Disrupt Yourself II

Disrupt Yourself

by Whitney Johnson

Why Disrupt?

Not everyone has to abandon the traditional path, of course. Certainly if you’re working toward an ambitious and potentially achievable goal, such as managing a division at your firm or winning a C-suite job in your industry, disruption is unnecessary. You’re pursuing what Christensen callssustaining innovation:when a company gets better at what it’s already doing and provides more value to existing customers. But if as an individual you’ve reached a plateau or you suspect you won’t be happy at the top rung of the ladder you’re climbing, you should disrupt yourself for the same reasons that companies must.

First and foremost, you need to head off the competition. As you continue to improve along the dimensions of performance that the employment market has historically valued, you risk overshooting demands. What you do reliably, if not brilliantly well, can be done just as effectively by many peers—and perhaps more swiftly and affordably by up-and-comers.

Second, consider the greater rewards that disruption may bring. It’s true that disruptive innovation in business tends to start out as a low-cost alternative to existing products or services, and of course you don’t want to embrace a career strategy that reduces your own price point. But when you disrupt yourself, you vector to a new set of metrics. In some cases, you might initially take a pay cut in return for a steeper trajectory; after all, the endgame of disruption is higher demand for what you produce. In other cases, you might even boost your pay while still undercutting the competition in your new role, organization, or industry. Remember, too, that when it comes to personal disruption, compensation is not just financial. Psychological and social factors also matter.

Four Principles of Self-Disruption

As someone steeped in disruptive innovation, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how it applies to careers and discussing it with people whose peripatetic yet satisfying paths resemble my own. We all seem to follow four rules, loosely based on those that Christensen set out for businesses.

1. Target a need that can be met more effectively.A core principle of disruptive innovation is that customers control resource allocation and that they don’t buy products but instead “hire” them to fulfill a need. Disrupters look for needs that aren’t being met well. They play in markets where no one else is or wants to be. A classic example is Salesforce.com: A simple, inexpensive, cloud-based system—initially intended to service small and medium-size businesses—is now disrupting the leading providers of customer resource management software.

Martin Crampton’s real estate portal was also a disruptive venture. But his personal disruption started well before that launch, when he realized that marketing strategy, not development and sales, drives usage of software products. He seized the opportunity, thereby positioning himself for a series of big marketing jobs before his next disruptive move. Alex McClung targeted his own industry’s need for people who could move fluidly across functional borders, such as from science to finance and logistics to regulation. Then he sought roles in a variety of health care organizations, ranging from biotech start-up to Fortune500 pharmaceutical, that would help him develop those skills.

And there’s Heather Coughlin’s story of giving up an equity-sales VP position at Goldman Sachs to help launch Hudson Street, an independently operated subsidiary offering investment research to clients. The group was formed partly as a response to court settlements requiring that salespeople in big banks rely on more than just their in-house analysts’ reports. Coughlin got in on the ground floor not only because she thought demand for that service would grow—which it did—but also because she knew that the fledgling group needed someone with her deep experience to serve customers.

“Being cognizant of the world around me and rolling the tape forward was critical,” she explains. “I watched two downturns and lots of layoffs, and swore that I would always try to be one step ahead.” Many colleagues thought she was crazy to leave her comfortable perch for an amorphous role—and to let her pay and status take a hit. But the operating skills she built in helping to launch and run Hudson Street are what propelled her into a business development job—and ultimately the CEO’s seat—at Isis Parenting.

NEXT PAGE 1.2.3.4.

Disrupt Yourself 07-08

Disrupt Yourself

by Whitney Johnson

Whitney Johnson on disruptive innovation and your career path.

My career path has been an unusual one. I started as a secretary on Wall Street, worked my way up in my firm’s investment banking group, and then stepped back to become an equity research analyst. Eight years later, I quit that job to produce a TV show and write a children’s book, but I ended up blogging about work/life issues and cofounding a hedge fund backed by a man I’d met at church. It’s not what you’d call a traditional corporate trajectory. But perhaps that’s the new normal.

