metacool Thought of the Day
- Dr. G. Venkataswamy
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March 23, 2007
- Dr. G. Venkataswamy
When will they learn? Innovation without value cr...
When will they learn?
Innovation without value creation is just wheel-spinning...
Forrester Research recently announced a new survey that looked at innovation from a macro level - this is an excerpt from InformationWeek :
"Investing in knowledge -- a term that in this context encompasses funding for research and development, higher education, and software -- is seen as a way to create national wealth, enhance geopolitical power, solve social problems, and bolster national pride.
Developed nations spend an average of $1,270 per capita yearly to improve knowledge yet fail to achieve the desired benefits, according to Forrester's study.
The U.S. spent almost $300 billion in public and private money on R&D in 2003, about half of all R&D spending by the 30 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). America can claim 35% of all patents filed in Europe, Japan, and at home. But such spending doesn't create jobs or boost the number of goods and services produced by a country -- also known as the gross domestic product (GDP)"
Why is it taking countries so long to realize the best practices of innovation learned long ago -- often through hard failures -- at top companies worldwide? Unless there are goals or a clear focus on creating value, there's no reason to start innovating. Have we learned nothing from the failures of the Knowledge Management era?
Knowledge intensive initiatives that don't focus on targeted and directed creation of actual benefits and value will waste the time, money and goodwill of workers, partners, customers or taxpayers. This applies equally for companies seeking bottom line dollar value or governments seeking socio-economic benefits.
From a corporate standpoint, companies too often set out fluffy so-called "innovation" projects purely to check a box on the next annual report. These 'keep up with the Joneses' attempts have no aims, no metrics, no focus on solving a particular issue, and worst of all, no plan to impact the bottom line.
These "lazy innovators" are shocking only in that the executives leading the charge must have (again) fallen victim to unscrupulous consultants, vendors, and yes-men who are too scared or inexperienced to point out obvious flaws. Too often, the only objective is increasing employee participation, or hunt through a tub of random ideas that might contain one tiny golden nugget.
"Innovation" has tons of definitions but I have yet to see one from any credible source that doesn't involve "creating value" as a key factor. Leading innovators -- Whirlpool, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, and Google -- recognize this vital point. Without a clear value objective, what follows is failure, finger-pointing and a laundry list of other problems including:
-Loss of respect from senior staff who only see a frivolous cost center to be cut at the next downturn.
-Indifference and scorn from employees, suppliers, customers, and participants whose time and good intentions got wasted. Plus the frustration and disappointment when no action results from their intellectual input.
-Anger from shareholders who see money wasted on initiatives that could deliver great value -- and often do create benefits at other organizations -- but are child's play for a team that knows how the game is played.
For governments, the message is the same - just replace the word "taxpayer" for various stakeholders. The wrong-headed belief that more money will solve the woes at universities and other research facilities has meant years of throwing money at problems that don't respond. Maybe there's a golden nugget there in an overlooked patent application . . . .More likely, it's another expensive misadventure from people who haven't learned their lessons.
Innovation without value creation is just wheel-spinning...
Forrester Research recently announced a new survey that looked at innovation from a macro level - this is an excerpt from InformationWeek :
"Investing in knowledge -- a term that in this context encompasses funding for research and development, higher education, and software -- is seen as a way to create national wealth, enhance geopolitical power, solve social problems, and bolster national pride.
Developed nations spend an average of $1,270 per capita yearly to improve knowledge yet fail to achieve the desired benefits, according to Forrester's study.
The U.S. spent almost $300 billion in public and private money on R&D in 2003, about half of all R&D spending by the 30 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). America can claim 35% of all patents filed in Europe, Japan, and at home. But such spending doesn't create jobs or boost the number of goods and services produced by a country -- also known as the gross domestic product (GDP)"
Why is it taking countries so long to realize the best practices of innovation learned long ago -- often through hard failures -- at top companies worldwide? Unless there are goals or a clear focus on creating value, there's no reason to start innovating. Have we learned nothing from the failures of the Knowledge Management era?
Knowledge intensive initiatives that don't focus on targeted and directed creation of actual benefits and value will waste the time, money and goodwill of workers, partners, customers or taxpayers. This applies equally for companies seeking bottom line dollar value or governments seeking socio-economic benefits.
From a corporate standpoint, companies too often set out fluffy so-called "innovation" projects purely to check a box on the next annual report. These 'keep up with the Joneses' attempts have no aims, no metrics, no focus on solving a particular issue, and worst of all, no plan to impact the bottom line.
These "lazy innovators" are shocking only in that the executives leading the charge must have (again) fallen victim to unscrupulous consultants, vendors, and yes-men who are too scared or inexperienced to point out obvious flaws. Too often, the only objective is increasing employee participation, or hunt through a tub of random ideas that might contain one tiny golden nugget.
"Innovation" has tons of definitions but I have yet to see one from any credible source that doesn't involve "creating value" as a key factor. Leading innovators -- Whirlpool, Coca-Cola, Pfizer, and Google -- recognize this vital point. Without a clear value objective, what follows is failure, finger-pointing and a laundry list of other problems including:
-Loss of respect from senior staff who only see a frivolous cost center to be cut at the next downturn.
-Indifference and scorn from employees, suppliers, customers, and participants whose time and good intentions got wasted. Plus the frustration and disappointment when no action results from their intellectual input.
-Anger from shareholders who see money wasted on initiatives that could deliver great value -- and often do create benefits at other organizations -- but are child's play for a team that knows how the game is played.
For governments, the message is the same - just replace the word "taxpayer" for various stakeholders. The wrong-headed belief that more money will solve the woes at universities and other research facilities has meant years of throwing money at problems that don't respond. Maybe there's a golden nugget there in an overlooked patent application . . . .More likely, it's another expensive misadventure from people who haven't learned their lessons.
Innovation: do not forget to pay employees for their ideas!
The latest issue of Harvard Business Review has a cool forethought on innovation titled "$152,000 for your thought" (not online yet and requires subscription).
What the authors found is that the average employee reward to savings or increased revenue from innovation ratio is about .001% or $100 for a $10 million idea. The result is a very broken idea generation process in most companies. The authors suggest that companies raise the bar and require employees to prove and document the viability of their ideas in return for much richer rewards - as much as 50% of the first year's savings or increased revenue. Doing so can significantly increase the number of workable innovations - they found by as much as 20-40%.
The story that led to the title of the article is that of a $38,000 executive assistant at a consulting company who came up with an idea that saved the company $304,000 and walked away with a $152,000 bonus.
Failures and Stumbles driving Innovation
"Failure is our most important product." R W Johnson, Jr., Former CEO, Johnson & Johnson, 1954
"Our company has, indeed, stumbled onto some of its new products. But never forget that you can only stumble if you're moving." Richard P. Carlton, Former CEO, 3M Corporation, 1950
Great wisdom shared by two great business leaders.
