Friday, June 14, 2013

INNOVATION - Think different


Innovation is nothing but doing something different with a product or service to make it better cheaper and more useful to people in many cases it may lead to the growth of complete new market new solutions come into existence because of that. Let me  explain this with an example. All of us have seen barbed wire fences across the world but from where this idea of barbed wire came into existence ,before barbed wires fencing a large area was extremely expensive and required a lot of labour since the fencing material was made of bricks and stones but in 1867 Lucien Smith of Ohio came up with the idea of twisting pieces of iron wires in such a way that they join up with adjacent wires and at their junction the ends of the wires stand up straight in such a way that someone who holds it carelessly may be injured, now this property of barbed wires was used in making fences of animal farms that prevented predatory animals and other trespassers from entering the farm and this was achieved at a fraction of the cost of a fence made of wood and bricks.



              So what does the above example show a man had a problem he wanted fencing to be done to protect his cattle at the same time he wanted it to be  one at a cost that is affordable without compromising on the effectiveness of the structure that would protect his cattle. He observed the resources available to him thought about using it to achieve the intended target and comes up with a solution that would satisfy his need.



        On the face of it a solution like barbed wire seems very simple but iron had been known to man for thousands of years even iron wires were available to man for a long time by why no one else thought what this man did. This simple innovation of barbed wire is still being used across the world as a major fencing solution its no rocket science it also shows that one does not need to be an engineer or a scientist to innovate examples are there from people around the world that even innovation can come from even the simplest of the people who have never read a letter of their language.



          In fact human civilization itself is based on innovation the utilization of fire for security and cooking was an innovation so was utilization of wheel for making vehicles and pottery. The various tools that man used for hunting like the bow and arrow ,man understood that highly pointed objects when thrown with a good amount of speed would penetrate the flesh of an animal deeper and faster also he understood the elastic properties of materials which was the string of the bow that was used to catapult the arrow with great speed.



            So this little faculty of the human mind that makes him think differently and try and find new solutions to problems with the available resources should be encouraged every person in the world can innovate. 

                                                                               Rakesh Mallick
                                                                                


No comments:

Post a Comment