Small and Medium Enterprises can sometimes give up too easily on an innovation project. Test Cricket, the long format of the game, has certain elements that capture our life well. There are many instances where you have to persist to get the result you want. It’s a game of patience and how we apply it to Innovation.
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Spurs and the art of unselfish basketball
I love how the San Antonio Spurs play the game of basketball in a beautiful manner. Their brand is being unselfish. No matter which superstar they have on the roster, each one does the right thing.
The way they play the game teaches us a lot to us too. We can implement some of these observations for all our projects. Especially for innovation projects, this approach can work wonders.
Do you do cool work?
We are teaching our son adjectives and how they can be used to best describe nouns. The word “cool” when associated with “work” has varied perspectives. It’s amazing how teaching kids can make one think about simple words in a new light.
Many a time, especially during brainstorming discussions, I try getting the team to pause; to deliberately reflect on the impact our solution will have on the world. We, technology enablers, are truly blessed to solve problems faced by many. From the inside it might seem like the usual but from the outside it would be super awesome. Many of my startup friends seem to miss this pause-and-reflect trick once they get caught up in the grind.
Try pausing every now and then, most definitely at home. Your work does have a meaningful impact on the society. That is my definition of cool.
What happened to your final year project?
A few days ago, I posed a simple question to a room full of professionals. "How many of you worked on a final year project?" Nearly every hand was up. My follow-up question was at the start of this post. Nearly everyone had a small laugh on their faces; all confirmed my experience that most college projects end up in reports that a handful of people read. A tiny, tiny, percentage of those do end up getting implemented in the real world or influencing a new path in academia. This has to change! We need a higher conversion of projects to peer-reviewed journal publications or converting those projects into products. That's how valuable IP is generated. That's how we transform to a knowledge economy. If you are mentoring students, formally or as a friend, help their projects achieve a better outcome.