"Purposeful Accidents"
Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras, authors of the bestseller "Built to Last", discuss the role of Creativity and Innovation that drives some of the successful habits of Visionary companies. They observe that "some of their (visionary companies) best moves were not by detailed strategic planning, but rather by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and--quite literally--accident." But they were no ordinary accidents. Rather "purposeful accidents" according to the authors.
Opportunistic or Planned Innovations
The authors give several examples of visionary companies including Johnson & Johnson's accidental move into Consumer Products with discovery of "Johnson's Toilet and Baby Powder" and "Band-Aid", Marriot's opportunistic step into Airport Services from providing meals in the airports to inside the airplanes, American Express's unintended evolution into Financial and Travel Services with the introduction of "American Express Travelers Cheque" and then Tourism and Travel, HP's unplanned move into computer business (when it designed its first small computer simply to add power to its line of instruments products) and more. These innovations were neither aberrations, nor they represented random luck--the authors discovered there was more to these innovations than what appeared on the surface--something bigger at work.
Darwin and the Evolutionary Progress
The authors label this type of progress by visionary companies as "evolutionary progress". Because evolutionary progress is unplanned progress, beginning with "small incremental steps or mutations, often in the form of quickly seizing unexpected opportunities that eventually grow into major--and often unanticipated--strategic shifts." Authors believe this is comparable to Darwin's theory of Evolution--species evolving by a process of undirected variation and natural selection--the survival of the fittest. Of course the difference with visionary companies being that there is a plan in place that stimulates these experiments and variations, and ultimately creates the meaningful inventions.
Johnson and Johnson - Failures to Innovations
Johnson & Johnson, one of the visionary companies in the book, has never in its 107-year history, posted a loss. It has had many failed ventures such as a foray into Kola stimulants, colored casts for children, heart valves, kidney dialysis, and ibuprofen pain relievers - the list is quite big. The failures result at J & J from the fact that the company emphasizes placing bets on many potential opportunities--most opportunities possibly fail, but the ones that do succeed, they succeed big. The bets, or the experimentation, are an essential price to pay for successful Innovation and Long-term growth. At General Electric, Jack Welch the then CEO, called this "planful opportunism"--directing a business by setting only a few clear, overarching goals and letting the people seize any opportunities they saw to further these goals.
3M - Accidents to Innovation Machine
What about 3M, quite possibly the most innovative company of our times that even CEOs of other visionary companies admire? 3M is best known for its household brands such as Post-It note, Masking tape, Scotch tape, and many more. 3M initially failed in its mining business, and eventually stumbled onto most of the successful innovations that we know 3M for, including Post-It, Masking and Scotch tape. According to the authors, "Although the invention of the Post-it note might have been somewhat accidental, the creation of the 3M environment that allowed it was anything but an accident." 3M institutionalized such mechanisms to drive Innovation as the "15 percent rule" - technical people spend up to 15 percent of their time on projects of their own choosing or initiative, "25 percent rule" - each division should produce 25 percent of annual sales from new products and services introduced in the previous five years, "Golden Step" award - given to those creating successful new business ventures originated within 3M. More mechanisms were created to stimulate internal entrepreneurship, test new ideas, create unplanned experimentation, share new ideas, develop new innovation, cross-fertilize technology, ideas and innovation, stimulate innovation via customer problems, speed product development and market introduction cycles, provide profit sharing, and promote "a small company within a big company feel" by creating small autonomous business units and product divisions - in early 1990 3M had over sixty thousand products and over forty separate product divisions.
Norton - Lessons Learned
The authors argue that whereas 3M created the mechanisms and management practices to encourage individual initiatives and experimentation, Norton was the exact opposite. 3M took the approach of "try a lot of stuff and keep what works", whereas Norton was centralized, bureaucratic and stagnant. Not only that, the authors discovered that Norton had explicit policies discouraging entrepreneurship; there were no incentives for creativity and towards looking outside for new opportunities beyond the traditional products and businesses. Norton emphasized too much planning from the top down, and made it a way of life. Norton eventually tried to innovate and expand with acquisitions, but it was too little, too late. Norton, a company that at one time was ten times the size of 3M, ceased to exist (was acquired on its way down in the nineties).
Five takeaways stimulating Innovation
The authors summarize their findings from 3M and provide five takeaways to drive Innovation at any business:
1. "Give it a try--and quick!" - Essentially echoing on having a process to try out a lot of stuff, and keeping what really works. The key here is to do something. Keep on trying something new.
2. "Accept that mistakes will be made." - Learn from the mistakes quickly, and move on. Failures are part and parcel of what creates new innovation. Don't repeat the same mistakes.
3. "Take small steps." - Experiment, but on a small scale. When something looks promising, go all out and seize the opportunity. This way one can do plenty of inexpensive experiments that create a funnel of would-be innovations.
4. "Give people the room they need." - Without entrepreneurship, there is no experiment. Without experiment there is no success or failure. People need some time and room to experiment.
5. "Mechanisms - build that ticking clock!" - How do you harness creativity and build innovation? It cannot happen simply by chance. Companies need to create practices and tangible mechanisms to experiment, try out new ideas and innovate.
If you enjoyed reading this Creativity and Innovation best practice, I recommend the complete list of Creativity Innovation Best Practices.
Acknowledgements:
Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras - Built to Last - Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
"Our company has, indeed, stumbled onto some of its new products. But never forget that you can only stumble if you're moving." Richard P. Carlton, Former CEO, 3M Corporation, 1950
Great wisdom shared by two great business leaders.
"Purposeful Accidents"
Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras, authors of the bestseller "Built to Last", discuss the role of Creativity and Innovation that drives some of the successful habits of Visionary companies. They observe that "some of their (visionary companies) best moves were not by detailed strategic planning, but rather by experimentation, trial and error, opportunism, and--quite literally--accident." But they were no ordinary accidents. Rather "purposeful accidents" according to the authors.
Opportunistic or Planned Innovations
The authors give several examples of visionary companies including Johnson & Johnson's accidental move into Consumer Products with discovery of "Johnson's Toilet and Baby Powder" and "Band-Aid", Marriot's opportunistic step into Airport Services from providing meals in the airports to inside the airplanes, American Express's unintended evolution into Financial and Travel Services with the introduction of "American Express Travelers Cheque" and then Tourism and Travel, HP's unplanned move into computer business (when it designed its first small computer simply to add power to its line of instruments products) and more. These innovations were neither aberrations, nor they represented random luck--the authors discovered there was more to these innovations than what appeared on the surface--something bigger at work.
