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Innovation Journal - Cognizant

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REINVENT - INTO THE NOVEL NATION<br />

the mounting real-time collaboration requirements of today’s millennial<br />

workforce.<br />

What is innovation?<br />

Entire essays, books and treatises have been written on this topic; here<br />

is a lighter take on the question.<br />

I: Indigenous<br />

Companies that promise to deliver innovation to their clients should<br />

also live and breathe innovation, internally. An innovation that has<br />

become part of the fabric of our processes is <strong>Cognizant</strong> 2.0, the<br />

delivery excellence platform that acts as our global knowledge<br />

repository, enterprise social platform, and project management<br />

environment which has helped us stay ahead of the competition. With<br />

140,000-plus associates and growing, the more prolific C2.0 becomes<br />

and the more efficiency we show in our business, the better able we<br />

are to deliver services that meet our clients’ top- and bottom-line<br />

expectations. C2 (think Facebook meets Twitter) can be continuously<br />

leveraged with more virtual and social computing features to address<br />

Motivation is also very important for creativity and innovation,<br />

because any new idea is raw and must be proved.<br />

This may involve much iteration; again, as Edison said, “I<br />

have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t<br />

work.”<br />

N: Natural<br />

Creativity is as natural as breathing. Human beings are said to be born<br />

creative, even though their thinking becomes more conditioned and<br />

structured as they grow older. Think of a model getting ready to walk<br />

on the ramp, and suddenly her heel breaks, so she fixes it with tape. If<br />

there is problem, then solve it or work around it until it is solved -- that<br />

is how the human mind works. Experience also plays a role; experts,<br />

for instance, become so adept at certain tasks that they can become<br />

highly innovative about how they ply their trade. An example is a cook,<br />

who can make many dishes using the same ingredients.<br />

N: Nurtured<br />

Successful innovators focus on implementing their ideas, nurturing<br />

them from the “hunch” stage to completion. Every great achievement<br />

progresses in stages, from gliders to Boeing jets, from steam engines<br />

to bullet trains, from analytical engines to supercomputers. In all these<br />

cases, the ideas were cultivated, thought about deeply and reinvented<br />

after failures. Thoughts flow when we rethink an existing idea or<br />

problem, making it ground-breaking.<br />

O: Optimistic<br />

When it comes to innovation, it is not a sin to commit a mistake, only<br />

to fail to learn from the mistake. As Albert Einstein said, “Anyone who<br />

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