In the United States and many other developed, capitalist countries, the idea of a “company man” (or woman) with a job for life has long been outdated. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median job tenure for American workers age 25 or older has held steady at about five years since 1983, and for men it has slightly declined. Baby boomers born from 1957 through 1964 held 11 jobs, on average, between ages 18 and 44, says another BLS report. And studies tracking long-term employment from 1976 to 2006 paint a similar picture: The percentages of people who have been with their companies at least 10 and at least 20 years have fallen substantially.

Career change isn’t as easily documented, because it’s harder to define than a job switch. But many economists and sociologists think that these bigger shifts are becoming more common, and case studies to support that hypothesis abound.

Consider Martin Crampton, a former research scientist and math teacher from Australia. He parlayed a stint as a developer and demo specialist for a software company in Melbourne into a decade-long marketing career, first at the software firm and then at two multinational manufacturing companies (Bic and Stihl), before starting his own consultancy. In 1993 he leapt into another profession and, with his partner, created Australia’s first national real estate portal (before Realtor.com). Crampton later sold that business and started another one that focused on online services. He currently works on ventures involving franchised data and social media.

Then there’s Liz Brown, once a hard-charging law firm partner who left Fish & Richardson to become executive director of an angel investment network and a professor; Alex McClung, whose 23-year career has spanned 15 diverse roles at six different health care companies; and Heather Coughlin, who started her career in equity sales at Goldman Sachs, helped it launch a third-party research subsidiary, and is now CEO of a mother-and-baby support, education, and retail chain.

It’s hard to make sense of seemingly wanton—yet ultimately rewarding—career choices like those, until you consider the theories of the man I met in church: Clayton M. Christensen.

As HBR readers well know, Christensen is the father of disruptive innovation —the idea that the most successful innovations are those that create new markets and value networks, thereby upending existing ones. Volumes of research and evidence show how disruptive thinking improves the odds of success for products, companies, even countries. Our investment fund focuses on disruptive stocks, and it has outperformed relevant indices by a sizable margin over the past decade.

I believe that disruption can also work on a personal level, not just for entrepreneurs who launch disruptive companies but for people who work within and move between organizations. Zigzagging career paths may be common now, but the people who zigzag best don’t do it randomly.

NEXT PAGE  1.2.3.4.

LEADERSHIP AND CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY

LEADERSHIP AND CORPORATE ACCOUNTABILITY

Today’s highly competitive global business environment places unprecedented demands on

companies from a range of stakeholders. Far beyond merely meeting the needs of their customers,

organizations are compelled to consider the interests of their employees and investors, the various

governments that regulate their markets, and society on both a local and global scale. In this interview,

Rohit Deshpandé, Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing at HBS, discusses the growing

demand for accountability and the benefits of the Leading Corporate Accountability—India program.

What are the corporate accountability challenges facing firms that do business in India?

Leaders in organizations across the world, and particularly in countries like India, are facing three sets of challenges. The first is a global best-practice challenge. This has to do with understanding the thinking, the knowledge, and the frameworks that drive high performance. Second is a competitive challenge. Increasingly, an organization’s marketplace is not just domestic but also international. More and more, sales are coming from exports to international markets, and companies are competing against leading global players in addition to organizations from their home territory. To succeed, they need to know how to differentiate themselves competitively in the global arena.

The third challenge—which might be very specific to countries like India—is the notion of moving your game up a notch in terms of responsibility and transparency to multiple stakeholders. In India, this might be referred to as the Anna Hazare challenge. 

Companies must be proactive, rather than react after there is a public outcry about responsibilities and the lack of accountability. In other words, business leaders need to get out in front of corporate accountability issues and differentiate their organizations in a new environment.

How can organizations create the right framework for analyzing their responsibilities?

The right framework starts with shifting from a shareholder view of the organization to a stakeholder view of the organization. This requires executives to be more aware of claims from all of the different stakeholders—not just investors, but also the public,customers, and employees—and to understand how to balance these multiple claims. At the same time, they have to think about their organizations from more than a short-term financial perspective and consider issues related to sustainability over

the long term.