Darwin and the Evolutionary Progress
The authors label this type of progress by visionary companies as "evolutionary progress". Because evolutionary progress is unplanned progress, beginning with "small incremental steps or mutations, often in the form of quickly seizing unexpected opportunities that eventually grow into major--and often unanticipated--strategic shifts." Authors believe this is comparable to Darwin's theory of Evolution--species evolving by a process of undirected variation and natural selection--the survival of the fittest. Of course the difference with visionary companies being that there is a plan in place that stimulates these experiments and variations, and ultimately creates the meaningful inventions.
Johnson and Johnson - Failures to Innovations
Johnson & Johnson, one of the visionary companies in the book, has never in its 107-year history, posted a loss. It has had many failed ventures such as a foray into Kola stimulants, colored casts for children, heart valves, kidney dialysis, and ibuprofen pain relievers - the list is quite big. The failures result at J & J from the fact that the company emphasizes placing bets on many potential opportunities--most opportunities possibly fail, but the ones that do succeed, they succeed big. The bets, or the experimentation, are an essential price to pay for successful Innovation and Long-term growth. At General Electric, Jack Welch the then CEO, called this "planful opportunism"--directing a business by setting only a few clear, overarching goals and letting the people seize any opportunities they saw to further these goals.
3M - Accidents to Innovation Machine
What about 3M, quite possibly the most innovative company of our times that even CEOs of other visionary companies admire? 3M is best known for its household brands such as Post-It note, Masking tape, Scotch tape, and many more. 3M initially failed in its mining business, and eventually stumbled onto most of the successful innovations that we know 3M for, including Post-It, Masking and Scotch tape. According to the authors, "Although the invention of the Post-it note might have been somewhat accidental, the creation of the 3M environment that allowed it was anything but an accident." 3M institutionalized such mechanisms to drive Innovation as the "15 percent rule" - technical people spend up to 15 percent of their time on projects of their own choosing or initiative, "25 percent rule" - each division should produce 25 percent of annual sales from new products and services introduced in the previous five years, "Golden Step" award - given to those creating successful new business ventures originated within 3M. More mechanisms were created to stimulate internal entrepreneurship, test new ideas, create unplanned experimentation, share new ideas, develop new innovation, cross-fertilize technology, ideas and innovation, stimulate innovation via customer problems, speed product development and market introduction cycles, provide profit sharing, and promote "a small company within a big company feel" by creating small autonomous business units and product divisions - in early 1990 3M had over sixty thousand products and over forty separate product divisions.
Norton - Lessons Learned
The authors argue that whereas 3M created the mechanisms and management practices to encourage individual initiatives and experimentation, Norton was the exact opposite. 3M took the approach of "try a lot of stuff and keep what works", whereas Norton was centralized, bureaucratic and stagnant. Not only that, the authors discovered that Norton had explicit policies discouraging entrepreneurship; there were no incentives for creativity and towards looking outside for new opportunities beyond the traditional products and businesses. Norton emphasized too much planning from the top down, and made it a way of life. Norton eventually tried to innovate and expand with acquisitions, but it was too little, too late. Norton, a company that at one time was ten times the size of 3M, ceased to exist (was acquired on its way down in the nineties).
Five takeaways stimulating Innovation
The authors summarize their findings from 3M and provide five takeaways to drive Innovation at any business:
1. "Give it a try--and quick!" - Essentially echoing on having a process to try out a lot of stuff, and keeping what really works. The key here is to do something. Keep on trying something new.
2. "Accept that mistakes will be made." - Learn from the mistakes quickly, and move on. Failures are part and parcel of what creates new innovation. Don't repeat the same mistakes.
3. "Take small steps." - Experiment, but on a small scale. When something looks promising, go all out and seize the opportunity. This way one can do plenty of inexpensive experiments that create a funnel of would-be innovations.
4. "Give people the room they need." - Without entrepreneurship, there is no experiment. Without experiment there is no success or failure. People need some time and room to experiment.
5. "Mechanisms - build that ticking clock!" - How do you harness creativity and build innovation? It cannot happen simply by chance. Companies need to create practices and tangible mechanisms to experiment, try out new ideas and innovate.
If you enjoyed reading this Creativity and Innovation best practice, I recommend the complete list of Creativity Innovation Best Practices.
Acknowledgements:
Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras - Built to Last - Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
Creative Generalist Q&A: Adrian Chernoff
Adrian Chernoff is the Chief Creative Officer of Ideation Genesis, an innovation company based in Boulder, Colorado. He creates and develops a wide array of novel consumer goods – everything from story-telling products to technology products.
Chernoff has been inventing things since the age of six. Even at that tender age, he would carry a pad and pencil to jot down his thoughts and sketch them out. Maybe it’s not surprising, then, by his thirty-fifth birthday he received his 50th U.S. patent on top of 12 international ones. His innovations run the gamut from highly technical to deceptively simple. At General Motors he was awarded the title of Master Inventor and the Chairman’s Honor Award for leading GM’s pioneering efforts in developing the AUTOnomy, Hy-Wire, CARousel, and Sequel technology vehicles. Many speculate that these environmentally-friendly technologies will eventually replace today’s combustion engines. Adrian also transformed rubber bands into labeling bands called "Rubber Bandits," which are sold at Staples. At Walt Disney Imagineering he worked on creating theme park rides, and at NASA, he developed new concepts and hardware for their space programs.
Um, so what exactly do you do, Adrian?
I think, I create, I design, and I nurture ideas to life. I am part visionary and part idea czar. I work on a multitude of wide ranging and diverse projects where I have little or no knowledge or prior experience. I thrive on the blank slate and the open-ended question. Through my company Ideation Genesis I innovate on both homegrown projects as well as assisting corporations, organizations and entrepreneurs in products and services.
For example, right now I am working on a new drink product. There isn’t exactly a how-to guide on creating a drink. So, the learning dialogue in creating a drink is very interesting and one has to explore and discover many things at the same time. Some questions I am exploring right now include types of ingredients, types of processes, nutritional ingredients, and chemical changes through temperature. I may have blended a few breakfast drinks here and there, but I am no expert. And yet diving into the unknown drives me. Each piece is explored and is integrated into a larger piece of an ever-evolving puzzle. And the end result must be simple and clear even if all the stages are complex on their very own. What sort of approach do you take with inventing?
There are two processes. First when I have an idea I always write it down. In this instance I will have an epiphany, an aha of a new idea, and then I must write it down with enough detail to recall it later. It must be legible, or else, what’s the use, I won’t know what it says and the idea has come and gone. Then I document the idea through journaling capturing the essence of the idea, do some sketches, and then let it incubate.
