Our Mission
Help organizations realize their goal of sustained revenue and bottom line growth by making creative thinking and innovation part of company's fabric instead of something that happens by chance.
We help develop innovation capacity through customized
"Many people believe that the way to drive innovation is to carve out a few creative people. Our view is entirely different. We need innovation from everyone. We believe it is a skill that can be taught. So at the beginning of 2000 we began to embed innovation as a core competency of the company. Today close to 1,000 people have been through training to develop the skills of innovation. We've had more innovation in the past 18 months than in 17 years I've been CEO."
David Whitman, CEO, Whirlpool
Founder & CEO
 Madan Birla is a veteran of the "hard" side of business. In his 22 years at FedEx, he was managing director of Long-Range Operations and Facilities Planning and Materials and Resource Planning before being named managing director in the company's Leadership Institute. For eight years as a member of the Long Range Planning Committee he worked closely with Fred Smith (Founder & CEO) and the senior management team in evaluating strategic 'what-ifs'.
His life experiences in two rich cultures, East and West, and his broad educational background have prepared him well to creatively meld ideas from engineering, business and psychology to develop comprehensive 'Leading for Innovation' models.
He received his Master of Science degree in industrial engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in Chicago, IL. After graduating from IIT, he joined RCA Records in Indianapolis. While in Indianapolis he did graduate work in business at Butler University. After moving to Memphis to join FedEx, he received a Master of Science degree in counseling from the University of Memphis.
He is a regular speaker in executive education programs at Kellogg Management Institute, Northwestern, Tuck Business School, Dartmouth, American Management Association, The Conference Board, Indian School of Business, Singapore Institute of Management, and others.
He is actively involved in volunteer work. He led the effort to establish the Indian Community Fund for Greater Memphis that funded several permanent exhibits, including the Gandhi exhibit at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis He has two grown children who live in New York and Chicago.
Birla authored the following books:
'Balanced Life & Leadership Excellence: A Nurturing Relationship' (with co-author Cecilia Miller Marshall)
Translated into German
'FedEx Delivers: How the World's Leading Shipping Company Keeps Innovating and Outperforming the Competition' Translated into Orthodox Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Russian, Spanish, Korean, Vietnamese and Thai
|
|
I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game – it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its PEOPLE to create value.
Lou Gerstner
IBM CEO
Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?
To thrive in turbulent times, a company ... must give customers new, compelling reasons to spend, reinvent its cost structure, and build new growth platforms that leverage its competencies. All that takes innovation.
Gary Hamel
Author and global strategy consultant
FORTUNE, November 12, 2001
|