What key governance tools do organizations need to deliver on their responsibilities?

We can put governance tools into two buckets: external governance and internal governance. External governance has to do with all outside stakeholders—that is, interactions with government regulators, with society, and with customers. To deal with these external stakeholders, companies need different mechanisms such as legal counsel, risk management systems,consultants, and auditors. Then there are internal governance tools—the incentive system, the rewards system, and, perhaps most important, the value system—that are put in place to move the organization forward.

Free Online classes for Undergraduate Students. 07-05

Free Online classes for undergraduate students are offered. The likely topics are Interview preparation, Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Change Management, and Business Management & other topics as per need and demand.

Capacity Building & Development is planning to conduct online lectures to ignite the latent potential in the youth and mentor them to confidently face interviews for jobs. The lectures will be on the topics that usually form a part of the Interview.

These lectures will also strengthen their knowledge about the latest in Management. Students studying graduation in any stream can take advantage of this program.

The programmes are absolutely free and at no stage the students will be charged any money. The programmes are global and unrestrictive. People from any country can join the programme.

We will impart to the students, what is usually imparted to the students in the world’s top Educational Institutions, along with what the corporates expect the students to know. The content is being prepared based on the research of various case studies and is inspired by the global leadership programme being developed at various incubators located in leading Academic Institutions and the corporates.  There will be continuous improvement in the programme based on the feedback received from the students and the academicians in our network.

The tools we will use will be white boards, Power Point Presentations, Videos and other audio video tools.

The classes will be of 45 minutes duration with an optional Q&A session as per the need. The classes will be in the evening on week days between 5&7 PM IST (+5.30 GMT). The schedule for the online programme will be drawn once the registration process is complete. Registered students will receive the details of the process and the procedures for attending the classes.

This is just knowledge sharing Interactive programme and not a course.

NO CERTIFICATION WILL BE ISSUED EITHER FOR COMPLETION OR PARTICIPATION. JOINING THIS COURSE WILL NOT ENTITLE ANY RECOMMENDATIONS FROM OUR SIDE. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY WE CAN HELP FIND OR FACILITATE JOBS THORUGH THIS PROGRAMME. THE PARTICIPANTS WILL NOT GET ANY REFERENCE LETTERS FROM US.

Students can unsubscribe from this programme and our mailing list any time.

Registration Procedure:

Please complete the following steps for registration.

Please subscribe to mailing list Here

Once you subscribe to the mailing list, you will receive a mail to the email id registered with us, with links to our, FACEBOOK PAGE, Twitter Account, Google+ Account , Linkedin Profile  and the procedure for following us on social media. Following us on these networks will be useful as we will be posting frequent updates here.

Once you complete this process, we will take you to a form where you need to fill your profile. Once this is done, We will approve your membership into our network. This membership will allow you to enter our online class room. For every class you will receive a link for participation.

We will send you more details and schedules, once we complete the registration process and have enough students.

Please subscribe to mailing list Here

Developing global leaders 07-05

Developing global leaders

Companies must cultivate leaders for global markets. Dispelling five common myths about globalization is a good place to start.

JUNE 2012 • Pankaj Ghemawat

As firms reach across borders, global-leadership capacity is surfacing more and more often as a binding constraint. According to one survey of senior executives, 76 percent believe their organizations need to develop global-leadership capabilities, but only 7 percent think they are currently doing so very effectively.¹ And some 30 percent of US companies admit that they have failed to exploit fully their international business opportunities because of insufficient internationally competent personnel.²

Most of the prevailing ideas in business and academia about global leadership reflect efforts by leadership experts to adapt the insights of their field to the global arena. I come at this topic from the opposite perspective, having focused for nearly two decades on studying globalization and thinking through its implications for business and public policy.