The second process is nurturing an idea to life. This process is longer, and can take months or years to complete. It is an evolutionary process and always begins with learning, exploring, and digesting new knowledge. This phase includes research, incubation, quick prototyping, mapping, and analysis. Then once the new idea is framed with enough knowledge it is time for development, which includes breaking it down into a feasible service or product through charts, diagrams, models, and prototypes in addition to market awareness, sales channels, and communicating the product. The development process is an integrated approach of product design, engineering, marketing, cost analysis, intellectual property protection, manufacturing analysis, etc and as these disciplines converge on the goal at hand the end product or service is refined as the invention is readied for the world.
What is your educational background? And how did you come to be doing what you do now?
I have always been driven by creativity, but I took a more technical route. At college I studied Mechanical Engineering, but took drawing classes from the art department and architecture classes from the school of architecture. I really enjoyed the non-traditional thought processes and the school of architecture was jazzed by my projects and work. They supported my ideas, concepts and projects and wanted me to transfer to their school, but I stayed the course with engineering. My passion is in creativity and even though it is a foreign concept in engineering school I realized engineering processes are valuable and furthermore unique when combined with design and business skill sets. I can’t say it wasn’t easy, but it was about personal perseverance as I earned an undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering, and as I became the first graduate at the University of New Mexico to receive dual masters degree with a Masters in Business Administration and a Masters in Manufacturing Engineering.
The answer to the second part of the question of how I ended up doing what I do now is not a simple answer. To begin with I spent my free time during my college years and any of my free time creating ideas and concepts, I traveled and observed different cultures around the world, and I applied to jobs where I could nurture my creativity and knowledge base. I always sought growth opportunities where I could learn and experience new things and in jobs where my combined business, engineering, and design skill set would be of value and where I could learn and grow.
I might add that if you're like me it’s not easy finding opportunities that fit, and it’s not always clear to someone in HR what you do, but it is always clear to the visionaries and shakers in the world what you have to bring. Patience is key in addition to keeping active and keeping the faith things will work out. The world of invention is lined with trees of rejection, but trees do survive and succeed in making their way in the world.
You were the Chief Architect and principal inventor behind General Motors’ “Reinvention of the Automobile”. Please summarize what that entailed. Can the automobile truly be reinvented?
For many years General Motors and many OEM’s have thought there could be something new in transportation, but what? No one in the last fifty years had broken through. At the request of the CEO of General Motors, I was challenged to reinvent the automobile. With that call I was hired into General Motors with very little automotive experience to fulfill the request. The task was clear, reinvent the automobile. There were no constraints and it was on open-ended question of what-if?
Let us start this discussion with a little vehicle primer. The vehicle’s basic design architecture has been stagnant from it early designs of a three box configuration having a low box in front, a high box in the middle and a low box in back. It contains a seat or seats and has an engine propulsion system either packaged up front or in the rear. Many innovations have been added to this basic mode of transportation, but it is evolutionary as everything has been added in a step-by-step configuration for the last 100 years.
Now, consider throwing everything away but keeping four wheels and a place to sit. What could one do? What would one create? Could one change the utilitarian nature of the vehicle in many aspects from the ground up and from inside out? Could it impact the design, mobility, economics, ergonomics, access, control, manufacturing, and day-to-day use of the vehicle?
The answer is yes. It consists of a life size skateboard with everything packaged in the skateboard. The skateboard, which is predominantly flat, has a self-contained propulsion system, electric motors in each wheel for propelling the vehicle forward or backward, and an electronic controlled network for braking, accelerating, and steering the vehicle. Everything about the vehicle being a mechanical system with linkages and cables became reinvented into a system of electronic signals with moving liquids and gases. The vehicle become something different, the user could create anything on top of a skateboard. Design was liberated from the three-box structure, and so is everything that has evolved in the modern day vehicle. The vehicle of the future is the AUTOnomy.
Once the idea was conceived it had to be championed and supported. The VP of General Motors R&D became the vehicle champion and through the support of the CEO and the VP of Design, we began the journey of turning the idea into a reality by collaborating and integrating technology and design. Technology would be packaged smartly and seamlessly and the design would enrich the presentation and acceptance of the reinvention. Over the course of eighteen months it became a reality. In nine months, the AUTOnomy showcased the future benefits and design enabling freedom, and just nine months later the Hy-Wire became the first fully functioning and running prototype utilizing by-wire technology, fuel cells, and a skateboard.
Having worked with the Department of Energy Laboratories, NASA, Disney, and General Motors, how receptive and how capable would you say large organizations are at leveraging innovation?There is a fundamental need in many organizations for innovation. The need can be heard in many of their conference rooms, but the issue is leveraging it. Yes, organizations must first have the desire, ability and need to create ideas of value, but the translation, implementation, and execution dies long before it can be leveraged. I have observed the limitations, which come from having too many gatekeepers, decision heads, and levels and not enough champions and risk takers to sustain the wild ride. It can be done, but it takes perseverance, risk, and belief. The faith and the success in leverage innovation for the most part resides in the hands of the Champion who encounters obstacles and must consistently overcome them along the entire process.
Your site www.adrianchernoff.com proudly touts that you have 60 patents (from 112 applications). What is your view of the patent process and the changing nature of intellectual property?
The patent process is relatively new the United States, but it is accelerating. In 1836 the first patent was issued and it took 75 years until the first millionth patent was issued in 1911. The seventh millionth patent took 10% of the time than the first million at 74 months. I have done some basic calculations and I estimate the eight millionth patent will be issued on April 20, 2010, just 49 months later. It is evident that more and more patents are being issued every day even thought the backlog is increasing with an average award time of 2.5 to 4 years.
The patent process is starting to yield patents that are both more valuable and quantifiable. Patents are fueling new business start-ups with equity financing and are becoming viable means for proving the inventor(s) on record. In today’s age more and more lawsuits are being awarded for patent infringement and that’s a good sign. It means that patents are becoming a commodity. As patents become more important so does the role of the inventor and the need for inventors. The patent process is expensive and is time consuming, but it can be rewarding. This is the only process that can give an organization or an individual a legal monopoly for a short period of time. And because of this monopoly there are organizations that have cropped up that are patenting things to own them like real estate holdings. These organizations have no intent on turning the patents into products and services, but rather to cash in them at a later date. This new business model may cause more conflict than growth in the future.
You wear many job titles and your inventions range from automotive parts to rubber bands. Is the variety and apparent lack of focus intentional? Why or why not?
It is not necessarily intentional, but it stems from having diverse interests and knowledge base. I really enjoy learning new things and that is why I can easily play in many fields. Some may see it as a long term lack of focus, but in reality it is intense focus in a specific area for a short period of time. I become an expert in a niche area for a while as I create results, and then as things proceed and make their way I transition into new opportunities and areas as they arise. I easily transition from one world to another. It stems from being mentally agile and adaptable. And this can be seen in my work history from working on inventing robotics for space applications at NASA to designing theme park rides at Walt Disney to working on futuristic and revolutionary vehicles at General Motors.
