4. Innovation Journey
Course Learning Goals
✴ To enable students recognise the changing nature of the business
landscape and the shortcomings of relying only on Linear, Logical,
Analytical and Sequential Thinking.
✴ To enable students understand the philosophy of Design Thinking.
✴ To equip students with tools and frameworks for the practice of Design
Thinking.
✴ To enable students internalize the Design Thinking approach through an
Action Learning Project.
5. Innovation Journey
Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CLGs)
Upon successful completion of the course the Learner will be able to:
✴ Recognise the changing nature of the business landscape and the
limitations of traditional linear approaches of thinking.
✴ Formulate business problems and seek innovative solutions to those
problems.
✴ Develop skills for empathetic understanding of various stakeholders involved
around a business problem.
✴ Enhance ability and willingness to explore creative solutions.
✴ Discover the benefits of experimentation and prototyping and how to do
these with a view to managing risk.
✴ Recognise the importance of developing an entrepreneurial mindset and
identify the key requirements for an entrepreneurial mindset.
6. Innovation Journey
Indicative Course Evaluation and Projects
Components of Course Evaluation Percentage
Mid-term exam/Quiz 20%
Design Thinking Project 50%
End term exam 30%
Total 100%
8. Innovation Journey
Sunil Sangra
An MBA from IIM-Lucknow (a top-5 B-school in India), Sunil’s passions are Innovation, Creativity and Strategy. He
has over 30 years of rich C-Suite experience across functions and sectors. He has worked/consulted with leading
organisations in India and the Middle East such as EXIM Bank, Nomura, CRISIL, The Aditya Birla Group, World
Bank, OMZEST, HAYS, ZS Associates and the Future Group, to name a few. He has played multiple stints as an
entrepreneur and has led the most successful IPO ever, in the Indian media industry, with subscriptions exceeding
US $ 1 billion - book built by Merrill Lynch. Sunil has co-designed and facilitated a Design Thinking workshop with
Prof. Srikant Datar of Harvard Business School which included participation by senior faculty members from leading
B-Schools and senior executives from the corporate sector in India. Sunil has been a keynote speaker at a NHRDN
(the most respected national level HRD association in India) summit with ‘Building Diversity - Driving Innovation’ as
the theme, and a faculty and mentor for the Goldman Sachs ’10,000 Women Entrepreneurs Program’. In addition,
he has been teaching Innovation and Design Thinking at leading Business Schools in India. He offers Consulting,
Training and Coaching services in the areas of Innovation, Creativity, Design Thinking and Strategy.
Profile
• Over 175 Corporate Innovation & Design Thinking workshops delivered in India, USA,
Europe, Brazil, Egypt & China
• Over 3,500 senior business leaders trained across sectors & industries
9. Innovation Journey
Testimonials . . .
Adil Malia
CEO & MD, The FiRM
Ex- Group President HR, Essar
Director, South West Asia,
Coca Cola Company
General Manager HR, GE
Mumbai
“Exponential growth follows post VUCA periods. Organizations need to transform
themselves and be ready. They need to do 3 things . . . Build Learning
Organizations, Build Capacity for Design Thinking and Build capability for
Quantum Leadership. Sunil does one of the most brilliant jobs of building Design
Thinking capacity through his workshops. I have seen many, this is clearly one of
the best!” (April 2017)
“Building Capability and Confidence for Innovation” delivered by Sunil Sangra is
exactly what Birla Carbon Technology function needed as we increase our focus on
Innovation and R&D. It is essential for an organization to keep pace with changing
technology and the future needs of its customer base. Sunil provided a 3 day
workshop that effectively teaches fundamental concepts, provides case studies
and demonstrates practical tools to effectively understand and put to practice
Design Thinking principles. Participants included a range of experienced
Engineers and Scientists.” (Atlanta, USA, July 2018)
Dr. Dale Clark
Global Chief Technology
Officer, Birla Carbon
Atlanta, USA
Awdhesh Krishna
Managing Director
Global Head of HR
Corporate Wholesale
Nomura
“Sunil Sangra delivered an impactful program on Innovation and Design Thinking
for our senior leadership team. He brought in a depth of expertise on this subject;
his content was contextual, timely, relevant and very engaging. The tools and
techniques he shared were practical and can be applied to current & future
business scenarios. We are looking to roll out the program to the next level in the
organization.” (June 2017)
Dr. Sujatha Muthanna
Head Learning &
Development
Strategic Accounts
Infosys Ltd.