At the core of my work lies the reality that, while globalization is indeed a powerful force, the extent of international integration varies widely across countries and companies and generally remains more limited than is commonly supposed. To be sure, rapid growth in emerging markets, combined with a long-term outlook of lower growth in most developed economies, is pushing companies to globalize faster. But metrics on the globalization of markets indicate that only 10 to 25 percent of trade, capital, information, and people flows actually cross national borders. And international flows are generally dampened significantly by geographic distance as well as cross-country differences. US trade with Chile, for example, is only 6 percent of its likely extent if Chile were as close to the United States as Canada is. Furthermore, if two countries don’t share a common language, that alone slashes the trade volume between them by 30 percent.

An appreciation of how distances and differences influence international ties helps explain some of the organizational and other stresses that established multinationals are encountering as they accelerate their expansion to emerging markets (for more, see “Parsing the growth advantage of emerging-market companies,” on mckinseyquarterly.com). Emerging Asia is farther away—and more different, along multiple dimensions—than more familiar markets in Europe and North America. Japanese multinationals face a distinctive set of cultural, political, and economic issues that complicate their efforts to expand abroad.

Exaggerated notions of what globalization means—what I call “globaloney”—are also apparent in prevailing ideas about global leadership. Some training centers aim to develop “transcultural” leaders who can manage effectively anywhere in the world as soon as they step off the plane. Yet scholars of cross-cultural management suggest that objectives like this are unrealistic.

While global leadership is still a nascent field, common conceptions of it already incorporate myths or half-truths that rest on misconceptions about globalization. Correcting these myths should help the efforts of companies to increase their global-leadership capacity.

Myth #1

My company, at least, is global.

When I present data on the limited extent of international interactions to executives in large multinational corporations, a typical reaction is that even if markets are not that integrated, their firm certainly is. Such claims, however, seldom hold up to scrutiny. Less than 2 percent of firms onFortune’s Global 500 list of the world’s largest companies, for example, derive more than 20 percent of their revenues from three distinct regions.³ Most firms also remain quite domestically rooted in other aspects of their business, such as where they do their production or R&D or where their shareholders live. BMW, for instance, derived 51 percent of its sales revenue from outside of Europe in 2011, but still maintained roughly 64 percent of its production and 73 percent of its workforce in Germany.⁴

An accurate read on the extent of globalization in one’s firm and industry is certainly a crucial requirement for global leadership. Also invaluable is an appreciation of the extent to which the people within your company are far from completely globalized. Consider just a few pertinent facts. Trust, which some have called the currency of leadership, declines sharply with distance. Research conducted in Western Europe suggests that people trust citizens of their own country twice as much as they trust people from neighboring countries and that they place even less trust in people farther away. Turning to information flows—also central to leadership—people get as much as 95 percent of their news from domestic sources,⁵ which devote most of their coverage to domestic stories. Similarly, 98 percent of telephone-calling minutes and 85 percent of Facebook friends are domestic.

The persistent rootedness of both firms and employees has the surprising implication that global leaders should not seek to sever or hide their own roots to become global citizens. Rather, they should embrace “rooted cosmopolitanism” by nurturing their own roots and branching out beyond them to connect with counterparts elsewhere who, like themselves, are deeply rooted in distinct places and cultures. Indeed, studies of expatriate performance confirm that expats who identify strongly with both their home and host cultures perform better than those who identify only with one or with neither.⁶

This rooted-cosmopolitan approach also accords better with research showing that people can become “biculturals,” with a truly deep understanding of two cultures,⁷ but probably can’t entirely internalize three, which implies that four is out of the question. Facing such limitations, attempts to become global by breaking free from one’s roots seem more likely to lead to symmetric detachment—a lack of meaningful ties to any place—than to symmetric attachment everywhere.

Myth #2

Global leadership is developed through experience.

Leadership scholars have argued that experience contributes some 80 percent to learning about global leadership.⁸ My own investigations of senior executives’ perceptions of globalization, however, indicate that experience, while required, is not sufficient for the development of an accurate global mind-set.

