Is it just me ....or do all of you think there has been a lot of buzz regarding Innovation particularly in the context of IT Services....It all around...Here are a few cases that i was able to dig out.

British Telecom CTO Matt Bross Visits MindTree as a case study in innovation. - Article here
CEOs are looking at new kinds of innovation to drive substantial organizational change and business growth, said Ginni Rometty, senior vice president of IBM's enterprise business services division, in a statement. "It's not just product innovation any more. It's about understanding how to innovate a business model, or an operational process, or management behavior - such as real-time risk management, collaborative pharmaceutical development, or digital film distribution." In a CEO survey conducted by IBM - Summary Here
Subroto Bagchi titled Different Layers Of Innovation. Subroto, a brilliant writer on management topics, starts by postulating that with inclusive view of things the mind leaps forth with neither ideas that nest neither in the present nor the past.Inclusion is about feelings for people and situations that are twice removed from us.When we can build an idea that makes a difference to people and situations twice removed from where we stand, it is bound to be innovative. He points out the serving immediate customer's better can be served by creating a linear extension of your offering to serve them better, it is not necessary to create something innovative. Some thing "new and improved", something that is "renovated" is good enough. On the other hand, if you wanted to make a tangible difference to your customer's customer or your supplier's supplier, it would call for innovative thinking. Only such thinking creates competitive advantage by expanding the sphere of influence. To be able to bring people who are twice removed into the fold of your beneficial impact, you have to think inclusively. Inclusion as an act leads to connecting with people, their needs, their thoughts and their desires at an existential level. It is at that level that the quality of human thought is at its creative best. Source/Via - Innovation, Innovation Everywhere

Panel at a Nasscom event in Jan...titled Beyond Services : Innovation in Large companies.

WIPRO's innovation initiative has started to pay off and the company expects to intensify its focus on innovation as a tool to drive future growth, the Chairman, Mr Azim Premji, said mid Feb. Addressing a press conference at the Nasscom 2006 Leadership Summit, Mr Premji said that the annualised revenues generated through Wipro's innovation initiative and its 40 centres of excellence (CoEs) stood at over $100 million, accounting for five per cent of the company's revenues. "We expect to increase the revenues generated through innovation efforts to around 10 per cent of our revenues in three years," he said, adding that the company would make ongoing investments in tools, technologies and solutions that would drive innovation.Wipro has set up an Innovation Council that acts as an internal venture capital funding project, which would improve business productivity for the company and its customers, and "improve our ability to win deals and reduce the cost of delivery." - Source Business Line
"We institutionalised the spirit of innovation through our innovation initiative six years ago and are now deriving business value from these investments," Azim Premji, chairman of Wipro, told a press conference here.He said that annualised revenues generated as a result of innovations from Wipro's innovation initiative and its 40 centres of excellence together account for over $100 million. Source New Kerala
Assistant Managing Editor Bruce Nussbaum, who guides Business Week's efforts in innovation, creativity, and design strategy, talked with Nilekani at the Conference Center in Davos. - Source Business Week

Innovation is one of the major themes of Davos this year. There are more than 20 sessions on the topic, and hundreds of CEOs attended. What does innovation really require in a business context? You need two things to create an innovative culture. Innovation requires diversity. You need to bring together different kinds of people to get new ideas. Innovation also requires borderless thinking. A censored society always focuses on borders and what you cannot do. A society that promotes borderless thinking focuses on new possibilities and opportunities. It is better at innovation.

How much of innovation can and should be outsourced?
The hardest part of the innovation process -- and the most important -- is anticipating client needs.

This is very cultural. Customer intimacy is very important. You have to be close to your customers. That is what companies need to do. They do not want to outsource that, and they shouldn't. But everything else can be outsourced.

We can take a raw idea and put together all the pieces to create the right value proposition for a company: the form factor, designing for manufacturing, production. Outsourcing this innovation is very practical. Everything inside the iPod is outsourced, but the design and connection to the customer is not. That is Apple's (AAPL) secret to keep.

What is the biggest challenge in innovation?
Services. We are better at maximizing existing things. Services are different. There is more opportunity there in services as well.