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Innovation Evangelism at Wipro Technologies

Pavan Soni
Innovation Evangelist, Wipro Technologies, Bangalore, India
E- Mail ID: pavan.soni@wipro.com; Blog: www.pavansoni.net

Abstract
The article depicts a practitioner’s approach towards Innovation Evangelism in a
corporate context. The case in point here is Wipro Technologies, one of the leading
Information Technology firms based out of India. The author being an Innovation
Evangelist at the firm shares the imperative of evangelism, the various vehicles deployed
and the learnings there from. The need for Innovation Evangelism comes from the urge
to spread awareness about innovation and enable it, especially at the grassroots level.
Author defines an Innovation Evangelist in an organizational context as one who
generates awareness of the need to innovate; builds a belief amongst people that anyone
can innovate; and provides sufficient facilitation to enable innovation. At Wipro
Technologies, Innovation Evangelism happens through a series of vehicles that include:
Wipro’s Innovation Camp, Innovation Bazaar, Story Book on Innovation, Systematic
Creativity Workshops, and Inflection Point newsletter, among others. Each of these
started as experiments and then through learning got institutionalized. Key learnings are:
enrollment of the stakeholders; creating a semi-structure knowledge sharing
environment; enabling a market of ideas, talent and capital; having a constant and
consistent communication; transparency in operations; and taking a more scientific
approach towards creativity; among others. One of the areas of further investigation is on
measuring the direct and indirect returns of investment for each of these vehicles. The
article would make a good read for researchers, academicians, professionals and students
alike who study and execute innovations at the grassroots level.

1. ABOUT WIPRO TECHNOLOGIES

Wipro Technologies (NYSE- WIT) is a global Integrated Information Technology Services provider
headquartered at Bangalore, India. The key services offered by the firm are: Consulting Services, IT
Services, Product Engineering Solution, Technology Infrastructure Services and Business Process
Outsourcing. The firm has over 60,000 employees from 56 nationalities serving close to 1,000 clients
world over. Over the years, Wipro has sustained organic growth and adopted game changing inorganic
initiatives simultaneously. As per the Chairman of the firm, Mr. AH Premji, the key drivers for Wipro’s
growth and transformation are: People Leadership; Innovation Leadership; Process Leadership;
Infrastructure and Information System; and Responsible Citizenship. The rest of the article talks about
the role and impact of Evangelism to enable and sustain Wipro’s Innovation Leadership. [1]

2. IMPERATIVE OF INNOVATION EVANGELISM

Research reflects that the long term corporate performance has not matched the performance of the
markets, because corporations do not adopt as fast as markets do. As against the corporate, these
markets (composed of several industries) lack culture, leadership, emotions and more importantly-
memory [2]. It is often observed that as a start-up grows to become a large organization, a focus on
processes takes over the passion and the entrepreneurial spirit gets lost during the course. Organizations
which were born out of business and technology breakthroughs soon become ‘also ran’. This
transformation is not unique to any country or industry, but is seen across. The Divergent Thinking that
was the very cause of firm’s early success soon changes to a Convergent Thinking paradigm resulting
in more of same and hence blindness to external (even internal) realities [2]. Hence there’s a constant
need to check the reality and to nurture the vitality to retain a divergent thinking climate, if not a
culture. The difference here being, the climate can be conditioned in a limited fashion for a period of
time, while the culture is much more fundamental trait of a firm that can only be influenced over longer
time frames. If sustained, the climate can significantly and permanently impact the culture.
Innovation Evangelism is an approach towards creating and sustaining these climatic changes

Volume 1 · Number 3 · 2009

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