Slides for a talk I gave recently gave on Innovation for my fellow colleagues at Myntra - My slides are sparse and I do most of the talking - But should be useful for a quick perusal

1. 1
ART(?) OF
INNOVATION

2. WHAT IS INNOVATION?
A "NEW IDEA, DEVICE OR
METHOD"
2

3. INNOVATION
TWO APPROACHES
3

4. DEPTH VS BREADTH
Knowledge
Comprehension
Assimilation
Application
Innovation
Connecting the ‘Dots'
Depth

5. DEPTH - TO SEE
5
ऋिषः
In ancient days, Rishis were people who could see things that normal people could not. They
went very deep into various subjects (not restricted to Medicine, Mathematics, Spirituality..

6. BREADTH
6
➤ ‘Connecting the Dots’ vs ‘Dots always connect backwards’
➤ Power of ‘Knowledge Compounding’
➤ Superficial knowledge doesn’t foster innovation
➤ Great stuff is achieved by perseverance, and not just short-term brilliance
➤ An in-depth knowledge in multiple fields helps people innovate

7. RECIPE FOR INNOVATION?
7
➤ “The building blocks of new ideas are often embedded in
existing knowledge”
➤Unusual Pairing

8. FAST VS SLOW INNOVATION
➤ Fast : Try and Fail Quickly (and eventually succeed)
➤ Slow: What will be relevant 18 - 24 months from now?
➤ If we don’t do enough slow innovation, we’ll miss forest for
the trees

9. EXAMPLE #1
9
➤ Product Design firm IDEO’s biggest successes originated as
“combination of existing knowledge from disparate industries”

10. EXAMPLE #2
10
Most of Thomas Edison’s inventions were the result of
importing ideas from one area of science to another*
E.g., knowledge of electromagnetic power to lighting,
telephone, phonograph, railway and mining!

11. MY TRYST WITH INNOVATION
11

12. EARLY LIFE :P
12
➤ Part of the teams that created World’s First
➤ Low Power WiFi Chipset - WiFi in Laptop and even
Phones! (2003)
➤ 4G - Launched in Sep 2005
➤ Seamless Connectivity for HetNets (2010)
Not so Early Life :P :P (but still World’s First)
➤ SD-RAN / C-RAN with Ethernet Fronthaul (2014)

13. RECENT WORK #1
13

14. 0LA AUTOCONNECT WIFI
14
➤ Unusual Pairing - Connectivity Guy in
Automotive Domain
➤ World’s first and only seamless in-car
connectivity solution
➤ Bigger than
➤ Biggest Network Operator T-Mobile in Austria
➤ Probably bigger than all Tier-II operators in EU put together (if you
drop England / Germany / France)
➤ World’s Largest mobile WiFi Network

15. RECENT WORK #2
15

16. EXPONENTIAL GROWTH / INDUSTRY CHANGE - HOW IT FEELS
16

17. EXPONENTIAL GROWTH / INDUSTRY CHANGE -WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE
17

18. OLA PLAY
18
➤ Reimagine car for a ride sharing economy
➤ What do you do if you have a
BILLIONminutes?

19. 19

20. 20
INNOVATION LABS
@MYNTRA
Win with Technology

21. REFERENCES
➤ Smarter, Faster, Better - Charles Douhigg (Notes on Edison,
Unusual Pairing)
➤ How to make your knowledge multiply like money - Sriram V
Iyer (Concept of Knowledge Pyramid and Knowledge
Compounding)
➤ Road to Artificial Super Intelligence (Wait But Why)