Tata Motor Inc. What Is

¶ … Tata Motor Inc. What is innovation? The business scenario Innovation in Tata Innovation at Tata through the TSC strategy The culture of creative dissatisfaction Leadership as the foundation of innovation Hiring the right people. The use of social media for tapping as well as encouraging collaboration Scalon, J (2009). How to Build a Culture of Innovation In this paper, we discuss the Tata Motor Inc.

innovative process with a sharp focus on the new invention of the Nano Car (world's cheapest car).The case study addresses the leading and management of innovative change and creative processes. The following items are reviewed: the innovative process; the contribution of individuals; cross functionality; technical communication; organizational culture and characteristics; leadership; social responsiveness; and market changes. Introduction An overview of Tata Motor Inc. Tata Motors Ltd. is a multinational corporation that has it's headquarter in Mumbai, India.

The Company is part of the Tata Group which was formerly called TELCO (TATA Engineering and Locomotive Company). Tata Motors is the largest automobile company in India and had consolidated revenue of $20 billion in the period 2009 and 2010. The company is an industry leader in the commercial vehicles and forms part of ten top three manufacturer of passenger vehicles. The company also manufactures vehicles falling in the compact, utility and midsized vehicle segments. The firm is the global fourth largest manufacturer of trucks.

It is also the second global largest manufacturer of buses. It also employs 24,000 people. Since its inception, the company has manufactured and produced more than four million vehicles in India alone (Imagin Mor Pty Ltd.,n.d). After its establishment in 1945 while majorly manufacturing locomotives, the firm proceeded to produce its first locomotive in 1954 in conjunction with Daimler-Benz AG ( Rodrigues,2010).

What is innovation? According to Drucker (1985) "Innovation is the specific tool of entrepreneurs, the means by which they exploit changes as an opportunity for different business or a different service." Innovation at Tata is never recent phenomenon. It is however a form of a legacy. The corporation has a culture of perpetual quest for excellence which is very highly engraved in its ethos and efforts to encourage its employees in through the years to serve its clients through a process of continuous innovation in its processes as well as products.

Through the years, Tata has effected innovation in three main areas. These are; 1. Processes 2. Products 3. People (Middleton,2008) The business scenario The automotive manufacturing sector is a very competitive one and there are multiple competitions on various areas. The current financial climate which is recessionary coupled with the poor performance of the automobile sector has led to a rise in global demand of better and fuel efficient vehicles that are affordable.

The worldwide view of India as a lucrative automobile market made it to be considered a major production as well as export hub. This was coupled with a rise in competition in the segment for passage vehicles. In response to the increasing need of the customers the Tata Motor Limited (TML) launched Tata Nano which is an efficient car costing about $2,500.The Tata Nano which is also called the ' People's car' caused a buzz in India and globally.

In order to promote the Nano as well as create publicity and awareness the TML needed a way of making the public know about the vehicle so as to dispel any fears and any misconceptions. They resorted to the use of a Web2.0 tool and made an interactive site for the Tata Nano. This enabled TML to make use of the social media networks in obtaining the necessary feedback that they got from the end-users to be used in dine tuning the manufacturing as well as the supply chain.

The solution The TSC team was able to connect with the leadership of TML over a series of corporate workshops that allowed the TCS to fully understand that the site would have to bbe developed soa s to follow the theme of the Tata nano, which is ' a high value, low TCO'. The site was developed by the TCS using Joomla an open source content management system within a period of one month. The Joomla platform made it possible to develop the site rapidly.

The TCS Innovation Lab -- Web 2.0, the TCS Performance Engineering Group, as well as the Open Source COE made it possible to successfully deploy productions within a robust application framework. The TDSC did leverage its Rapid Application Development (RAD) capabilities in order to undertake the project from commencement to finalization within a month.

The website was then integrated with other social networking sites like Facebook as well as Orkut.This facilitated the visitors to easily exchange information on the car with their own networks thus creating one of the most successful viral marketing campaigns. The statistics indicated that there were more than thirty million hits in the initial few days and more than eighty thousand car configurations. The number of individually completed surveys were more than fifteen thousand (TCS,2010).

