Goodness in grievance

Mahabharata ended and Pandava reclaimed the glory which they deserved , It was time for Sri Krishna to go back to his Kingdom so he asked his aunt Kunti , is there anything you want ? What esle I can do for my loved pandva's ? Kunti's response to this question was very astonishing , she said oh lord I want that more problems should come to our lifebecause whenever we have been into trouble we have remembered you with utmost sincereity , we have called upon you for help and guidance and you have always appeared to show उस the path in troubled waters. If we are in trouble that would meen being constantly in toubh with you , thinkig of you and your belessed presenece.
Kunti is attitued towards problems and grievance in her life is not very common otherwise , that is because normally when challenged by difficulties of life we are toobusy in fighting with them to notice what kind of changes they are bringing to us , I am not saying these changes are always good but certainly there are lots of positives in such situations. Bad times are the real groomers of any individuals and some of the most admired people could do wonders because they faced bad times , some of the greatest innovations of human history are from the period of world war.

USe customer to innovate

If we talk about innovations , researching on cutting edge technologies , working on new systems and frameworks , the immediate thing which comes to mind is the huge cost associated with it which does not always provide a good return . Imagine how many innovations and research never make it to the production environment . What could be the way in which companies can still get innovative ideas without having to spend too much on thier own workforce , that is surely learning from customer and involving him in your system to innovate.
Who would know customer better then himself , Customers are the biggest source of innovation . They can come up with any weird idea because it is not going to cost them any thing , they won't be afraid of failure (It hardly matters to them ) and they don't have any pressure from thier management to drive innovation in a certain direction only . One such idea is innvated by customer in Punjab , Dhaba owners of Punjab also purchase Washing Machines but not for washing clothes , guess what they make lassi in those washing machines. Just imagine if one of the negineer in Videcon would have come up with this idea that lets project our washing machine as Lassi maker also , what would have been reaction from his management ?
Now when customers have shown the way , they must be seeing a business proposition here , may be in future they can simply do some changes in design of washing machine and make it more suitable for lassi making .

Going forward it will be very important to involve your customers into your business , just imagine you end having a workforce of millions of people by using this methods and guess what you even don't have to pay these people . All you have to do is to listen to them carefully , understand them and thir needs and encourage them to provide feedbacks on any aspect of product and services . One other industru where I see this practice prevalent is media and entertainment , Many news channels have started making thier cutomers their reporters . They ask viewers to send any latest happening around them , You see now they are literally coveringentire nation without sending any one physically anywhere. What adds to this is tehonology which has made it all very simple.

So remember when next time you meet your customer , don't think that he is just customer , give him a new role that is of critique and Engineer for your product and he may change the way you do business.

Innovation by bottom of pyramid

When I was reading C K Prahlad in bottom of the pyramid , It was all about invention for BOP . There was talk about Cemex going ahead and giving a chance to build home to communities specially to people who can efford it all at once , there was discussion of HLL going small as per need of BOP who could not purchase a large shapoo bottle which costs near 60-70 Rs but they can defintely purchase a small use and throw shampoo shachet which does not cost more then 1 rs. There are many such innovations and book really earge people and organizations to innovate for BOP , for many reasons from sustaining the organizations long term growth to untapping the huge market and yes ofcourse doing some charity as well to improve living of
billions.
However when I was in UNICEF Latur , wondering on the streets of Mandi in Latur , I come across a dofferent thought , I wanted to explore what are the innovations by bottom of pyramid and not bottom of pyramid. When I started obesreving this around me , I was amazed to see that there are so much which is innovated by BOM themselves for their use , they don't boast of it , they don't get it patented and they also normally don't go for commercialisation of these inventions because most of these are to fulfill gap in there daya to day life activities. These people are no Einstines and Edisons , so you might not find there innovations very sophisticated but they are thoughtfull and robust , above all they serve the puropse.

Latur and near by are some of the places in Maharastra which are effected by power cuts and load shedding very regularly . your electrical equipments are bound to be useless here atleast 8 hour and atmost 16-17 hours. There was a interesting arrangement which I come across in the mandi of Latur which is consist of road side stalls of vegetable vendors , food vendors and some other hawkers. As they are road side vendor so they can not use electric equipments any way because they would not have nay connection to use that , so the first option is to use those ageold kerosine lamps , which I used to see a lot in my village , but here people have changed with

time , Someone has come up with a very simple and effective apperture , It is smal
tubelight operated by battery , they take one small battery ( one used in bikes ) and connect small tubelights to it by a wire . So when you need light just hook the wire to batteries and otherwise remove these wirse from it . I observed everyone in that mundi was using it , just estimate the market potential of this simple and crude equipment , when you stand at one end of the mundi , you see complete area is illuminated by it , everyone there has it and some big stall owners have 2 to 3 of it . Now even shop owners are also using this not so complicated light source when there is no electricity.

One another innovation I had seen while I was travelling across villages in thos areas , most of the pan shops sell cigarette and bidi in India and maximum customers just purchase one unit of there cigarette , light it and enjoy it there only for this they keep asking for matchboxes from pan shop owners . Some time back pan shop owner used to keep matchboxes ready specifically to serve such customers , then some of them started using a very ancient style of keeping fire alive for long time , they used a rop , one part of it was lighted and another was bound to a small corner of the shop , this rope served purpose for hours and after that they had second piece of the rope ready. Now they have laso gone hi-tec , many of them have got this
electric equipment which when switched on provides sparcing to light your cigarette , one has to keep the button pressed for few second so that there are enough sparcs and you are done. This innovation I have seeing around from quite some time now.

Latur is center point and zilah parishad for many surounding villages , which are located in close proximity . This gives oportunities to many cab owners for doing business , these cab owners own Tata sumo , qualis and such vehicles to do round between villages with passengers , Now even these people have moved up in value chain , In many of such cabs I have seen that the seating arrangments was modified so as to accomodate maximum people , not only this all of them have equiped thier cabs with LCD panels and now they proudly write in thier cabs " Video Coach" , no wonder that they get good business and also charge a little premimum from villagers to play some movie or some hindi song while these people travel from one
place to other.