How "Innovaner" was Coined?
Today, when I, look back to find the most inspiring factor that would motivate me for my present or future endeavors, I get transported to my childhood days. I was obedient and loved studying. However, compared to other students in the class, I seldom fetched good grades. But there was one subject I had a fine tooth for; Mathematics. I used top in the class in Mathematics but struggled to get even passing marks in other subjects. This continued for a long time and I had to pay a heavy penalty because of my passion only for Maths. After completing my high school, I tried hard to seek enrollment in leading engineering colleges in India, but failed. There were three main subjects in the entrance exam: Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics and unfortunately, my only favorite was Mathematics. I was not much confident in other subjects.
I would often pray to God to help me appear for an exam where I was evaluated only on the basis of Mathematics. Finally, after my graduation in Science (Bachelor in Science), I got the opportunity to appear for a post-graduation entrance exam; Master in Computer Application, where the main subject was Mathematics.
Post Graduation fascinated me and during the course, I got two breaks of six months in each semester. At that time, I cross-trained myself to get acquainted with leading technologies. This helped me immensely, as after completing my post-graduation, I developed a peculiar nature of adapting to new environments swiftly. I looked at problems differently and not traditionally. I developed the courage to deal with challenges and harbored a positive thought process and extreme self-faith.
This newly developed nature helped me gather handsome knowledge of different technologies and earned me huge fame for the first time when I was working in one of the biggest Indian MNCs. I was in the production support team where I found that a monthly batch job used to take a long time, approximately 12-13 hours, in processing. However, with my analytical and technological knowledge, I helped my clients in getting the end data in 9 minutes. Monetarily, it was a great benefit for the clients, so measures were taken to improve the process. It was coined as the “Best Practices” and was also published in the organization’s internal journal.
Later, I got the opportunity to work for another leading MNC that had appeared in Forbes 100. At that time, I was in the leading production support team where I noticed some challenges when a new resource was hired in the team. The knowledge transition to the new resource demanded a gigantic amount from project cost. To mitigate the issue, I came up with a Run book. This eased in defining, orchestrating, managing and reporting on workflows that supported the system and network operational processes. I studied three years old data and tried to classify the issues in different bins as follows. Analytically, each type of issue was termed to be a cluster.
The Run book reduced/saved 14 person-hours for a production job in a year.
I continued adding to the folder my knowledge and, even after 10 years of experience, I was enthused to cross-train myself. This propelled me to take admission in online MBA from IIM-I. This new learning further helped me build a new capability on the IBM tool in one of my organizational engagements. When asked about the secret of success in building a successful capability, I would reply with a smile that I followed “Tuckman’s Law” (it focuses on tackling a project from the initial stage to completion. It follows a few phases like forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning.). During my MBA study, I gathered more knowledge about the law/process/technology and implemented the same in a well-managed way.
However, as they say, learning is not a destination but a journey. This innovative nature and curiosity drove me to pursue a doctoral degree in Marketing Research and Analytics from the National School of Leadership, India.
In one of my recent conversations with the senior management, I opened my mind by saying that I would like to come up with software that can read the text even if it is not present. Well! It seemed fun to many colleagues, but the CTO was very supportive and curious to know the new thing. Hearing the same, his question was, “How you are going to do it,” rather than discouraging. The product was not only developed the same, but it became the company’s portfolio product and helped many companies to extract text from huge documents which were even 150 years old. In such old documents, few letters remained missed or in a non-readable format. The newly developed text extractor helped a lot in such scenarios to digitize the documents. I got a favorable research environment where the senior management supported me and helped me file 5 Patents in Natural Language Processing.
Apart from the above, I have 15 publications of which 11 are organization-based and 4 are international-based, including two books .
Here’s how Albert Einstein defined Innovation, “You can’t solve a problem on the same level that it was created. You have to rise above it to the next level.” Being a strong follower of this quote, I have been practicing innovation to solve the problem by scaling myself up and building courage, passion and love.
Early days, I practiced Creative thinking process unconsciously and after I got value out of it I tried practicing it Consciously and made it a habit .
The Journey inspired me to coin the term INNOVANER .
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