Perspective # 10 - MGR style Positive Lateral thinking

MGR style Positive Lateral thinking: Many inventions today happens due to lateral thinking of employees.

Let us look at the example of Pfizer’s anti cholesterol blockbuster Lipitor that has annual sales exceeding US $10 Billion. Many competitors including many in India are working on formulations to reduce LDL (bad cholesterol). A small firm called Kos Pharmaceuticals worked on a different model – they worked on formulations to elevate HDL (good cholesterol) instead of working on reducing LDL (bad cholesterol) and struck gold. Their product Niaspan is now FDA approved and the company valuation is sky rocketing – thanks to thinking differently.

Lateral ideas are evident in today’s Web 2.0 stars like YouTube the free video sharing site or Social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace whose valuations are zooming. Nearly $6 million worth of virtual currency changed hands in Second Life, the virtual world in June 2006.

Prof. Govindarajan who authored the bestseller "10 Rules for Strategic Innovators" (published by Harvard Business School Press) has a nice analogy from Tamil cinema of his youth “Think of the scene where the villain ties down MGR, kidnaps the heroine and escapes in a Mercedes. He is chased by a police van, which follows the same rules as the car, but is much slower…By the time MGR gets up, he is 30 minutes late. He knows he can’t play by the same rules, so he jumps on a horse, bypasses the roads and goes after the villain. That’s thinking differently,”.

The case of washing machines used to make Lassi in Punjab is well known. Think about the possibilities if we think lateral, particularly ‘Positive lateral thinking’. Lateral thinking innovation sometimes is misguided and results in IP violations, reverse engineering etc. Varanasi is the largest consumer of condoms in the country – to polish the silk and lubricate the hand and power looms! India and elsewhere Cough syrups are replacing good old Alcohol.! The annual study by the National Institute on Drug Abuse , conducted by the University of Michigan found that as many as one in every 14 high school seniors said they used cold medicine “fairly recently” to get high. Another study found that 36 million Americans have abused prescription drugs at least once in their lifetime! Too much lateral thinking :)

The challenge is to make all imbibe the message of the need to think lateral in a positive way.