What role does analogy play in the invention and innovation process?
Analogy can be a useful tool in identifying the value in what is being created and at the same time it can be the focal point that keeps the clarity around the product as it flows through the development process. Analogy provides a clear focus and filtering process. At each junction of the process an expert can suggest valuable changes and if the innovation is not clear and specific then it may evolve or become something different than what was intended. However, changes can add value and drifting may yield some breakthroughs, but it can also complicate and create chaos shifting a product from a market success to a market failure.
It is important to remember Analogy can help guide, align, and keep focus of the process and the product. Without a defined focus the process or the product can become more complicated and drift occurs. Drift can be very damaging in both complicating the product, imbedding unnecessary functions, adding costs, and losing the desired end-deliverable. There are many experts that get involved along the way in bringing a process or product to market and each can add their value. As new values are added and removed, the drift effect can result in something entirely different than what was initially conceived and agreed upon.
What are some of the traits that many of the individuals that you feature at muzz.com share?
Oh yes, MUZZ, a site I created to showcase the success of individuals who make a profound difference in the world. Each individual profiled on MUZZ has made either a singular, dynamic, or ever-compound contribution that has changed the world. Each succeeded in maintaining their course in the face of adversity. Each made their mark while not compromising their vision. Each in his or her own right is a role model for the future. Each has succeeded in action and fuels faith to others that it is possible to succeed by yourself, in your own way, and with your own vision in the complex and diverse world that we live in and within.
Those who have and who are persevering are added to the site. They join Leonardo da Vinci who created the robot in the late 1400’s, Marcel Marceau who introduced a new silent world of mime, Jim Henson who created education puppets and the Muppets, George Washington Carver who created 300 uses of peanuts, Nikola Tesla who created AC power, Albert Einstein who created and identified the theory of relativity, Frank Lloyd Wright who indoctrinated a new architecture and built 500 buildings, Katharine Hepburn who created iconic and strong female characters in movies, and Walt Disney who created of Mickey Mouse, animated movies, and themed amusement parks.
Where do you look for inspiration? Are there any organizations, people, books or websites that you find especially inspiring?
I look for inspiration in others, in ideas, in innovations, in theater, in music, in movies, and products. I don’t really have a consistent well that I go back to, but I do read a lot of magazines including Forbes, Fortune, Inc., Business Week, Wired, Fast Company and Business 2.0. I also go through intense reading cycles and perhaps that was from my grandfather, Milton Appelbaum, who owned the Arcadia Bookshop, an antiquarian bookstore in New York’s infamous book row. I also watch a lot of movies, go to trade shows, and travel.
I never know what inspires me to create, but by being in action in the world I am able to see new connections, with those visionary connections I am enabled to create, and by being creative I am inspired.
Very inspiring. Thanks Adrian!
March 18, 2007
How to host a product/feature design party
Want to design the next great web app? Upgrade your product, but can't decide what to add or change? Add a new feature to your product, but can't decide how to implement it? Forget focus groups. Forget endless meetings and brainstorming sessions. Throw an ultra-rapid-design party, and do it in a single day. This approach exploits the wisdom-of-crowds through a process of enforced idea diversity and voting, so no consensus, committe, or even agreement is needed. And it's way more fun.
The Product Design Dinner Party takes 9 people, a pile of diverse "inputs", and has each of the 9 people voting on--and pitching--one another's ideas to continuously reconfigured groups of 3 people, letting the best ideas rise to the top. The process is a little complicated, but it's derived/modified from an existing rapid-prototyping design I'll talk about later in the post.
The basic idea looks like this, although there are a million ways to modify it:
1) Pick 9 people, ideally from different parts of your company and including some customers. (If you don't have a company yet, pick 9 friends--preferably those who don't know each other well)
2) Buy/borrow/find at least 20 "input materials" including books, magazines, a short film, graphic novels, etc. (a list of possibilities is a little lower in this post)
3) Assign (randomly) at least 2 "inputs" to each person. Do NOT let them choose (it's important they not be allowed to gravitate toward things they're already comfortable with)
4) Give the group 30 minutes to generate 4 ideas (if it's a feature/upgrade party, then 4 different features or feature sets... if it's a feature implementation party, then 4 different ways to implement the already-decided feature, etc.) These 4 ideas don't have to come directly from their input materials, although participants should be highly encouraged to describe at least one new thing they learned that inspired their idea.
5) Round One begins: split into 3 groups of 3 people (see chart below). Each person gets no more than 10 minutes to "pitch" four ideas to the other two in their group. There are 12 total ideas for this group, so allow about 30 minutes. Record (anonymously) the selections of each person, which represent a "vote" for the ideas.
6) At the end of Round One, each person must select their two favorite ideas from each of the other two members of their group. So if Group One had Fred, Mary, and Sue... then Fred must select his two favorite ideas from the four that Mary pitched, and his two favorites that Sue pitched.
7) Round Two begins: reconfigure the groups so that each person is now with different people (see chart below). Instead of pitching their own four ideas, each person pitches the four ideas they chose from their previous group members. Again, they have about 10 minutes to pitch the four ideas. Remember, the point is that each person is no longer pitching their own ideas!
8) At the end of Round Two, each person must again select their two favorite ideas from each of the other two members of this new group. Record (anonymously) the selections of each person, which represent a "vote" for the ideas.
9) Round Three begins: reconfigure the groups again. Each person in the group now pitches the four ideas (two from each of the two members of their most recent group) they chose in the previous (Round Two) round.
10) At this point, each person has pitched a total of 12 ideas:
* Round One: pitch your own four ideas
* Round Two: pitch four ideas from your Round One group to your new Round Two group -- two ideas from each of your previous group's other members.
* Round Three: pitch four ideas from your Round Two group to your new Round Three group, as before.
11) At the end of Round Three, again each person selects their top two favorite ideas from the ones pitched by the other two members. Record these as a vote.
12) You should now have a total of 108 votes. Choose the top 9 vote-getters (you'll have to be creative about tie-breaking... you could choose more than 9, for example).
13) Give each person a copy of the 9 ideas, and send them back for another round of "inputs." Again, assign each person different materials from the ones they used at the beginning.
14) Give the participants 30 minutes to use their inputs and flesh out a single idea from the nine. Their one idea can be a modified version of one of the nine, based on their "research." Their one idea could be a mashup of two or more of the nine ideas. It cannot, however, be something completely new. Participants should be prepared to explain how something they got from their inputs helped in some way (not an absolute requirement).
15) Now it's up to you what to do with the ideas. You might choose just one, or take all 9 "winners" with their pitches back to another person or group, etc.
