CIM Sri Lanka Annual Conference concludes on a high note

The Chartered Institute of Marketing Sri Lanka (CIM SL) held its annual flagship event, the CIM Annual Conference, on 28 and 29 June, at the Waters Edge Hotel in Battaramulla, under the theme ‘Disruptive Innovation’. 

Held for the 16th successive year, the conference brought together the country’s professional and business community in one forum in order to share the experience and knowledge of eminent foreign and local industry experts such as Dr. Prafulla Agnihotri – Founder Director of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Tirchy, Professor Wong Poh Kam - Professor at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, Dr. Gemma Calvert - Professor of Marketing at the Nanyang Technical University, Singapore, Fathhi Mohamad - Founder of PickMe and Irfan Ahmed - Founder of the Innovation Quotient. The Chief Guest of the event was Carl Cruz- Unilever Sri Lanka Chairman, while the Guest of Honour was CIM Chief Executive Chris Daly. 

The keynote speaker Dr. Prafulla Agnihotri, who spoke on the role of disruptive innovation in generating economic growth, defined disruptive innovation as a process where a small company identifies a niche market and develops products and services at a lower price and offers it to customers who were previously not able to enjoy it. 

An example of a disruptive brand cited by Dr. Agnihotri was the popular Indian detergent brand Nirma. The company was able to cater to the needs of the rural poor by offering a low-price product that was affordable, available and convenient. 

Dr. Agnihotri stressed that in countries such as India and China, disruptive innovation has led to newer segments of consumers entering the market and higher purchasing power of consumers which has resulted in the overall growth of the market size.

The Chief Guest at the event, Unilever Sri Lanka Chairman Carl Cruz, stated that many organisations make the mistake of innovating products and services that are too sophisticated, expensive and complicated for their consumers to use. Innovation that is disruptive provides a whole new population of consumers at the bottom of the market access to services and products that were only available to those with greater wealth and skills.    

Dr. Gemma Calvert, Professor of Marketing at Nanyang Technical University, Singapore, stated that understanding what consumers wanted was the biggest success of disruptive innovation. Explaining this further, Dr. Calvert said: “The subconscious brain is very powerful; it has inspired marketers to apply the methodologies of neuroscience to receive consumer insights and market research.” 

He went on to state that today Neuromarketing was one of the fastest growing sectors in the market research arena. It is able to capture the consumer’s subconscious responses, emotions, biases and attitudes to brands. It is able to examine whether the new products will be acceptable and if it is something they will want even if they have no prior experience of it. 

Poh Kam Wong, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Innovation Strategy, National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, spoke on ‘Innovation through Imitation’. The speaker brought in live examples of organisations which have used game-changing strategies to bring in a more innovative culture and also drew the attention of the audience towards the process of changing a company’s culture and what companies should do to create an innovation culture in organisations.   

The sessions were followed by lively panel discussions on the application of disruptive innovation within the Sri Lankan context. The panellists included Dr. Gehan Dhameeth - Assistant Professor of Business Wells College,  Deepal Sooriyaarachchi - Management Consultant, Author, Trainer and Speaker, Shea Wickramasinghe - Managing Director of Ceylon Biscuits Ltd. (CBL), Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana - Founder of WSO2, Mano Sekaram - Chairman SLASSCOM, CEO/CO/Founder of 99X Technology, Indrajit Wickramasinghe - CEO of Union Bank. 

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) UK is the world’s largest professional body for marketing, represented locally by CIM Sri Lanka. CIM Sri Lanka strives to continuously support and uplift Sri Lanka’s marketing profession through education and a host of training and development initiatives.