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The way forward for Sri Lanka is with education, global awareness and participation and innovation that attract investment. Most sectors in Sri Lanka have now become data and computer-based with technology building bridges within societies to support innovation. The education system, in particular, needs to concentrate more on encouraging innovative thinking.
Sufficiently-educated IT professionals complete with proper education, global awareness and participation and innovation have entered industry and the government sectors. They are already absorbed in industry in various capacities. But it appears hardly any encouragement or support is available for innovation.
From the angle of an investor, there apparently is some hesitation. Perhaps, fear of failure may be the cause. However, available talent needs to be diverted towards innovations. Specific products to meet specific needs should be the goal. In this context, disruptive technology could play a leading role.
“Disruptive innovation, describes a process by which a product or service takes root initially in simple applications at the bottom of a market and then relentlessly moves up market, eventually displacing established competitors,” Clayton Christensen(Harvard Business Review, 2006).
A disruptive innovation allows a whole new population of consumers at the bottom of a market, access to a product or service that remained accessible only to a limited few. Among the characteristics of disruptive businesses are: lower gross margins, smaller target markets, and simpler products and services. Perhaps, these characteristics are unlikely to be attractive to firms soaring higher in the market, creating space at the bottom of the market for new disruptive competitors to emerge.
Disruptors are also innovators. However, all innovators are not disruptors. As makers and builders, innovation and disruption look similar. According to think tanks, disruption, on its part, makes us change the way we think, behave, do business, learn and go about our day-to-day. Disruption displaces an existing market, industry, or technology and produces something new and more efficient and worthwhile. Smartphones and other mobile devices are now a foundation for the launch of many disruptors.
Combining connectivity with the internet, high bandwidth data, high definition displays and cameras, access to outside data sources including GPS and search, and sensors, they seem to be rapidly growing in numbers. The mobile revolution appears to be disrupting the supply chain of a considerable range of different industries. A combination of component technologies, networks, and app stores drive these innovations. However, there are also software based applications developed.
Innovation or the idea of introducing something new is not totally new. It existed through the ages. But innovations with technology or innovative technology, is new. When technological innovations get transferred into commercial products, the results affect the entire business process and the business environment changes.
Depending on customer acceptance of a product developed, the demand may exceed supply, as has been witnessed with products that appeared on the markets to disappear no sooner they came in. However, more and more of the same thing would soon lose the glamour and the glitter. To an enterprising business personality, this would be the ideal climate to ‘make hay’ with more innovations.
Who innovates? People innovate, not the organisation or the business concern. People engineer innovations using theories or concepts, together with their own creativity. Innovation is often based on improvements to what exists and are practically, combined efforts sharing information and working in collaboration.
Combined or collaborative, innovations are not easy. Novelty needs to be maintained. Therefore, they need time, careful thought and consideration and are expensive. Besides, there is no guarantee with hundred percent successes. Failures are likely – at any stage of the product process or even with customer acceptance. In the event, who takes the responsibility? Innovation has to be in an atmosphere of patient tolerance and acceptance as a step towards success.
According to an industry expert, “Sri Lanka could become an ‘Apparel Isle’ similar to Silicon Valley by getting ahead of the innovation curve”. Innovation could also be a key component of a strategy to take the apparel industry forward.
However, breaking an innovative technology into the apparel industry would be no easy task. Yet, there is belief that if the industry is to survive, the focus should be on disruptive concepts, and all future investments should be in favour of innovation, likely to become part of the next generation assets. This thinking should not be limited to the apparel sector alone. It applies elsewhere as well.
(The writer is the Dean/International at SLIIT.)
