Innocolumn

12rd May 2017, BUSINESS STANDARD

R. Gopalakrishnan, Corporate Advisor and Distinguished Professor at IIT Kharagpur rgopal@themindworks.me I have been struggling with the nagging question about how long it takes for an invention (when an original idea has been articulated) to become commercial (when it is widely sold in market).

14th April 2017, BUSINESS STANDARD

R. Gopalakrishnan, Author and Corporate Advisor, Email : rgopal@themindworks.me My last anecdote was about how it took fifty years between conception and commercialization of the ball pen, an apparently simple innovation that is basic to our lives now (BS, 3rd March 2017). The article drew a noteworthy response from an IIT contemporary

03rd March 2017, BUSINESS STANDARD

R. Gopalakrishnan, Author and Corporate Advisor, Email : rgopal@themindworks.me Pen maker John Loud got a ball point pen patent in 1888, Anton Shaeffer in 1901, Michael Brown in 1911, Lorenz presented a prototype ball pen in 1924,

3rd Feb 2017, BUSINESS STANDARD

By R Gopalakrishnan, Author and Corporate Advisor “....Men of business are not often at home in the world of ideas; it was Jamsetji’s distinction that he lived in both worlds, the world of ideas and the world of action.

02nd January 2017, BUSINESS STANDARD

(Nobody consciously seeks setbacks, but if a setback should happen, you can take a creative leap forward). I wish my readers a happy new year, full of ideas and curiosity.

11th December 2016, BUSINESS STANDARD

India has over 140 million farm holdings of which 20 million account for 80 percent of the area. Imagine a community of these twenty million farmers connected digitally—as change agents, as leaders,

09th Dec 2016, BUSINESS STANDARD

R. Gopalakrishnan, Author and Corporate Advisor, rgopal@themindworks.me In my last column, I had likened the fertilization of a concept in the brain to the development of a foetus in the womb.

11th Nov 2016, BUSINESS STANDARD

By R Gopalakrishnan, Author and Corporate Advisor There was an amazing response to my metaphor of ‘concept in the brain’ resembling a foetus in the womb (BS, 14th October 2016). In both cases fertilization has occurred but existence has not happened.

14th Oct 2016, BUSINESS STANDARD

By R Gopalakrishnan, Author and Corporate Advisor We routinely use the reproduction metaphor when we talk about ideas, for example, we use expressions like “The idea was born”, “How the idea was conceived”, or “The idea was aborted.” How did this metaphor of an idea in the brain and a foetus in the womb come about?