The annual CBI Global conference attracted more than 200 visitors, many sponsors and exhibitors from all over the world to this perfect location – the Hotel Leela close to Mumbai international airport.

Senior level executives and decision-makers of the Indian cement industry attracted international producers and suppliers and many more from India and neighboring countries to cover key aspects of India’s cement industry. Its key findings are summarized below.

It was complimented by the “CEO & Executive Forum” with hand-picked industry thought leaders and industry captains like Sumit Benerjie (Reliance), Martin Gierse (KHD), Oliver Mahow, Suman Mukherjee (Shree Digvijay), and Mohammed Al-Esayi (Ali Al-Esayi Group). Robert Madeira (CW Group), Jürgen H. Stäudtner (Innovation Partner of CW Group and Managing Director of Cridon), Jean-Michel Allard (Vicat), Patrick Peeneart (Lafarge) as well as Sanjay Puri and Michael Foillet (IFC, World Bank) completed the session.

Juergen H. Staeudtner (Innovation Partner of CW Group and Managing Director of Cridon) pointed our that the resolution of the challenges will require innovative approaches based on not being afraid to break the box. He showed which major innovation strategies have proved to be successful – Need Seekers, Market Readers and Technology Drivers. Cement companies must verify what they can do best and understand what is missing to be a successful innovator. Jürgen H. Stäudtner also provided a questionnaire to quick check upon the innovation strategy best suited. You can look up the different types in the article “An Overview on Business Innovation Strategy Types”, take an online questionnaire or download the paper-based questionnaire soon here.

Other key findings of the conference have been:

• India will be a long term success story for cement in the next 20 years, since Indian infrastructure needs to be build. Chinas production and consumption in return is expected to decline for the same reason. Since many companies try to profit from this they built a capacity in the last years which is not used so far, and they will continue to do so.
• This creates pressure on prices benefiting the private sector as house prices in India high are relatively high – pricing will be a key marketing discipline n the years to come.
• Indias cement industry is split in five regions with its dominant players. Internationals and local late entries will focus on the whole country which will pressure the incumbents even more. Also a consolidation is expected to happen.
• Indias distribution networks rely on very traditional partner agreements. The packing of cement is almost exclusively done by sacks. Production and business process efficiency measure will massively change this.
• End Customers are not a subject of discussion so far. Instead the cement industry focuses on delivering to its distribution network which creates a massive need perception gap – in future, customers must be better understood.
• Coal supplies are difficult in India and not secure. Plants are recommended to invest in coal mines and secure transportation access by long term contracts with harbors.
• Alternative fuels like waste or tiers are under discussion as well as effort which has to be undertaken to foster C02 reduction.
• Lime stone and clinker will continue to be substituted by the more renewable fly ash and slack although Indian cement plants own enough lime stone resources for the next 150 years. Cement additives are on the rise.
• Indias security issues must be resolved and this requires to change people’s mindset.

After all, many triggers have been identified which require innovative approaches! CW Group and Cridon can help.

Do we have a recession or will we have an economical boom? That’s the crucial question of our time which reappears after major events each year: euro or other financial crises, hurricanes or tsunamis, exploding nuclear power stations and the global warming get to us.

The answer to this question is closely associated with our perception of the economical trend: once again we have to risk more and the need to become more creative as well as innovative has grown substantial. We have mostly heard of a company’s financial agenda in the last 15 years – opening with the question of Shareholder Value, followed by Mergers & Acquisitions and finally hitting a dramatic shrinkage of funds.

Was it worthwhile in the end? Let us take a glance at the MSCI World Index (in Euro):

The MSCI is one of the most important stock indices in the world and includes over 6.000 stocks out of 24 countries. After an intense growth in the 90’s nothing substantial has happened henceforth. It goes up and down just as the amplitude diminishes. The chart looks like a quill, once triggered and swinging off continuously.

I remember that stocks have increased exponentially in value over the last 100 years – despite two world wars. The MSCI must increase to almost 3.000 Euro in the upcoming years for having a reasonable exponential trend.