Group Configurations (just an idea to get you started):
While it might be hard to believe a process like this could lead to any useful ideas, it's actually derived from a well-desiged, heavily-field-tested rapid-prototyping/development process from one of the leading training consultants on the planet, Thiagi. Granted, that doesn't mean my modifications haven't completely messed it up, but the main goals and benefits of doing it this way are:
1) Time constraints
Constraint-fueled creativity is something we've talked about earlier, so I won't discuss it here.
Build something cool in 24 hours
Creativity on Speed
How to make something amazing right now
and a little in Don't wait for the muse
2) Forced lack of attachment
By having to pitch someone else's ideas instead of your own (after Round One), it keeps people from getting stuck/married/attached to their own idea.
3) Random, outside-your-domain inputs
By having to use pre-selected (and pre-assigned) materials from outside your domain, participants have a better chance for a diversity-driven inspiration.
The whole thing is based on the assumption that you have all the knowledge you need -- the wisdom within your own company and your customers... you just need a way to tap into it that doesn't dilute the idea (as design-by-consensus would do) or prevent innovation (as design-by-listening-to-customers would do).
Ideas for "input materials"
Books on a wide range of topics outside your domain including architecture, astronomy, pop culture, filmmaking, comic books, wedding planning, education, children's book, romance-novel-writing, crafts magazine, travel book, sports, history, environment, etc.
If it's a software product, you might assign people to look at a variety of pre-chosen sites or web apps that are way outside your domain.
I've used this in the training world -- as a tool for learners to help come up with what they ought to be learning, but I've never used it in the way I've described here. I'm looking forward to trying it...
(And yes, I took a little artistic license with the photo at the top--pizza and coke might be better than alcohol. Then again...)
I'd love to hear ideas for modifying this, or from anyone who's done anything like this!
The tools of cultural production are in the hands of teens
Every year, John Brockman asks a question of a widespread community of thinkers and publishes it on Edge.org. I reproduce here my answer to this year's question -- "What are you optimistic about?" -- in its entirety:
The tools for cultural production and distribution are in the pockets of 14 year olds. This does not guarantee that they will do the hard work of democratic self-governance: the tools that enable the free circulation of information and communication of opinion are necessary but not sufficient for the formation of public opinion. Ask yourself this question: Which kind of population seems more likely to become actively engaged in civic affairs — a population of passive consumers, sitting slackjawed in their darkened rooms, soaking in mass-manufactured culture that is broadcast by a few to an audience of many, or a world of creators who might be misinformed or ill-intentioned, but in any case are actively engaged in producing as well as consuming cultural products? Recent polls indicate that a majority of today's youth — the "digital natives" for whom laptops and wireless Internet connections are part of the environment, like electricity and running water — have created as well as consumed online content. I think this bodes well for the possibility that they will take the repair of the world into their own hands, instead of turning away from civic issues, or turning to nihilistic destruction.
The eager adoption of web publishing, digital video production and online video distribution, social networking services, instant messaging, multiplayer role-playing games, online communities, virtual worlds, and other Internet-based media by millions of young people around the world demonstrates the strength of their desire — unprompted by adults — to learn digital production and communication skills. Whatever else might be said of teenage bloggers, dorm-room video producers, or the millions who maintain pages on social network services like MySpace and Facebook, it cannot be said that they are passive media consumers. They seek, adopt, appropriate, and invent ways to participate in cultural production. While moral panics concentrate the attention of oldsters on lurid fantasies of sexual predation, young people are creating and mobilizing politically active publics online when circumstances arouse them to action. 25,000 Los Angeles high school students used MySpace to organize a walk-out from classes to join street demonstrations protesting proposed immigration legislation. Other young people have learned how to use the sophisticated graphic rendering engines of video games as tools for creating their own narratives; in France, disaffected youth, the ones whose riots are televised around the world, but whose voices are rarely heard, used this emerging "machinima" medium to create their own version of the events that triggered their anger (The French Democracy ). Not every popular YouTube video is a teenage girl in her room (or a bogus teenage girl in her room); increasingly, do-it-yourself video has been used to capture and broadcast police misconduct or express political opinions. Many of the activists who use Indymedia — ad-hoc alternative media organized around political demonstrations — are young.
My optimism about the potential of the generation of digital natives is neither technological determinism nor naive utopianism. Many-to-many communication enables but does not compel or guarantee widespread civic engagement by populations who never before had a chance to express their public voices. And while the grimmest lesson of the twentieth century is to mistrust absolutist utopians, I perceive the problem to be in the absolutism more than the utopia. Those who argued for the abolition of the age-old practice of human slavery were utopians.
American Innovation Proclamation
U.S. business and higher education leaders unveiled "The American Innovation Proclamation," urging Congress to move forward on critical legislation that promotes U.S. competitiveness and sustains U.S. innovation leadership. The proclamation is signed by more than 270 business and higher education leaders. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN), Chairman, House Science and Technology Committee and a Bipartisan Group of House and Senate Members received the proclamation at a well attended press event March 13 in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington DC. LINK: Download american_innovation_proclamationfinal.pdf
We, the leaders of American business and higher education, call on Congress to act quickly on an innovation agenda that will ensure continued U.S. competitiveness, enabling Americans to succeed in the global economy. Innovation leadership creates high-wage jobs and rising incomes for Americans. Innovation drives productivity and economic growth, giving American workers the tools to remain the most productive in the world and creating products, processes—and even new industries—that expand employment and boost living standards. The United States has remained the world’s innovation leader through a commitment to basic research, a world-class workforce and a climate that rewards innovation. But America cannot rest on past economic success. Our competitors are investing in innovation, improving their competitive position and, in some respects, surpassing us.
Therefore, Congress must act to:
Renew America’s commitment to discovery by doubling the basic research budgets at the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the Department of Defense;
Improve student achievement in math and science through increased funding of proven programs and incentives for science and math teacher recruitment and professional development;
Welcome highly educated foreign professionals, particularly those holding advanced science, technology, engineering, or mathematics degrees,
especially from U.S. universities, by reforming U.S. visa policies;
Make permanent a strengthened R&D Tax Credit to encourage continued private-sector innovation investment.
We, the signatories, hereby proclaim our support for these initiatives and stand ready to do our part.
Innovation: So loved yet so abused
There certainly has been a lot of buzz around Innovation lately. In fact, it seems that every time we turn a corner we are bombarded with stories that include the word ‘Innovation’ front-and-center. Recently we read an insightful article which spoke to this particular issue, and to the true meaning of Innovation.
The article quotes Boston Consulting’s Harold Sirkin: "There's a belief that innovation is about great ideas … but in the business context, it's also about bringing a great idea to market, and how to maximize the payback on the investment made in the idea."