To illustrate, in a survey I asked readers of Harvard Business Review to estimate a set of basic values about the internationalization of product, capital, information, and people flows. The respondents overestimated these values, on average, by a factor of three. And, more interesting from the standpoint of leadership development, the magnitude of the readers’ errors increased with their years of experience and the seniority of their titles. The CEOs in the sample overestimated the values by a factor of four!

Why might experience correlate with less rather than more accurate perceptions about globalization? One possibility is projection bias. Senior executives and CEOs tend to lead far more global lives than most of the world’s population, often touching several continents in any given month. Ninety percent of the people on this planet will never venture beyond the borders of the countries where they were born.

If experience alone is insufficient to develop accurate perspectives about globalization, what do executives need to learn off the job? A starting point is an accurate read on the magnitude and patterns of international interactions within their industries and companies. Rooted maps, described in my 2011 McKinsey Quarterly article,⁹ can help executives to visualize and interpret these patterns.

Global leaders also need to understand the factors that shape international interactions in their businesses, by undertaking a structured examination of cross-country differences and their effects. That is what a survey of academic thought leaders recently concluded should be the focus of the globalization of business school curricula.¹⁰

Conceptual learning of this sort is a complement to—one might even say a precondition of, though certainly not a substitute for —experiential learning. When executives can fit their personal experiences into an accurate global perspective defined by conceptual frameworks¹¹ and hard data, they can gain more from their typically limited time abroad and avoid costly mistakes.

Myth #3

Development is all about building standard global-leadership competencies.

Many lists of global-leadership competencies have been developed in business and in academia, but these provide only a starting point for thinking through the right competency model to apply within a particular company. Customization and focus are essential. In part, that’s because even though literally hundreds of competencies have been proposed, a lot of these lists have important gaps or fail to go far enough toward incorporating unique requirements for global leadership. That isn’t surprising, since the lists often grow out of research on domestic leadership.

One large review of the literature summarizes it in three core competencies (self-awareness, engagement in personal transformation, and inquisitiveness), seven mental characteristics (optimism, self-regulation, social-judgment skills, empathy, motivation to work in an international environment, cognitive skills, and acceptance of complexity and its contradictions), and three behavioral competencies (social skills, networking skills, and knowledge).¹² To my mind, most of these would also be useful for domestic leadership. Only the motivational point seems distinctively international, although one or two more (such as acceptance of complexity and its contradictions) clearly seem more important in the international domain than domestically.

Typical competency lists also tend to focus on cultural differences, missing other components critical to global leadership. Economic differences (such as the challenges of fast versus slow-growth markets) and administrative and political differences (including the extent of state intervention) are among the other factors that can cause leaders to stumble in unfamiliar contexts.

Perhaps most important, standard lists of global-leadership competencies reinforce a one-size-fits-all view of global leadership that is inconsistent with the reality of globalization and the mix of work global leaders do. A company may find it useful to recruit for and develop a small set of key competencies across all of its global leaders. Yet the diversity of roles that fall under the broad category of global leadership argues for substantial customization around that common base. At the corporate level, this implies developing a portfolio of competencies rather than an interchangeable set of global leaders who have all met a single set of requirements.

Operationally, an ideal training program would therefore include a geographic dimension and prepare people for dealing with particular origin–destination pairs. For example, a Japanese executive going to work in the United States would probably benefit from preparing for the higher level of individualism there. One preparing for China would in all likelihood benefit more from understanding that “uncertainty avoidance” is less pronounced there, so executives must be ready for faster-paced change and greater levels of experimentation.

Customizing training-and-development efforts at the level of individual country pairs is likely to run up quickly against resource constraints. However, the fact that 50 to 60 percent of trade, foreign direct investment, telephone calls, and migration are intraregional suggests that, in many cases, customizing at the regional level is sufficient. Firms will need a mix of regional and global leaders. Regional leadership is presumably less difficult and costly to develop than global leadership.

At a more granular level, competencies can also be customized to the requirements of specific executives’ roles. The dimensions to consider include depth in particular markets versus breadth across markets, the frequency and duration of physical presence abroad, and a focus on internal versus external interactions.¹³

Myth #4

Localization is the key.