Scoring the 3.000 mark in a few years is all but possible from our current point of view. This fits perfectly at the time. The preferred key is moll and pessimistic forecasts are favored.

Do we live in a new Fin-de-siècle what is described in Wikipedia as follows?

The Fin-de-siècle mindset saw civilization as being in a crisis that required a massive and total solution.

I have decided. I believe in a new Wilhelminian Era according to mid-19^th-century that comes along with powerful political and social rearrangements. We do not need a financial oriented corporate management anymore that strangles creative and innovative people and contributes quite no benefit to anyone.

We are in need of becoming more innovative instead of cheering for ourselves, just because we feel so innovative. In truth we dread ventures as the devil is frightened of holy water. However, the devil is not particularly innovative.

More innovation

The term brainstorming was coined over 70 years ago. Its use has been disproved for 50 years now. It is time to apply techniques which really enhance creativity like collaborative innovation.

Alex Osborn described the technique of brainstorming at BBDO in his book “How to Think Up”, released 1942 (the “O” stands for Osborn). However, there had been plenty of evidence in the past 50 years proving the technique has a negative impact. Donald Taylor, Paul Berry and Clifford Block wrote about its benefits in 1958 and raised the  following question: Does Group Participation when using Brainstorming facilitate or inhibit Creative Thinking? Their results consolidated and published by Jochen Paulus in the journal “Bild der Wissenschaft” are as below:

The candidates can’t do any better in groups since they hinder each other. Usually they have to wait until anyone else has finished speaking – and this inhibits creativity.

The explanation for this characteristic is given by Wolfgang Stroebe, professor of psychology at the University of Utrecht. (…) He attributes the inhibition to malfunctions of participants’ memory: To get input for new ideas the brain has to reallocate information out of the long-term memory, and it has to keep them present. Both processes suffer from waiting when the conventional brainstorming technique is conducted.

Admittedly, it is significant important for successful ideas to draw on others’ thoughts. The internet lists new methods and tools to generate ideas, named ideation as part of “Collaborative Innovation”

With appropriate software support provided by the worldwide leading suppliers of innovation software we can facilitate two very important features of target-oriented creativity in companies:

1. Participants are able to pass their ideas at any time – provided that they have a mobile phone. Ideas typically spring up in moments we do ordinary activities, for instance when having a shower.
2. Moreover, participants are able to see what ideas others have. This is essential. Only a few can evolve seminal ideas out of their own mind – ideas are based on each other.

Summarized: do not book any brainstorming workshops to create ideas unless the initiators are professionals in brainstorming. There are enough other opportunities out there. Collaborative innovation based on innovation management software is one of them.

More Innovation

New Adress is Ellerstraße 101, Building 3B, 40721 Hilden, Germany.

Phone numbers will follow since Deutsche Telekom needs a thrid attempt.

You think Matterhorn is boring? Think again!

I have 600 skydives, most of them head-down. I have been climbing mountains – to 5642 meters. What you see if you check the following videos is breathtaking. Even 10 years ago I would not have believed such unbelievable action could take place.

And, it is a perfect example of the most promising innovation strategy: Need Seekers. All of the following examples look like being technology driven innovation. Yes, it is true – and no, the technology would not exist without the need of these guys – the need for speed:

Jeb Corliss flying the Matterhorn

When I started skydiving in 1998 or so, Patrick de Gayardon set new standards by flying the Grand Canyon with a wing suit. Jeb Corliss now set a new benchmark by flying the Matterhorn:

Jeb makes use of the technical progression of wing suits. Patrick developed this wing suits initially and all subsequent development was done by skydivers as to my knowledge. They made technology fit their need.

Ueli Steck is up first

Less than 2 hours to climb the Matterhorn. Ueli uses dry-tooling – a new technology to connect to the mountain, working best in winter times. Only insane peope used to climb mountains in winter.

I read his book and understand – it is all about training and dedication. He has countless numbers of crampons and ice axes. He drives technology and does not depend on it.