The site also made it possible for data to be collected from the modules Car Configuration as well as the Survey Application modules to be used by the company in the analysis of market data sourced from customers. TCS therefore succeeded in creating an online presence form the Tata Nano at an optimal cost while creating interest on the car up to the time of its launch.

The benefits of the interactive website that was created by the TCS; The following were the benefits derived from the sue of the website (TSC,2010); The ability of the TML to engage with a huge customer base (Market segment) while creating a personal as well as emotional connection with the product at hand. The use of demographic data on the car model sourced through the car configuration aided in the enhancing the strategy to be used for aligning the distribution with more emphasis on the regional preferences.

The distribution strategy was important because of the fat that the demands for the car were more than the supply. The achievement of high impact at a relatively low cost as a result of employing social media tools as well as open source software.

A high level of customer satisfaction as well as viral marketing via the use of the car configurator and social network integration on the Tata Nano website Innovation in Tata Scanlon (2009) noted that cultural transformation is never possible without the good leadership of the top business executives. Tata group therefore came up with the Tata Group Innovation Forum (TGIF), which is a twelve member panel of very senior Tata Group executive as well as the CEOs of other subsidiary firms. Mr.

Sinha, the CEO of Tata Quality Management Services as well as a key member of the forum pointed out that, "TGIF's main objective is to inspire and share best practices" (Business Week, n.d).The executives too came up with other strategies in order to spur culture of innovation within the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) strategy. Innovation at Tata through the TSC strategy The initial move was for the leaders to approach the innovative problem from top down as well as bottom up approach.

Ananth Krishnan, the TCS Chief Technology Officer pointed out that this involved the establishment of formal systems aimed at encouraging the thinking as well as the processing of creative and innovative ideas. The TCS then came up with multiple channels and managers were trained on techniques of directing the ideas of the employees. There are various forms of innovation according the TCS strategy. The incremental innovations These are handled as well as funded by the relevant business units from which the ideas emanated.

Platform-level innovations These are innovations that might extend the currently existing innovation's offerings to become one of the corporations' nineteen innovations hubs. Leading-edge research centers These are centers that are focused on the research and development of key specific technology domains as well as business sectors. There are disruptive ideas that might emanate from the labs. Should one emanate from the business units, then it would be effectively directed to the laboratory and then funded via an incubator fund that is operated from the office of the Chief technology Officer.

The method through which the ideas are effectively evaluated and then subsequent funded is not as important as the fact that the employees of the TSC are aware that their ideas are highly welcome. In order to encourage innovation, the TSC has incorporated the concept of innovation into its core review process in their annual reports. This therefore makes innovation to be one of the 9 categories on which TSC employees are evaluated.

Should an employee be a winner of the firms Young Innovator Award, they will witness an increase in their salary. Reframing Ghosh (2010) pointed out that the ability to view things in a different angle is the critical aspect of the innovative process. This is referred to by Senge (2006) as the changing of one's mental model. The process of reframing is well illustrated in the case of Tata Nano car concept.

The reframers question themselves in an attempt to answer the question "why not." Tata for instant broke a century old paradigm for car manufacture by distributing the component kits for the manufacture of the Tata nano to a number of entrapreneural smaller firms could assemble closer to their customer base. This was as opposed to complete production of the car in their factories. They questioned the conventional wisdom in order to aid the firm in navigating the increasingly complex corporate environment.

The culture of creative dissatisfaction Other than the formal system of the TSC the company has taken certain key steps that are aimed at the stimulation of creative thinking. The company trains its employees so as to think about improving its products at all times. They refer to this as the culture of creative dissatisfaction. Innovation has therefore been made a key component of the training programs.

This is provided at its leadership institute (fifty senior administrators are sent here every year ) up to the "Technovator" workshop, a four-day programme in which the employees are taught on how to think creatively. Social responsiveness and technical communication The company encourages employee to take about 5 hours of their forty five hour week in doing their personal projects such as the development of a new idea or the learning of a new skill.

So as to best capture the nascent ideas, the firm launched a social network called IdeaMax which is more like Digg for employees to place and comment as well as vote on their ideas. The IdeaMax platform has collected more than 12,000 ideas a large number of which have been developed into projects. Leadership as the foundation of innovation Samson (2010) pointed out that the keys to innovation are.