| |October 20189CIOReviewtions which they should have built a few years back. In most of the cases, these organizations are repli-cating systems and solutions which their competitors have already cre-ated or developed. This is not a bad thing to do as these business solu-tions bring revenue to these organi-zations. However, having a little more focus towards innovation will go a long way for the organization to become the leading player and create their distinct identity in the travel space. I think it is very im-portant for an organization to have the team which channelizes innova-tive ideas through the employees in a seamless way. The key is that eve-ry employee needs to be engaged in the innovation building process. This way the entire team becomes R&D team and participates in the innovation.How to blend innovation with deliveryIt will help organizations to dedi-cate 80% effort towards meeting their immediate needs in terms of projects which are absolutely needed. Projects involving sup-port of existing apps and building new solutions which are absolutely needed and have a direct impact on the day to day business functions (e.g. booking system), well-known process improvements (e.g. agile adoption, automated regression testing) etc will fall in this category. Remaining 20% effort should be spent towards innovation which will result into new customer expe-rience. This 20% innovation effort is a strategic move which will make the organization leading player in the industry. This effort should be channelized by the innovation team and all employees should be equipped with the required soft-ware & hardware (e.g. cloud) to ideate and build POC's/Proto-types in a time bound manner (2-6 weeks). Regular hackathons (both external and internal) can also be really handy to bring the culture of innovation in the organization.Some of the advantages of this approach would be:· In-house IP creation every 3-6 months time frame· Bottom-Up idea creation and implementation (e.g. software de-veloper ideating algorithm improve-ment in payment system)· Platform for in-house engi-neers to learn new skills and scale up - this keeps the workforce engaged and relevant to changing technology trends (E.g. Java programmer work on POC's involving MEAN stack or iOS developer work on prototypes involving Machine Learning)· Establishes the organization as the leading IP/Patent creator in the market like IBM, HP, Intuit, Philips etc.Innovation is no longer a fancy word for organisations. The cus-tomer is more informed than ever before. The competition is brutal. At the same time, the ability of startups to disrupt the entire eco-system in a short span of time is at all-time high. The organisation which is ready to blend innova-tion with delivery will build the best products to address customer desires and aspirations and will be able to retain the best of their staff. Such organisations will be seen as the market leaders. Organisations that are prepared to adopt technologies to build the right solutions to reach out to customer's aspirations are going to be the leadersAnshul Goswami
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