Dilipkumar Khandelwal spoke about the need in today’s competitive market for a company to innovate continuously to differentiate itself from its competitors and survive. But, rather than having pockets of irregular innovation, businesses Taking a cue from Charles Darwin, Mark Dickson said it is not the strongest of species that survives nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change.

He made a fervent plea to project managers to make continuous learning a central pillar of professional development, since it is learning alone that will help them to adapt to change and advance their careers. Every year, 2.2 million new project management should strive to have a continuous series of innovation, he said.
Businesses should start out with incremental innovations that add value to an existing product or process, and then aim to create disruptive innovations that create new markets. Mr. Khandelwal’s advice is for companies to center innovation on the end-consumer rather than the industry. “Now we are involving the end-consumer in product development. This is an economy driven by consumers, thanks to the wealth of data available, and digital technologies,” he said.

But, for this to happen, companies need to build a culture of innovation. Mr. Khandelwal, who heads SAP Lab’s development center in India that is the second largest R&D center for the company globally, recommends the following measures to create that culture: start with a clear purpose; give space to people by giving them access to a platform and allow them to come together to create new ideas; deconstruct boundaries where technology and people intersect; and place the customer in the middle of the innovation agenda.

On a concluding note, he said that innovation should not be the job of just the top management. Innovation takes place when employees are allowed to think, create, give suggestions, and are included in the innovation process.