All of this points to a need for a structured framework to drive Innovation forward, like that found in Blue Ocean Strategy, so that the Innovation process becomes profitable and worthwhile, rather than a loosely flaunted word.
Sirkin presents Apple’s cash curve for the iPod. As the article describes “the graphic shows the company's low startup costs (because Apple didn't invent the portable digital music player, it simply redesigned it), speed to market, and ability to quickly achieve a large volume of sales.” Very blue ocean, indeed.
Would you like to join in the discussion? Get in touch with us via the ‘email me’ tab in the upper left-hand corner.
Future: Innovation Timeline 2050
E-ink, 3D printers, disintegrator, mindwipes, replicators, human memory downloads, reputation trading, 3D fax, video wallpaper, virtual reality windows. All this is due before 2050 according to the Innovation Timeline (pdf) by NowAndNext.com. Also useful is their list of links to sites similarly concerned with the future.
-- via Fallon Planning
Two Faces of Open Innovation
By Charlie Leadbeater
March 14: Listening this morning at Nesta to Matt Locke, outgoing head of open new media innovation at the BBC, helped to clarify a distinction about open innovation which I had not previously got clear enough. There are two faces of open innovation.
The first, and most familiar, is open innovation into a company or organisation. This is open innovation of the kind analysed and advocated by Henry Chesbrough, to widen the pool of ideas a company can draw upon. This is open innovation of the kind practised by Goldcorp and P & G. It is the model that Wired magazine calls crowdsourcing. It is Pop Idol. Or as the head of digital music at Sony put it at the Nokia world conference in Amsterdam in the Autumn, this is the world in which all of humanity becomes part of a hit generating network for the music business. Open Innovation IN provides organisations with a wider network of talent and ideas to draw upon but often feeding an unchanged business model for how the IP is exploited and commercialised.
The second approach is Open Innovation OUT. This is where a group of people, a movement, sometimes a company, created a kernel or a platform, with some tools, onto which people can add their ideas and contributions. Open Innovation IN narrows down a wider set of contributions into a funnel of corporate development. Open Innovation OUT is designed to allow a process of evolutionary innovation that accretes and grows as each new person adds their piece of infomation, code or module. Open Innovation OUT is Wikipedia and Linux, open source and social movements like Avaaz and Move On.
Of course these two models are not necessarily incompatible. Some innovative companies are good at drawing in ideas and letting them out: Google perhaps is an example. And open innovation in all its guises has some common features: collaboration, networks, shared ownership.
But the two kinds of Open Innovation are really quite different. Open Innovation IN, crowdsourcing, is a process innovation to give established organisations access to a wider network of talent, extending the range of ideas and often cutting the costs of innovation. A wider funnel feeds an essentially unchanged business and corporate process of exploitation and commercialisation. Open Innovation OUT however is more like crowdcreating, people building something together. That may well require a different approach to ownership which is mutual and open source.
Find out more at http://www.charlesleadbeater.net where Charles has posted the draft of his next book We-Think: The power of mass creativity.
March 12, 2007
The Growing Global Indian Innovation
Indian Americans are the top entrepreneurs among immigrant groups in the United States, and in setting up the largest number of engineering and technology companies over the past decade. Indian Americans account for 26 per cent of tech firms founded by immigrants as a whole. Eglis Milbergs, president of the Center for Accelerating Innovation, in this article touts the Duke University study wherein the biggest concentration of Indian entrepreneurs was found in California, Texas and New Jersey.
Ajay Singh Niranjan of The Great Human Capital believes that a brave new world beckons Indian Innovators and Entrepreneurs, and lots of opportunities exist for innovation and entrepreneurship to thrive in India, especially in areas such as technology, health care, education, rural marketing and social services.
In this article, Wipro's Innovation process is outlined in an interview with K.S. Viswanathan, chief-executive of sales at Wipro India.
Viswanathan states that "We (Wipro) have three types of innovation: technology innovation, process innovation and delivery innovation....At the apex end, we have an IT management council, where normally all decisions about breakthrough innovations or quantum innovations are taken....To assist the IT management council, we have an IT innovation council, where we go through four gates before an IT project gets done."
At Wipro, 5% of the total revenue of $3 billion comes from innovation projects according to Viswanathan. And to top it off, Azim Premji, CEO, gets involved in key innovative projects. Viswanathan says "Azim Premji has said that so many dollars of revenue per year are earmarked for innovative projects, largely for quantum innovations and those that lead to process innovations."
Arun Kottolli, a Management Consultant who maintains his own blog provides key advantages towards investing in India. Kottolli affirms that "India has now regained its innovative spirit. As a result, creativity can be seen in all walks of life in India. Indian companies have discovered the benefits of innovation and creativity.....Creativity in India can be seen in diversity of its languages, classical arts and music, literature, folk arts, construction etc."
One key metric: IBM, GE, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel and sixty other top innovating companies have already setup their R&D centers in India.
Kottolli believes that Indians tend to opt for cost effective innovation.
Kottolli is a prolific blogger, and in another article, talks about the Indian Style of Innovation and Intellectual Property Creation.
Innovation at Infosys is grounded in the intellectual capital and the processes to rigorously train the employees:
-->The company’ key competitive advantage has been the intellectual capital of its employees. - Infosys Annual report 2006
-->In India Infosys took that idea (from GE) to heart and created the world’s largest employee training facility.
In a separate article, Kottolli writes that the "Indian automobile industry has demonstrated resounding success of Indian innovation. Bajaj Auto created DTSI technology and designed Pulsar bike, Maini Group’s Reva, Mahindra’s Scorpio, Tata Motors created Sumo, Safari, Indica, 209, 407, and a slew of trucks."
John Hagel recently visited India, and wrote an article on the Innovation and Talent in the Indian IT Industry.
"As JSB and I have written, there is an opportunity to pursue “innovation blowback” strategies, using the Indian market as a catalyst for breakthrough innovation in products and services that can then be used to support global attacker strategies designed to challenge incumbents in the more developed Western economies.
The Indian IT services industry could fuel enormous growth for the Indian economy by more aggressively supporting these innovation blowback strategies.
Ultimately, the opportunity would be to become leaders in the formation and orchestration of creation networks. This would require mastering open innovation management techniques to attract and mobilize talent, focus the innovation initiatives across multiple participants and accelerate commercialization and learning from these initiatives.
There’s no shortage of opportunities at both the product and process level to drive the growth of Indian IT services companies."
Gautam Ghosh, a key blogger on Management Consulting, provides a reason on why Indian IT companies have not fully embraced product innovation: "Because software exports are not taxed and services within the country are, the incentive for developing IT products and services for Indian firms is low for the Indian IT service providers."
