Profitable growth is the objective of every company. But whose responsibility is it? There is worry about the future uncertainty of the company, its image, changes in position of stocks & shares, possibility of lay-off of the employees & the job of CEO himself coming in the danger list etc. This shows that every employee of the company has a stake in it, & that they all should continuously contribute to its growth. We can achieve substantially, if each employee recognizes that his contribution to the company is equally important, & that efforts of all put together can achieve a lot more. In ten Chapters of this book, the author discusses various aspects of this important topic, viz. its challenges; thinking; leadership; budgeting for growth; identifying opportunities & creating environment for growth etc. In an important Chapter, the author talks about innovation, which does not necessarily require a genius. A new idea lays the foundation of growth. The idea can come from anyone, right from the new recruit, to the about-to-retire employee. There should be a built-in scheme of obtaining ideas from everyone, getting them scrutinized & progressing those ideas which are having potential for growth. Ideas can come individually, from a group, or from a team of personnel from different departments of the company. The ideas should better be generated, through the process of group brain-storming, & all ideas including wild ones, should at first be recorded, without criticism. All ideas can not be processed, so each one of these should then be examined, sorted out, & reduced reasonably, for further judicious examination from the point of view of strategy, technology & financial aspects. Thus the ideas should be reduced to the minimum possible & best ones. The rest may at first be kept on low key, & later on discarded fully on merits. When an employee having ideas does not get support or acceptance of his ideas, or freedom for working on the ideas, he may decide to go out to some other organization or a start up, or even start his own start up.
The author has enunciated five components for innovation. The first one ideation, is getting flow of new ideas. We should have adequate number, as well as quality ideas from internal sources. If we are not getting these, we have to find out their likely reasons e.g. employees are not adequately creative, they are doubtful about seriousness of the top, system in the company does not allow ideas to come to the surface, employees are fearful of taking risks as failures of the ideas may mar their career, & poor feedback from informal networks of various departments of the company etc. Therefore, the top management should encourage all employees, safe guard their interests(i.e. no punishments for failures), help them to modify/re-frame & give a proper shape to the ideas, create a proper atmosphere in the company for motivation & reward for their successes. The ideas should also be obtained from interactions with, customers & suppliers etc. Contacts of our people with them should be encouraged, to get new ideas. The second one Selection, is making a choice of idea(s) for further processing. For this purpose, there should be a transparent & fair mechanism of selection, & the selectors should have the necessary skills of screening, to obtain the best workable idea(s). The selection process must not appear to be rigged. The idea(s) should be screened by a team of impartial personnel, with above yardsticks, discussing from the point of view of their workability, possibility of development, problems, prospects of capturing the market, fitting in with the company set up, potential of people who will be made responsible for the development of the particular idea, prospects of & expected time required for success & finally the profit. After selecting an idea, it is to be nurtured patiently, for its development & growth, through skills of creativity & practicality. These being new & unforeseen areas, unexpected problems are expected. The people on the job must be supported & helped, in shaping & developing the idea further, with a firm determination, to overcome the obstacles. For the launch stage, we have to identify a suitable person for implementation, not necessarily the one, who gave the idea (he may be suitably rewarded). The author advises use of growth budget, for making this process of converting the idea into reality, anticipating the likely problems & giving proper written responsibilities with time frame to avoid over runs. The focus of the company should always be on developing the promising ideas, so that money, personnel & other resources are utilized in the best interests of the company. The abstract writer has been associated in the past, with several brain storming sessions as a member, & also as a coordinator, & is of the firm view that by storming the brain & postponing comments on the ideas, generation of ideas takes place in quantity, which then by segregation effort, leads to quality ideas. What is needed is, an unbiased & patient approach.
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