success, we need to re-define the measure of success. The measure of success need to be the financial status plus higher value measures like- taking care of the environment, respect for living and non-living, gains not at the cost of loss for others, develop self and others, etc.

Having financial indicators plus the higher values measures would call for a different kind of ideation and idea selection process. For this, I propose the concept of Immersive Innovation Process. Immersive innovation is to come up with products and services by considering the higher values. To do this we need to operate from a plane which is higher than the materialistic plane. Leaders, Philosophers, Scientists, and others, identify this as managing business keeping in mind the spirituality. In companies leaders need to start practicing immersive innovation, if they want to make their company unique and have lasting success.

Economic uncertainty the best time for innovation

The economic uncertainty is making companies and people to hold on to what they have (sustain until the dark cloud pass) and think of growth when things improve. The first approach that individuals and companies take in such situations is to manage cost by doing cost-cutting. Cost-cutting in my opinion is ok if one clearly identifies that cutting-costs has minimum or no effect on the outputs and deliverables while maintaining quality and time commitment.
Cost-cutting helps in avoiding the issue for sometime, but not overcome the situation. In situation like these innovation is the need of the hour. Innovating at every steps and at all levels needs to be promoted. Innovation by nature would also mean one has to take certain amount of risks. Not taking risk would mean not moving forward and not moving forward would mean staying still, which leads to decay in time and eventual death for the company. Hence, individuals and corporates need to take the path of innovation by taking calculated risks to create opportunity for new business and growth.

Does social and cultural changes follow economic transition?

Advancement in technology has made it possible to get access to a whole lot of information. This has enabled better governance at various levels- individual, company, community and nation.

The way we work and think of work has changed considerably in the last 2 decades primarily because of access to information.

Availability of information has direct impact on economics. With the economic transition there is an influence on the attitude of people, the relations between people, the atitude towards work, business transaction, consumer behavior, life-styles, value-orientations, etc. In my opinion the economic transition has definately brought in social and cultural changes.

Slow death - are we sensing it ?

From an evolutionary perspective human being is exquisitely adapted to recognize and respond to threats to survival that come in the form of sudden, dramatic events. Yet today the primary threats to our collective survival are slow, gradual developments arising from processes that are complex both in details and in dynamics. The spread of nuclear arms is not an event, nor is the “greenhouse effect,” the depletion of the ozone layer, malnutrition and under development in the Third World, the economic cycles that determine our quality of life, etc (Peter M Senge).

So, the questions are- Are we realising that we are slowly and sytematically destroying our planet? Do we wait until we see proof points of dying Earth? Do we wait because whatever bad happens will not happen in our lifetime? Do we wait hoping nature has its own control mechanism and is the biggest equalizer? I see and feel that we have lost a lot of time already and it is time to act now to ensure that we don't cause irreparable damages to Earth. It is time to re-define progress. This issue needs to be addressed top- down (Governments, Corporates and Influential People) and also approach the issue bottom-up (Other people like us).

Access to information - what does it mean ?

Access to information has crunched the notion of time and space. Information in itself is going through transformation and advancement, i.e. alphanumeric to audio to images to video. What does this mean ? Information is the fuel for the business to run; it is clearly the lifeline of any business. The ability to extract the relevant information converting that into knowledge and applying is one of the critical success factors for business.

Access to information has enabled the changes we have seen in environment, social, economic and political scenarios. What took place in the last 10 years has been more than what has happened in the previous 30 years.