“I deeply appreciate the value Sunil Sangra brings to the Design Thinking space.
The collaborative workshop planned on “Reimagining Management School
Education in India” was a perfect example of embracing a Design Thinking
methodology. The content was relevant, engaging and exhaustive and gave
innovation in Indian Education a shot in the arm. Look forward to more
collaborations and co-creations across sectors.” (Workshop by Sunil Sangra & Dr.
Srikant Datar of Harvard Business School in May 2015)
10. Innovation Journey
• Foresight Essentials; Institute for The Future; Palo Alto, California, USA, 2019
• Exponential Innovation Program; Singularity University; Silicon Valley, USA; 2019
• Service Design; CIID; Copenhagen, Denmark; 2019
• Strategic Foresight; Aalto University; Helsinki, Finland; 2018
• Design Sprints; AJ & Smart; Berlin, Germany; 2018
• Business Model Canvas + Value Proposition Canvas; Strategyzer - Alex Osterwalder; Berlin;
2017
• Exponential Growth; Peter Diamandis and Singularity University; 2015 & 2017
• Exponential Innovation; Vivek Wadhwa of Singularity, Stanford & Carnegie Mellon Universities;
Houston, USA; 2016
• Design Thinking for Growth, Darden Business School, University of Virginia, USA; 2016
• Holacracy Practitioner Training by Brian Richardson at Seattle, USA; 2016
• LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® method facilitation at Milan, Italy; 2015
• Kirton Adaption-Innovation (KAI) Theory and Inventory at Blacksburg, USA; 2015
• Hasso Plattner Institute - in Design Thinking at Potsdam, Germany (sister institute of d.school
at Stanford University); 2014
• The LUMA Institute - In Design Thinking at Pittsburgh and San Francisco, USA; 2014
• Balanced Scorecard Collaborative (with thought and practice leadership of Kaplan and Norton
of Harvard Business School); 2006
• Arthur D. Little in International Business Strategy at Boston, USA; 1990
Certification & Training
19. Innovation Journey
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the
most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
Change . . .
20. Innovation Journey
The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is The Next Competitive Advantage; Roger Martin; Harvard Business Review Press, 2009
21. Innovation Journey
Characteristics of Exploration and Exploitation
Exploration Exploitation
Organisational focus The invention of business The administration of business
Overriding goal
Dynamically moving from current
knowledge state to next
Systematically honing and
refining current knowledge
Driving forces
Intuition, feeling, hypotheses
about the future, originality
Analysis, reasoning, data from
the past, mastery
Future orientation Long-term Short-term
Progress
Uneven, scattered, false starts
and significant leaps forward
Accomplished by measured,
careful incremental steps
Risk and reward
High risk, uncertain but
potentially higher reward
Minimal risk, predictable but
smaller rewards
Challenge
Failure to consolidate and
exploit returns
Exhaustion and obsoloscence
The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is The Next Competitive Advantage; Roger Martin; Harvard Business Review Press, 2009
Current
focus
22. Innovation Journey
You engage in
enough Exploitation
to ensure current
viability
You engage in
enough Exploration
to ensure future
viability
The Ambidextrous Organisation
Business Model Generation; Alex
Osterwalder et al; Wiley, 2010
23. Innovation Journey
GE’s Ambidextrous Growth Strategy
FastWorks
Innovation Program
Exploration
Lean Six Sigma
Improvement Program
Exploitation
Stable Environment Changing Environment
25. Innovation Journey
Rakhi’s Cycle
Growth/Entrepreneurial
Mindset
OUTLOOK
UNCERTAINTY
NEW EXPERIENCES
REPERTOIRE
Life is a journey of
learning, therefore . . .
Rakesh’s Cycle
Fixed Mindset
Life is a test, therefore
avoid looking foolish
and . . .
Seek
new
Accept
Build
broad
Fear
Avoid
new
Have
narrow
Manage risk
through action
Detect multiple hidden
growth opportunities
Develop Customer
Empathy
Place small bets,
quickly
Succeed more often
in new situations
This confirms . . .
Manage risk
through analysis
Find only a few
incremental ideas
Understand customers
only as data
Place big bets
slowly
Fail more often in
new situations
This confirms . . .
