Leveraged Innovation Management: Key Themes from the Journey of Dewrain Harvest Systems

Abstract

Systems for harvesting dew for human consumption are new to India. This paper provides insights from the tracking of the innovation journey of dewrain harvest systems from incidental observation to commercialization. It traces the key phases in the innovation journey and documents the activities and outcomes in each phase. Based on the analysis it identifies a class of innovations called ‘leveraged innovations’. These innovations leverage on the early innovating experience of the innovator, the knowledge base of the stakeholders and the available infrastructure.

Data for the paper was collected from the narrative of the innovator and the documents prepared by the innovator and his team. The paper has been divided into three sections. The phases in the innovation journey are presented in the first section. Key themes in leveraged innovation are identified based on the insights from phases, and their link with the literature on innovations management are discussed in the second section. The third section provides concluding remarks and suggests ways forward for mapping the innovation journeys of individual innovators and developing the themes further.

The overall view is that the development of the dewrain harvest system was facilitated by the background of the innovator, the observation of spin offs, the larger externally linked definition of the problem, linkage with the local community that shared the need for solving similar problems, association with local laboratory and network of scientists, and independent learning to augment the received knowledge facilitated the leveraging process for a successful journey.