| | November 20168CIOReviewBy A.K. Prakash, Head- Advance Engineering, HELLA India Automotive Pvt. Ltd. With an experience of 20+ years of working across various domains that include research and development of control systems, rapid prototyping, system modelling and embedded system development for Defence & Automotive applications, Prakash is presently working as Head- Advance Engineering at HELLA India Automotive. He is responsible for leading innovation in the organization to take new ideas in to innovative products.Building the Culture of InnovationInnovation plays a critical role in the growth of any organization. In this article I would like to briefly summarize my experience based on leading new product development for automotive industry. Automotive industry is going through constant change with more and more electronics as we see amalgamation of different technologies for smarter vehicles to achieve better efficiency, comfort and safety. Automotive companies will have to be innovative to meet future needs and aspiration of customers. It is clear that, not being innovative is a way to perish.Innovation can be broadly classified in to the following simple steps· Idea generation· Converting these ideas in to a useful & commercially viable product· Scaling up to the customer needsIn this article I would like to focus on the first two aspects of innovation and the role organization can play to improve these steps.The corner stone of successful idea generation is the problem you select to solve. The leaders of the organization should ensure that the problems for the idea generation is real and has a strategic alignment to the organization. Organization should have a process to constantly monitor various trends and extrapolate them to identify source of problems. It is fine to spend enough time to define the right problem statement for idea generation. While selecting the problem statement following points should be kept in mind· Is the problem generic? These problem statements will be general in nature and ideas may need lots of refinement to implement. Many employees should be able to contribute to solve such problems. OPINIONIN MY
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