OREANDA-NEWS. Tata Group Innovation Forum (TGIF) announced the winners of the Tata Innovista 2013 at an awards ceremony held in Mumbai today. Tata Innovista is a group-wide programme held annually to encourage, recognise and showcase outstanding innovations done by Tata companies across the globe.

Tata companies from across the world introduced 1,305 innovations in the year 2012-13 that have been successfully implemented and have accrued benefits to the companies. In Tata Innovista such innovations feature under the Promising Innovations category with sub-categories of product innovations, service innovations, core process innovations and support process innovations. This year, the Promising Innovations awards went to:

Product innovations - Tata Global Beverages and Rallis India; special mention for Tata Motors.

Service innovations - Two entries from Tata Consultancy Services won in this category.

Core process innovations - Tata Power and two entries from Tata Steel won in this category.

Support process innovations - Jaguar Land Rover; special mention for Titan Industries

The Support Process Innovations category garnered the maximum entries at 494. This trend signifies that the concept of innovation is getting embedded at Tata companies, moving beyond process and product innovations to support processes like HR, finance, supply chain, brand, marketing and logistics, among others. New Product and New Service categories saw 239 and 209 entries respectively, indicating that Tata companies are increasingly looking at market driven innovations. Core Process Innovations witnessed 363 entries.

The participation received under another defining category, The Leading Edge – Proven Technologies, indicates a healthy pipeline of promising business ideas that Tata companies are looking at putting out in the future. Over 600 entries were received under this category which recognises and rewards the most innovative technology that is developed and piloted, but is yet to be commercialised. This year The Leading Edge awards went to Tata Consultancy Services and Tata Steel.

Showcasing a growing culture of risk-taking and perseverance across Tata companies, the Dare To Try category at Tata Innovista saw over 240 entries. The Dare To Try category recognises and rewards most novel, daring and seriously attempted ideas that did not achieve the desired results.The award went to Tata Consultancy Services.

To encourage collaboration and cross pollination of ideas across Tata companies, TGIF has introduced a new bi-annual programme, Challenges Worth Solving, under which Tata companies identify challenges facing their businesses and seek creative solutions from Tata managers from across companies, leveraging on the diversity of the group. The top management of Tata companies is involved in identifying these challenges and selecting solutions from ideas generated. This year, 28 challenges were thrown open by Tata companies which generated 3,764 ideas from across Tata companies. Out of these ideas, 25 ideas have been selected for implementation. The best ideas received a special award during Tata Innovista 2013.

According to Sunil Sinha, chief, group quality management services, Tata Sons, “Tata Innovista has become a great indicator of the success of the innovation drive in the Tata group — and of the inherent capabilities of its people. The trends observed in the 2013 edition signify a growing culture of innovation in the group with elements of technology-orientation, cross-pollination and risk-taking ability. We have observed that over 70 percent of the participants are in the age brackets of 20-30 and 30-40 years, indicating that the innovation eco-system in the group is encouraging and empowering young managers to think out of the ordinary.”

From a total of 70 Tata companies who submitted their entries in Tata Innovista 2013, 29 Tata companies reached the regional rounds. The entries at the regional rounds, held in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Jamshedpur, Pune, London, Washington DC, Bangkok and Shanghai, were judged by eminent external experts. Seventy two teams from 20 Tata companies were shortlisted for the global round that took place in Mumbai on April 25, 2013. The finalists were judged by a panel of internal and external jurists, comprising distinguished personalities of the likes of Naveen Kumar Kshatriya, former vice chairman, Castrol India; Anand Kripalu, managing director, Cadbury India; Prakash Iyer, MD, Kimberley Clarke-India; Bharath Sesha, president, DSM India; Dr Rajeev Vaidya, president, DuPont South Asia and ASEAN; Erik Roth, partner and head of global innovation practice, McKinsey; and Dr Madhusudan Chakraborty, director, IIT Bhubaneshwar; among others.

In 2006, the Tata group started the process of capturing and celebrating innovations of Tata companies through Tata Innovista. The objective of this programme is to capture innovations in Tata companies, encourage innovators and innovations in Tata companies, share the levers used by them to identify and execute innovation projects, and create a culture of risk-taking. In order to support Tata companies in their journey of innovation, Tata Quality Management Services (TQMS), a division of Tata Sons, formed TGIF in 2007. The objective of TGIF is to encourage, inspire and help create a culture that promotes innovation in Tata companies. Over the past six years, TQMS, under the guidance of TGIF, has been connecting Tata companies all over the world, stimulating innovative thinking and encouraging collaborative research.