Gravity offers lessons in innovation

What does your firm do?
Our firm, Gravity Innovation Consulting (www.gravity-innovation.com), is best viewed as “the doctor for innovative organisations”. Organisations come to us to get a check-up evaluation from all angles, including innovation strategy, product development process, organisation structure, teamwork, talent utilisation, and so on.
We also take this time to interview the executives to get a clear understanding about the major symptoms of their firms that led them to come to us in the first place, and also their visions – how they want to see their firms a few years from now.
After we understand the context and the firms evaluated, we then proceed to put together a proper action plan aimed at getting the firms back on track toward organisation excellence once deployed.
We also coach executives on various subjects centred around building sustainable innovative organisations – how you apply your knowledge and expertise to help Thai companies become more innovative.

How do you apply your knowledge and expertise to help Thai companies become more innovative?
Gravity applies our expertise to three areas within an organisation.
First, for the corporate level, we help redesign the existing organisational structure, teamwork and culture to be more suitable for creativity and innovation to thrive.
Secondly, for executive and leadership, we coach them in |the best practices of effectively using their talent pool, empowering their organisation, and building a deeper bench of leadership in the pipeline. Finally, for the “innovation engine” within an organisation, we coach department directors and team leaders in the best practices of steering ideas with potential into real world products, and incubating innovation through |carefully crafted development phases.
What is your mission? What are the challenges?
My mission is to help Thai businesses stay competitive in this era of innovation economy.
While I prefer the top-down approach within an organisation for coherence and synergy reasons, when it comes to the national level and beyond, I deeply believe in the power of a bottom-up approach – helping a multitude of contrasting innovative organisations grow simultaneously and see how a few of them ultimately stand out – the survival of the fittest, if you will.
Thailand is relatively strong in many aspects, but the challenge is that when it comes to innovation, we don’t seem to have much exposure to world-class innovation or R&D processes, or innovative organisation designing and leading.
This is exactly where Gravity comes in; we help leverage Thai businesses to achieve their full innovation potential through our innovation process and innovative organisation expertise. Furthermore, we help executives sharpen their innovation strategies and understand their power to lead and inspire effectively.

Can you offer some advice for Thai firms looking to become more innovative?
Possessing knowledge and skills in several fields, and being creative and open-minded so that they can be “cross-pollinated” to create a unique solution to elegantly solve a problem are the keys to being innovative for individuals. Leonardo da Vinci is probably the best example for this, so are Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs.
For a firm, which is a synergic group of individuals, it needs a little more on top of that to constantly give out high-impact innovations.
It needs the right kind of corporate infrastructure, namely: visionary leaders, decentralised organisation structure, effective innovation process, and smart innovation strategy.
So in sum, what Thai firms need to be innovative are: creativity, ability to “cross-pollinate”, and the right infrastructure.

Can you share your broader view on the innovation landscape in Thailand?
In order to be economically strong, Thailand needs to be innovative more in the upstream – I’m talking about technology and product R&D. These days in Thailand, we see a lot of downstream innovation in marketing, packaging and distribution. I don’t really see innovation at any level beyond that, which has a substantial impact on the Thai economy.
South Korea and Japan, for example, have a lot of marketing or packaging innovation too, but what sets them apart is the ability to innovate at deeper levels and leverage their innovation engine to boost their economic and technical advancement.

What advice and words of inspiration do you have for Thai youth for their future career?
Know your core competencies, and have a dream – a big one. And don’t limit your view to your local economy.
Look out for global opportunities. You’ll be surprised how much is in store for those with talent and ambition.