Engineering Reverse Innovations

Amos  Winter; Vijay  Govindarajan

Article | Harvard Business Review | July–August 2015

Engineering Reverse Innovations: Principles for Creating Successful Products for Emerging Markets

by Amos Winter and Vijay Govindarajan

Abstract

Multinationals are starting to catch on to the logic of reverse innovation, in which products are designed first for consumers in low-income countries and then adapted into disruptive offerings for developed economies. But only a handful of companies have managed to do it successfully until now. In this article, an MIT engineering professor and a Tuck professor of management explain why. After conducting a three-year study of reverse innovation projects, they've concluded that the main hurdle facing product developers is a mindset. Western designers, who usually create products by following time-tested methods, struggle to overcome the constraints and leverage the freedoms of emerging markets. They tend to fall into common mental traps that prevent the development of reverse innovations: matching segments to existing products, lowering price by removing features, failing to think through all the technical requirements, neglecting stakeholders, and refusing to believe products created for low-income markets could have global appeal. But companies can avoid these traps, the authors found, by adhering to five design principles. The success of several new products illustrates how. One is the Leveraged Freedom Chair, a low-cost wheelchair that can navigate rugged terrain in places with poor infrastructure; a modified version is taking Western markets by storm.

Keywords: Innovation Strategy; Emerging Markets;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Winter, Amos, and Vijay Govindarajan. "Engineering Reverse Innovations: Principles for Creating Successful Products for Emerging Markets." Harvard Business Review 93, nos. 7/8 (July–August 2015): 80–89.

Book | 2016

The Three Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation

Vijay Govindarajan

How to Innovate and Execute. Leaders already know that innovation calls for a different set of activities, skills, methods, metrics, mind-sets, and leadership approaches. And it is well understood that creating a new business and optimizing an already existing one are two fundamentally different management challenges. The real problem for leaders is doing both, simultaneously. How do you meet the performance requirements of the existing business—one that is still thriving—while dramatically reinventing it? How do you envision a change in your current business model before a crisis forces you to abandon it? Innovation guru Vijay Govindarajan expands the leader's innovation tool kit with a simple and proven method for allocating the organization's energy, time, and resources—in balanced measure—across what he calls "the three boxes": Box 1: The present—Manage the core business at peak profitability; Box 2: The past—Abandon ideas, practices, and attitudes that could inhibit innovation; Box 3: The future—Convert breakthrough ideas into new products and businesses. The three-box framework makes leading innovation easier because it gives leaders a simple vocabulary and set of tools for managing and measuring these different sets of behaviors and activities across all levels of the organization. Supported with rich company examples—GE, Mahindra & Mahindra, Hasbro, IBM, United Rentals, and Tata Consultancy Services—and testimonies of leaders who have successfully used this framework, this book solves once and for all the practical dilemma of how to align an organization on the critical but competing demands of innovation.

Keywords: Innovation Strategy; Innovation Leadership;

Citation:

Govindarajan, Vijay. The Three Box Solution: A Strategy for Leading Innovation. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2016. View Details

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By offering specific action steps, Beyond the Idea extends the elegant conceptual insights from How Stella Saved the Farm, Govindarajan and Trimble's parable. Beyond the Idea shows exactly how to: - Build a team with a very particular structure, one that makes it possible to simultaneously build something new and sustain what exists. - Manage any innovation initiative as a disciplined experiment. - Implement three distinct models for moving from ideas to action. Beyond the Idea is an essential book for any business that recognizes that innovation always has been, and always will be, the key to long term growth and vitality.

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Engineering Reverse Innovations: Principles for Creating Successful Products for Emerging Markets

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