Sharing some thoughts from my meeting last evening and how the Reuters DV Fellows Program is so valuable!

I was invited last evening (Sunday) for a meeting in Pune as a part of TiE for an evening with Arun Maira, the chairman of Boston Consulting Group India, who shared some of his insights on innovation to us. Some interesting learning from research conducted over time from across top universities found that;

a. Over time closed systems tend to become less capable (Second Law of Thermodynamics)
b. Open systems or Naturally Evolving Systems tend to become more capable over time

Then some thoughts on four elements that are required for any organization or business and important learning;

a. Four elements ~ Strategy, Organization, Processes & Resources
b. Learning ~

Strategy has to be "Shared Vision" or Bottom-up and not just Vision-Shared, Top Down
Organization ~ Have to be "Permeable Membranes" not closed
Processes ~ Have the "Minimum Critical Processes"
Resources ~ "Latent Resources", Allow people to Fail

Research done shows over managed, unnecessary processes, closed boundaries and having optimized resources actually kicks in the Second Law of Thermodynamics fast enough to kill or allow competitors to leverage changing dynamics.

A very interesting examples was then when a large Indian auto company had no choice to compete produced an auto from concept to production in a record 18 months due to the fact that they had the shared vision, allowed people to collaborate, put in the bare critical processes and had latent resources of trained manpower (a program put into place over time saying that when the need comes, who knows) and voila!

This is a great learning for all of us in social entrepreneurship to learn, adapt and apply to ourselves and the visions we share. Today as we look around the opportunity that everyone is after is due to the point that most individuals, corporations or institutions are not adapting fast enough to respond to change, symptoms everyone needs to introspect on.

To sum it all Arun mentioned what Deming said, "It is all about people"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming#The_Deming_System_of_Profound_Knowledge.E2.84.A2

Which is what makes the Reuters DV Fellows Program so valuable and the programs that we are pursuing! The people.