Innovation Journal - Cognizant
Innovation Journal - Cognizant
Innovation Journal - Cognizant
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
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 />
127