Thursday, 31 October 2013

Innovate by adapting to the environment

It is all about utilizing tools and ideas within new contexts and situations. Mc Donald sells vegetarian burgers in India, Pizza hut sells vegetarian Pizzas. Whenever any foreign car maker enters India, they adapt their car designs to make it suitable for Indian roads and families. Special types of education are adapted for children with special needs.
Kellogg’s failed miserably after it launched in India. They were the first to introduce branded corn flakes for the Indian middle class. With the increasing number of urban women going to work, it seemed Kellogg’s cornflakes are just the “right fit” for the situation, but it failed. What was wrong? Kellogg’s corn flakes were meant for cold milk, but Indians like hot milk. It is only after making a cereal suitable for hot milk that Kellogg’s started to get accepted by Indians.
If a product is not tailor made for the situation, it could lead to failures; at times innovative adaptation is needed to enhance acceptability of products. One American company tried to sell tables in Japan, the height of the table was 29-inch while the average table height in Japan is 21 inches because Japanese sit on the floor at the table and do not use chairs. General Motors introduced the Nova in Latin America.  Nova means, “it doesn’t go” in Spanish.  The car had terrible sales. GM finally figured out the problem, renamed the car Caribe and immediately started getting accepted.
Charles Darwin said “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”Human race has to innovative quickly to adapt to the changing global climate.

Some companies in India have started to go green. Bajaj Auto launched innovative eco-friendly auto rickshaws (Three wheelers used for public transport), Lipton replaced wooden pallets with “slip-sheets” to ship teas.  It is us who has to drive the change. Try to adapt, improvise and conserve in every possible way. Nation’s resources, natural resources are an imperative for our survival.
A hotel in Copenhagen found out an alternate way of producing electricity for the hotel. They designed an innovative free meal offer for any guest who is able to produce electricity for the hotel on an exercise bike attached to a generator.

You can go to Google and type – best eco practices, then find out how many practices you can adapt as your contribution towards a greener earth. 

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