Team black sheep – FPV

FPV – I never heared of it before I found above videos. First Person View is about the remote control of cameras combined with rocket like planes.

In this case, technology was around: cameras and drones. Team black sheep combines it to create this astonishing video.

More Innovation

Women are responsible for over 80% of all consumers spending: they buy almost all household goods and influence every major private investment substantially. Also they are often the main earners in a household (34% of all German households have female main earners).

Tom Peters thinks: “It is a ridiculously rare corporation that takes advantage of the women opportunity. What a costly mistake.” For some years now, companies have tried to better address women by changing their products or their presentation. Experience is positive even if companies with many regular male customers need to make sure they keep them.

I believe that many products and services in the internet world do not cover women behavior sufficiently. Women use the internet nowadays as intensively as men do, but they use it differently. Most product managers including myself are male, however.

The purpose of this white-paper is to highlight, how internet products and services should be altered to reflect needs of women over 25. I have composed a list of five requirements, which products and services in the female internet must fulfill:

• strengthen community
• match life
• focus
• get personal
• give meaning

To do so I have read major publications about “Marketing to Women“. And I also did a field study. Altogether we scanned hundreds of websites to understand whether women’s requirements are fulfilled and what could be improved.

Get the white-paper “The female Internet” here.

We are an agency and consultancy for the management and the development of products and services mainly by telecommunications and the internet. And today we launch chogo.me, an internet service which helps users to better understand their strengths and weaknesses concerning innovation, or better said, to validate their requirements in a quickly changing world.

Only five minutes are required for a free, short and precise questionnaire, the visualization of the score and the presentation of appropriate improvement recommendations. The methodology is based on the condensed knowledge of several innovation masterminds and break-through studies. chogo.me derives 35 variables which assess the ability of an enterprise to innovate. These variables are condensed to six pairs of questions. The answers on these questions are normalized across the whole data set and run through an analytics engine. After the first pass of analytics, chogo.me applies a specific weight to each data point.

Three scores for each of the best innovation profiles are the result: users can see in a clear and easy graphical representation whether they fit the characteristics of Market Readers, Need Seekers or Technology Drivers. chogo.me gives users up to three understandable directions for improvements based on the score if this seems appropriate. Privacy concerns are respected thought the whole processes – no one will hear from a users score expect this is wanted.

In the next years the ability to innovate will determine the fate of many companies all over the world in the next years. Researchers agree on the increasing thread for companies to vanish from the market if they cannot develop appropriate products and services the right time. How to innovate and where to spend the effort is not easy to determine, since multiple successful innovation strategies have been identified which significantly can defer from each other.

There are some innovation profilers already available, but chogo.me is the first one, that tries to make this complex matter easy to understand. Users have a direct advantage of using this online service.

When do this workshops help?

Many companies have identified innovation as a major success factor of our times. And many have started a series of initiatives to spur innovation. Others companies have no good understanding of their options, have a lack of knowledge of latest innovation research and trends, or bewail missing creativity.

Our workshops are tailored to all companies, which do not want to long-winded discuss how to do innovation, but prefer practical experience. We help to

1. identify key-success factors for financially successful strategies
2. innovate efficiently
3. proof new innovation concepts such as open innovation or service innovation
4. measure you innovation performance

This way you can clarify essential questions quickly and avoid costly errors. For the same reason we are running the free online innovation profiler www.chogo.me.

How do this Business Innovation Strategy Workshops help?

Our workshops consist of two parts: one the one hand we help to identify your business innovation strategy and to classify it, and one the other hand we jointly look for new and innovative ways forward.

Workshop 1: Iterate

Three innovation strategies promise the best financial performance. In the first workshop you understand which innovation strategy helps best, and how you get close to it. We discuss which innovation activities you perform and to which innovation classification this fits.

Workshop 2: Define

Companies which are successful innovators focus on one innovation strategy. This workshop helps to understand, which activities you should introduce, understand better, optimize or even reduce.

The workshops can be ordered separately.

In case of questions: please contact us here.