Choosing a Mindset
37. Innovation Journey
Traditional organisations
Top-down and hierarchical in their organization
Driven by financial outcomes
Linear & sequential thinking
Innovation largely from within
Strategic planning largely on extrapolation from the past
Risk intolerance
Process inflexibility
Large numbers of employees
Control own assets
Strongly invested in the status quo
The Exponential Organisation; Salim Ismail;Singularity University; 2014
41. Innovation Journey
Innovation Journey
1. Digitization: Once you digitize a product or service (photography, finance, manufacturing, biology, etc...) into
ones and zeros, that product or service becomes an information-based technology and it hops on an
exponential growth curve. Something digitized can be replicated and transmitted for a near-zero marginal cost.
2. Deceptive Growth: During the early days of exponential growth, the doubling of small numbers seem
deceptively flat. Take for example the first Kodak Digital Camera that produced 0.01 Megapixel images. As it
grew from 0.01, to 0.02, 0.04, 0.08... they all seem like zero.
3. Disruptive Growth: What follows early deceptive growth is disruption. 30 doublings later something has grown
1 billion-fold. That first 0.01 megapixel Kodak camera is now generating a 10 megapixel image. The result of
which is the complete dematerialization and demonetization of film photography.
4. Dematerialization: Products and services are becoming bits. A clunky GPS on the dashboard of a car is
history, today its an APP on a smartphone. Think about all the 1980s or '90s technology that now comes free on
your cellphone: GPS, two-way video conferencing, HD video, HD photography, radio, books, records, maps,
weather and much more. Today’s smart phone comes with over a million dollars’ worth of technologies from the
1980s.
5. Demonetization: Once a product/service has become dematerialized into bits, its cost of replication and
transmission is near zero and ultimately leads to their eventual demonetization. As an example, digital
photography has totally demonetized the field.
6. Democratization: As products and services dematerialize and demonetize they become available to billions of
users across the planet. Today there are 3 billion people connected on planet Earth. By 2025 that will increase
to 8 billion connected individuals. Create a digital banking or insurance product and you have the opportunity to
market it across the globe.
6 D’s driving Exponential Growth
Peter Diamandis, Bold
56. Innovation Journey
1 Confirmation Bias: Searching for and interpreting information in a way that confirms
one’s preconceptions.
2 Negativity Bias: Giving far more weight to negative information and experiences than
positive ones. Originally developed as an evolutionary survival mechanism, valuing a
negative experience could some times save your life.
3 Anchoring: Relying heavily on one piece of information and ignoring all others.
4 The Bandwagon Effect: Doing or believing things because others do. Instead, do
something because you believe in it, because the data shows you it’s the right thing do,
and because you’re now capable of doing it.
5 Loss Aversion: Avoiding losses more than we seek gains, meaning we are fearful of
change and so we tend not to change, even though we’re living in a world where flipping
over to new technology can give us amazing advantage over other things.
Cognitive bias explains why our brains aren’t naturally wired to think exponentially
Cognitive Biases
58. Innovation Journey
93%
Of executives say their company’s
long term success is dependent on
the ability to Innovate
85%
Of executives in large companies expect
they will need to transform their business
in the next 5 years
75% Of senior executives said Innovation
is a top three priority for their firms
Accenture 2013 Innovation Survey; BCG 2014 Innovation Survey; Innosight 2014 Innovation Survey
60. Innovation Journey
18%
Of executives say their own
Innovation strategy is delivering
a competitive advantage
35%
Of executives in large companies
are confident in their ability to
successfully transform their
organisations
Accenture 2013 Innovation Survey; BCG 2014 Innovation Survey; Insight 2014 Innovation Survey
Only
61. Innovation Journey
93%
Of executives say
their company’s
long term success
is dependent on the
ability to Innovate
85%
Of executives in
large companies
expect they will
need to transform
their business in
the next 5 years
75%
Of senior
executives said
Innovation is a
top three priority
for their firms
Accenture 2013 Innovation Survey; BCG 2014 Innovation Survey; Innosight 2014 Innovation Survey
Of
executives
say their own
Innovation
strategy is
delivering a
competitive
advantage
35%
Of executives in
large companies
are confident in
their ability to
successfully
transform their
organisations
18%
Gap
This gap needs to be bridged