Some firms, rather than trying to fulfill the requirements of one-size-fits-all lists of global-leadership competencies, have embraced the opposite extreme of localization. Significant localization has taken place in the management teams of foreign subsidiaries. According to one study, the proportion of expatriates in senior-management roles in multinationals in the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and in the Middle East declined from 56 percent to 12 percent from the late 1990s to the late 2000s.¹⁴

Within this broad trend, some firms still rely too much on expatriates and need to localize more, but localization can be—and, in some instances, clearly has been—taken too far. Giving up on expatriation implies giving up on building the diverse bench of global leaders that CEOs say they require. Persistent distance effects, particularly those associated with information flows, do confirm the general wisdom: global leaders need experience working for extended periods in foreign locations because living abroad creates permanent knowledge and ties that bind. Extreme localization leaves no room for the development of leaders of this sort.

Executives report that “it takes at least three months to become immersed in a geographical location and appreciate how the culture, politics, and history of a region affect business there.”¹⁵This judgment accords with the finding that living abroad expands your mental horizons and increases your creativity. However, merely traveling abroad doesn’t produce these benefits.¹⁶

Long stays abroad are costly: traditional expatriation typically costs three times an employee’s salary at home. Nonetheless, firms that really wish to prioritize global-leadership development will need to allocate the required resources. Better metrics to track the returns on such investments may help. One survey indicates that just 14 percent of companies have any mechanisms in place to track returns on international assignments. Most of these companies use metrics tracking only business generated from an assignment.¹⁷

Better career management could help capture and measure returns on investments in developing global leaders. Evidence indicates that in European and US multinationals, expatriates still take longer, on average, to ascend the corporate ladder than managers who continue to work within their home countries. That indicates a deficiency in this area, as well as an incentive problem.¹⁸

Rather than pure localization, firms should embrace the practice of rotation, which provides the foreign work experience—not just travel—essential to the development of global leaders. And don’t make the mistake of viewing expatriation as being solely about sending people from headquarters to emerging markets. The same requirement for immersion outside of one’s home market also applies to the cultivation of global leaders recruited in emerging markets. For these executives, time spent in more established markets can, on the return home, reinforce both local- and global-leadership capacity.¹⁹

Myth #5

We can attract the best talent.

Nationals from key growth markets are underrepresented in the leadership ranks of many Western companies, so hiring future global leaders from these areas is critical. Yet recruiting top talent there is becoming increasingly difficult, as described in “How multinationals can attract the talent they need.” I recall from my own youth in India how foreign multinationals used to be unequivocally the preferred employers, prized for their superior professionalism, brands, technologies, scale, and so on. Now I see that Indian companies have raised their game, putting pressure on multinationals in local talent markets.

The implications for global-leadership development are threefold. First, shifting to the rooted-cosmopolitan ideal described here is critical to attracting and developing executives from emerging markets. This approach makes it clear that ambitious young Indians, for example, proud of their country, don’t have to refashion themselves as Westerners to succeed in Western multinationals.

Second, escalating competition for talent in growth markets implies that it is even more urgent for multinationals to diversify their leadership teams quickly. One of the main advantages of local firms is the fact that young recruits often can see, in the faces of the current leadership, that if they excel they have a clear shot at rising to the top. In many multinationals, such promises will require a leap of faith until diversity is significantly expanded. And the local competitors’ ongoing international expansion gradually diminishes another advantage of foreign multinationals: the ability to offer a wide range of global opportunities.

Third, incorporating more local talent will require a greater emphasis on developing people. Tight talent markets and overstretched education systems imply, frankly, that firms hire some people who are not up to the standards they would prefer to uphold. Among the great strengths of India’s IT firms is their ability to convert such not quite fully prepared talent into effective performers on a large scale.

It is indeed in today’s large emerging markets that the war for talent, identified by McKinsey back in 1997, has become most acute.

