Good at growth but no products
We are essentially becoming good at growth but really bad at innovating or building new products which are either zero to one or fundamentally better than the alternatives that exist.
Most of the companies, even the ones that are raising a lot of capital are the ones good at Growth but not so good at building something.
The usual mode of operation is to take a basic product to Bharat (and figure out growth there). The product is usually very basic (and a simpler alternate of what we have been using for years in some form or the other) but it’s still good enough for the demographic that will use this product for the first time.
But then the entire innovation is in getting growth or reaching a demographic that does not have access to that product yet - the innovation is not happening in building something new.
It’s not a bad thing but if we want to truly become a place where technology disruption happens then we need a lot of focus on behaviour changing products that will push us into the future apart from just getting the existing products into new demographics.
Gaurav, good observation! The kind of product innovation that creates new markets always goes against the grain. We need to be levelheaded about failure and comfortable with the inherent messiness of experimentation. Also, I think, It is time to start thinking in terms of building platforms and ecosystems, not products. A good product is an "experience".
Most of today’s successful companies are more like Tesla, which combines a set of technologies that already existed, rather than SpaceX, which had to pioneer new ones.
This is not to say that technology innovation is unimportant. You're absolutely right growth doesn't create value in itself ; for that, it has to be paired with working business model and Technology innovation is a key factor in retaining the gains produced by business model innovation.