For Rajiv Narang, founder and chief executive officer, Erehwon Innovation Consulting, fuelling the growth of innovative leaders and organisations has been a passion for a long seventeen years. Ask some of his clients, that include Novartis, Nokia, Development Bank of Singapore, Bank of America, ESPN, International Flavors and Fragrances, Max New York Life, Unilever, Motorola, Bharti-Airtel and Marico Industries, among others, and they will tell you that the man is good at his job.

At the recently concluded '3rd India Innovation Summit' in Bangalore, Erehwon Innovation Consulting was among the knowledge partners of the Confederation of Indian Industry.

In this email interview with Shobha Warrier, Rajiv Narang talks about innovation, Erehwon and how innovative Indians are. Excerpts:

How and when did your interest in innovation start?

Creativity was my passion since my school days. I always wanted to do things that were 'different' -- like participating in drama/theatre. Anything out of the ordinary attracted me.

One-and-a-half years after joining the corporate world, I realised, it was not the right place for nurturing innovation. Inspired by Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Edward de Bono's Teaching Thinking, I -- along with a few like-minded friends -- decided to take the plunge. Our mission was to ignite imagination in children and structure strategic thinking in schools.

This was something that we missed in school, and in 1991 Erehwon developed a programme in creativity for schools. And that was the beginning.

Is it the creative mind behind innovations that attracted you?

Well, creativity is the foundation of innovation. Creativity is giving expression to one's uniqueness, a channel to express one's views and that is exactly what fascinates me. A creative, constructive and positive mind attracts me.

Have you always been looking for and encouraging innovation?

Yes always. When I say "yes", I mean at every level. I have not only been encouraging innovation, I have been supportive morally and in every way I can.  Criticality will never come to me. Despite odds I will be part of the process. Intrinsically, I have the ability to see value in them.

Why have you only been looking for innovators? Didn't you feel the urge to innovate?

We chose the role of a catalyst -- to multiply the number of innovators.  I am not interested in doing one thing for too long a period. Being engaged in different fields is what keeps me going. 

As an enabler, we are creating innovators.  It's about enabling and creating movement of innovators and innovations. Erehwon's approach to innovation is enquire about the methodology and the mechanism. Is it innovative enough and is it consistent and continuous?

How and why did you come up with such a name (Erehwon is 'nowhere' spelt backwards)?

At college quiz shows, one of my favourite questions was -- Who wrote the book Erehwon? (Samuel Butler is the answer).

Searching for the organisation's name was a pretty clear and quick process. It was a journey from 'nowhere' to 'now here'. I wish we had left it at Erehwon and not added 'Innovation Consulting'.

How satisfying is fuelling the growth of other innovative leaders?

To me, satisfaction is when an innovation comes alive, when impossible becomes possible. Erehwon is constantly enhancing and developing methodologies, which can provide hitherto unknown answers. We get this fantastic feeling of accomplishment when we create next generation leaders.

What do you look for in an innovator?

Innovators have three unique attributes:

In an organisation, a senior manager is excited by the size of his kingdom -- the number of people who report to him and the brand he works for. The bigger the brand and more the number of people, the greater is the importance of his position.

However, an innovator is not excited about the number of people and the size of the brand. For him , it's the size of the challenge. He is driven by the prospect of converting a Rs 50 crore (Rs 500 million) brand to a Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion).

The second attribute is his willingness to take personal risks, to put his credibility at stake.

Innovators also possess the will to deal with ambiguity. People who have lived and come through successfully in their personal lives have greater confidence to deal with ambiguity.

How do you decide whether an idea is interesting enough? Also, what about Tehelka fascinated you the most?

We are interested in 'orbit shifting challenge', as there doesn't exist a current know-how to achieve the same.

Now, why orbit shift challenge? Many companies start at zero and reach the stage of diminishing point, Erehwon helps them identify a new orbit and deal with the new challenge and facilitate the journey to get there.

In the case of Tehelka, as a newspaper they had a certain ideology and challenge in the society to be accepted.  Erehwon's had a challenge in hand to make this happen.

Our success was when the paper was launched.

How much innovation is needed for the growth of a company?

Innovation is a tool or lever for growth.  Innovation is a means and not an end. The differentiation is the growth one achieves.

Look at poverty, solutions to alleviate poverty exist. However, can we quadruple our efforts?  Innovation has an output that is tangible, and in a society this output is the quality of life.

Are Indian companies innovative?

Indian companies are great good juggaads, which means good at creative problem fixing, but very bad in orbit shifting innovation.

Companies do not create business models or products and spend their energy in the low end of the value chain and lose out the high end in creating big opportunities.

Fortunately a new breed of companies is emerging. This new wave of companies --  Bharti, CavinKare, etc -- are not afraid of giants and are daring to go and think differently.

It is not about following benchmarks; it is about the creation of benchmarks. Courage is essential for innovation. The hope is very high and more and more companies are acting fast.

Compared to the West, why are there so few innovators in India?

India has been a democratic country with a socialistic mindset.  We have encouraged innovation fundamentally.  A socialistic bend of mind coupled with the colonial hangover has resulted in Indians developing a subservient attitude.  This has resulted in the creation of a society that rigorously confirms to hierarchy.  This way of limited thinking has suppressed the creative abilities of many an Indian innovator.

What is the right ambience for innovation to flourish?

It should for one encourage innovation. Environment where one is able to challenge one's superior on an opinion and do so in a transparent and fearless manner.

Any company with an inward-looking, defensive vision is non-innovative. It fosters an environment of fear, which results in limiting the powers of innovation in the organisation. This results in an inward-looking organisation, which is not open to outside ideas that can be refreshing. Organisations must enjoy doing new things and be excited by challenges.

You have experience in not only business innovation but social innovation too. Please explain social innovation.

Social innovation is something like poverty eradication and imparting education. Here the outputs of innovation are different.

We worked with the Karnataka government in the primary education sector and designed a strategy to build competency in students to deal with problem solving and learning different languages.

We are also working with GTZ (funding cum consulting organisation) - a German equivalent of US Aid, which aims to speed up the delivery of health services to rural markets.