Addressing the global-leadership gap must be an urgent priority for companies expanding their geographic reach. Predictable biases rooted in widespread misperceptions about globalization are hampering their efforts to develop capable global leaders.


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12 Watermelon Recipes 07-02

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12 Watermelon Recipes to Sweeten Your Summer

We’re excited about all the possibilities that summer opens up in terms of food, fun, and fashion. And what’s more summery than a crisp and refreshing watermelon (seed-spitting optional)? We’ve decided to declare July Watermelon Month, and for our first watermelon-related post, we’re bringing you 12 delicious recipes to make your summer festivities extra juicy.

1. Edible Rubik’s Cube: This is the perfect combination of beautiful and delicious, with just the right dash of geeky. Yum! (Recipe and photo: The Family Kitchen)

2. Watermelon “Fire and Ice” Salsa: We’re loving this fresh, summery take on salsa. Just add chips and lounge by the pool! (Recipe and photo:Gimme Some Oven)

3. Watermelon-Jalapeno Margaritas: *New favorite cocktail alert!* Smoky, spicy, sweet, and sour, this drink is an absolute must. (Recipe and photo: Boulder Locavore)

4. Watermelon Jello Slices: We consider Jaymee Sire our jello shotexpert, so when she made these watermelon-mint jello slices (complete with rind!), we basically swooned. (Recipe and photo: E is for Eat)

5. Watermelon, Radish and Arugula Salad: This pretty salad is perfect if you’re in the mood to get gourmet. This intriguing flavor combo and elegant presentation will definitely impress any guests you have this summer. (Recipe and photo: Say Cheese)

6. Watermelon Mojito Pops: Easy, fruity, and boozy, these cocktail-inspired pops are sure to be a hit at your next BBQ! (Recipe and photo:The Shiksa in the Kitchen)

7. Watermelon Balsamic Appetizer: Simple and bite-sized, this appetizer combines two fresh flavors that are perfect for summer.(Recipe and photo: Show Food Chef)

8. Watermelon Pie: Cool off with this watermelon-inspired, sherbert-based dessert. We’re thinking it would be a huge hit if you’re having a family event with lot of kids running around. (Recipe and photo: Make and Takes)

9. Watermelon Cupcakes: Not only do these adorable cupcakes look like watermelons, they taste like watermelons too! (Recipe and photo:Bakingdom)

10. Watermelon and Mint Ice Cubes: Flavored ice cubes are a win because they keep your drink cool and they add flavor instead of watering it down. The combination of watermelon and mint is refreshing and perfect for summertime. (Recipe and photo: Gastronomer's Guide)

11. “Mini Watermelons”: This quick dessert presentation is too adorable to resist. You know anything “mini” is a big hit over here at Brit HQ ;)(Recipe and photo: This Chick Cooks)

12. Watermelon Granita: While this site is in Polish, this granita looked to crisp and cool not to include! Google Translate works pretty well here, and it’s pretty easy to guess the rest. (Hint: there’s watermelon in there!)(Recipe and photo: Magazyn)

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Frugal Innovation 06-02

 Frugal Innovation: Lessons from Carlos Ghosn, CEO, Renault-Nissan

by Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, Simone Ahuja  |   6:00 AM July 2, 2012

Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO of the Renault-Nissan Alliance, famously coined the term "frugal engineering" in 2006. He was impressed by Indian engineers' ability to innovate cost-effectively and quickly under severe resource constraints. And under Ghosn's leadership , Renault-Nissan has proactively embraced frugal engineering and become one of the world's leading producers of both electric cars as well as low-cost vehicles — two of the fastest growing and most promising market segments in the global automotive sector.

Recently, in New York, we participated in a panel discussion organized by the Asia Society called "Jugaad Innovation: Reigniting American Ingenuity" (you can watch a video here). We were honored to have Ghosn as our key panelist. During the panel discussion, Ghosn explained that Western automakers must sacrifice the "bigger is better" R&D model and adapt to frugal engineering.

