It is hard to imagine any issue more central to Chinese enterprises today than innovation. Rising per capita incomes and wage rates will increasingly make it more difficult for Chinese companies to compete just on the basis of cost efficiency. The imperatives for a shift from a single-minded focus on cost reduction to a focus also on innovation are very strong and very clear.

It is important to remember, however, that how companies must think about and manage innovation is changing rapidly. We focus here on the three most important dimensions along which companies need to re-think their approach to innovation: the rapidly growing imperative for 360-degree innovation; the rapidly growing imperative for frugal innovation; and the rapidly growing imperative for companies to collaborate with other firms in order to develop new products, processes and solutions.

360-degree innovation

Tomorrow's global enterprises will have to figure out how to make innovation an always-on and 360-degree pervasive activity. Several disruptive forces are causing a steady decline in the half-life of technologies, products, services, processes and even entire business models. As such, innovation will have to be seen as an all-encompassing agenda touching every activity in the value chain. It will have to include innovation in how products and services are produced, distributed, marketed and sold as well as in how the company's organization itself is designed and managed.

The first disruptive force is the ongoing march of technology, which continues to advance at an exponential rate. In 1990, if you needed to buy a book, you had to walk down to a brick and mortar store. By 2000, you could order one over the Internet and it would be delivered to your home in three to five days. Today, you can order it as an e-book and have it delivered instantaneously to your PC, PDA, cell phone or an iPad.

The impact of rapid technological advancement is evident all around us - in autos, pharmaceuticals, clothing and even the lowly toothbrush.

The second disruptive force is the all-around transparency created by the Internet. A company's actions are becoming increasingly visible to almost every stakeholder - customers, competitors, suppliers, shareholders, employees, alliance partners, the community, governments and social activists - in real time.

A direct result has been that barriers to competitive imitation have rapidly gone down even as companies are now scrutinized and held more accountable by more stakeholders more frequently.

The third disruptive force is the emergence of new competitors from non-traditional countries, who bring significantly lower cost structures and larger pools of research and development talent, are very ambitious, and are comfortable moving at great speed. The processes that have resulted in the emergence of new champions such as Huawei, BYD, Infosys and Tata Motors are still in the very early stages.