In today's resource-constrained environment, Western firms are feeling the growing pressure to "do more with less" — that is, deliver more value to customers at less cost. CEOs of these firms can emulate four best practices initiated by Carlos Ghosn at Renault-Nissan:

1) Create "good enough" products that deliver high value for money: Over-engineering products is no longer sustainable — both for economical and environmental reasons. Rather, Western firms need to make simplicity a key tenet of their innovation process by developing "good enough" offerings that deliver significant value for money to cost-conscious consumers. For example, in 2004, Renault launched Logan, a small, no-frills family car. At a starting price of $10,000, the car is built with drastically simplified product architecture and minimal components. In addition to a stripped-down, modern design, Logan is reliable and energy efficient. As a result, it has become Renault's best-selling car across recession-weary European markets as well as in many emerging markets. Building on Logan's success, Renault has now developed an entire line of low-cost vehicles (under the brand Dacia) all modeled after Logan's technology platform.

2) Foster healthy rivalry among global R&D teams: CEOs may find it difficult to persuade R&D teams in the US and Europe — used to abundant resources and pushing the technology frontier for its own sake — to embrace frugal innovation. Yet engineers and scientists love challenges. Western CEOs can create challenges for global R&D teams by introducing artificial constraints that foster a sense of urgency and healthy rivalry that can lead to frugal solutions. In one instance, Ghosn requested three different R&D teams — one each from Japan, France, and India — to come up an engineering solution for the same technical problem. The teams came up with solutions of equal quality — yet the Indian engineers' solution cost only one-fifth of what the French and Japanese engineers' solutions cost.

3) Tap partners in emerging markets who excel at innovating more with less. Rather than relying exclusively on in-house R&D teams to develop frugal solutions, companies in developed economies need to connect with entrepreneurial organizations in emerging markets that have a knack for innovating on a shoestring. Recognizing that even its least-expensive pickup truck was five times costlier than the Indian market could afford, Nissan established an R&D and manufacturing joint venture with Ashok Leyland, an Indian commercial vehicle manufacturer. Ghosn recounts with humor how Dr. V. Sumantran, Non-Executive Vice-Chairman of Ashok Leyland, paid a visit to the basement of Nissan's technical center in Atsugi, Japan and pointed to a four-generation old Nissan pick-up truck. He told Nissan's baffled head of product planning: "Give us the design specs of this vehicle and our Indian engineers will use it as baseline to develop a great-looking yet affordable and robust pick-up truck fit for the tough Indian roads." And they did it. The result is DOST, an entry-level pick-up truck with a starting price of Rs 3.7 lakhs ($6,600). Since its launch in September 2011, DOST has garnered more than a third of India's hypercompetitive light commercial vehicles market. The Ashok Leyland-Nissan joint venture now plans to introduce DOST in other emerging markets in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.

4) Send your top executives to emerging markets to cultivate the jugaad mindset: 
Ultimately frugal innovation is not just about doing more with less. It's about learning how to innovate under severe constraints and turn extreme adversity into an opportunity for growth. But it's hard for Western executives to cultivate this frugal, flexible and inclusive mindset — which we call jugaad — in resource-rich and relatively stable Western economies. That's why Ghosn dispatched Gérard Detourbet, a senior executive in Paris who was in charge of Renault-Nissan's entry-level cars, to India. From his new base in Chennai, Detourbet will be leading the development of a "global small car" — an entry-level car priced at around Rs 3 lakhs ($5,200) that will first be commercialized in India and then introduced in other emerging markets like Brazil, Indonesia, and South Africa. When Detourbet returns to Renault-Nissan's headquarters in Paris, he is poised to bring with him the jugaad mindset he honed in India. As Ghosn, a Brazilian-born French national of Lebanese descent, explains: "We don't go to emerging markets to just bring back a product, but to learn something — like new processes or a whole new mindset."

To win in today's resource-constrained global economy, Western CEOs must follow Ghosn's lead in embracing frugal innovation. By inculcating the jugaad mindset within their enterprise, Western CEOs will be able to build a resilient organization that can deliver significantly more value to customers using fewer resources.

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