Bottomline:
When I visited India in 2006, I was "wowed" by the growth of local innovation on all industry fronts: pharma, healthcare, autos, equipment, manufacturing, financials, retail, education, IT and more – not just the BPO and KPO industries. The solid growth in Indian economy is fueling entrepreneurship, innovation and creativity from Indians in every industry. This growth is even attracting MNCs to establish their R&D, manufacturing and entrepreneurship centers in India. My favorite story is that of a Taxi Driver in India who drives an indigenous Tata Indica and conducts all the routes and business logistics by simply using SMS and click-to-talk on mobile phone. I was amazed as to how efficiently the Taxi business of over 100 taxis effectively ran using the mobile phone as a communications, logistics and business device. The Taxi Driver uses click-to-talk to signal to the Taxi dispatch service that his current route is coming to a close; the Taxi dispatch service locates the nearest new customer request to the current physical location on where the Taxi driver is; the Taxi dispatch service leverages GPS and Location software; the Taxi Driver gets an SMS from the Taxi dispatch service prompting him on where to go next with a link that provides a map if needed; the Taxi Driver goes to that location and finds the passenger; now, he simply uses Click-to-talk to signal that he has picked up the passenger and he is on the next route. Wow!
Living in Bay Area, one always has a strong awareness of the top Indian entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and even in the U.S. Now, we are seeing the growth of entrepreneurship and innovation from Indians in India and all over the world.
I am planning to create a report on the top 10 Indian Innovators from around the world. The names of Azim Premji, N R Narayana Murthy, Lakshmi Nivas Mittal immediately come to mind. However there are 7 more. Vyomesh Joshi at Hewlett Packard who manages HP’s multi-billion dollar imaging business must be considered in this list. The criteria at a minimum should be the innovators creating lasting companies or business units of at least $1 billion in annual revenue, real disruption in the marketplace, establishing a global brand and currently in active role (or within the last year). I would call upon the many aforementioned writers to co-create and get inputs on this report on the top 10 Indian Innovators.
Senate Reintroduces Legislation to Keep America at the Forefront of Innovation
Today a bi-partisan group of US Senators introduced legislation to make America more competitive in the global economy. The America COMPETES Act or the America Creating Opportunities to Meaningfully Promote Excellence in Technology, Education and Science Act will focus on three primary areas:
- Strengthening education in the areas of math, science, technology, and engineering;
- Increasing research investment;
- Developing an innovation infrastructure.
The bill was introduced by Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell along with other Senate sponsors of the bill including: Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), Pete Domenici (R-NM), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Ted Stevens (R-AK), Ted Kennedy (D-MA), Michael Enzi (RWY), Joe Lieberman (D-CT), John Ensign (R-NV), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Bill Nelson (D-FL) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX). The legislation is similar to one introduced in the last Congress but not acted upon.
Senators gave major credit for shaping several sections of the legislation to the National Academies' "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" report and the Council on Competitiveness' "Innovate America" report released during the last Congress.
“This is a strong signal that the nation must boost our brainpower, R&D investment and infrastructure for the challenges of 21st century innovation. The legislation is bi-partisan and comprehensive, cutting across a number of important policy areas, and a good start at structuring a long term approach to innovation. Business, academia, governors, mayors and the public will give it support. Lets hope Washington politics as usual does not become a barrier to passage and implementation….” said Egils Milbergs of the Center for Accelerating Innovation and a contributor to the Innovate America report.
Links to summary and section by section analysis:
Innovation: It Hasn't Started Yet
Every once in a while you run across something so great that you can't share it fast enough.
This video is such a thing.
Found via You Already Know This Stuff
This video is such a thing.
Found via You Already Know This Stuff
MBA in Design and Innovation Management
Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University and Ferris' College of Business have partnered to establish the first Master of Business Administration degree in the nation with a concentration in Design and Innovation Management.
The new MBA responds to the increased awareness of the importance of design and innovation in business. The program uniquely combines the resources of a college of business with a college of art and design. By embracing design thinking and collaboration the Design and Innovation Management concentration focuses on training future business leaders with the mindset and skills to build and sustain innovative and creative organizations.
The Delay In Chinese Innovation
Consider this:
I can buy an o-ring, made in China, from a US distributor cheaper than my China Regional Office can buy an o-ring from a local supplier who supplies the US with o-rings.
I can get any amount of o-rings that I want. China has to order 20,000 pieces
I can get them tomorrow. China has to wait 8 weeks.
I can have the distributor bill me. China has to pay cash, upfront.
It is instances like these, and there are many of them, that put the US at a distinct advantage over China. Imagine you are a Chinese engineer and you need a 1000 o-rings to complete your validation testing. You need cash money, upfront, and then you have to wait eight weeks. The US engineer has tried a hundred different o-rings in that eight weeks.
China is full of talented, motivated people who given the right tools would rival any country in the world with their innovation talent. But, because the system is so vertically integrated the infrastructure hasn’t been fully built yet and as a result the seemingly simple things are hard to accomplish.
Don’t get me wrong, China Innovation will rival the United States' someday, but that day is not as close as the headlines would lead you to believe.
I can buy an o-ring, made in China, from a US distributor cheaper than my China Regional Office can buy an o-ring from a local supplier who supplies the US with o-rings.
I can get any amount of o-rings that I want. China has to order 20,000 pieces
I can get them tomorrow. China has to wait 8 weeks.
I can have the distributor bill me. China has to pay cash, upfront.
It is instances like these, and there are many of them, that put the US at a distinct advantage over China. Imagine you are a Chinese engineer and you need a 1000 o-rings to complete your validation testing. You need cash money, upfront, and then you have to wait eight weeks. The US engineer has tried a hundred different o-rings in that eight weeks.
China is full of talented, motivated people who given the right tools would rival any country in the world with their innovation talent. But, because the system is so vertically integrated the infrastructure hasn’t been fully built yet and as a result the seemingly simple things are hard to accomplish.
Don’t get me wrong, China Innovation will rival the United States' someday, but that day is not as close as the headlines would lead you to believe.
Innovation timeline 1900-2050
Richard Watson from nowandnext.com dropped me a note today about his new Innovation timeline. It is showing innovations from the year 1900 to 2050. So if you would like to see Richard’s vision for the next 47 years you should click the image above for a full size pdf.
The Innovation timeline was originally produced for a 2007 +Ten trends: Predictions and Provocations report by nowandnext.com. He had since then added a few extra ideas to the period 2007-2050.
You may remember his Trend Map for 2007 that I reported about here. The Trend Map was open source and so is the new Innovation timeline. This means that people are encouraged to adapt or play around with it or use it in anyway they like.
I’m curious to see if his prediction for the future will become reality. What do you think about video wallpaper, space mining, single global currency, invisi-spray and memory enhancement in humans?
As last time Richard Watson points out that we should not take it too seriously.
Andra bloggar om: framtiden, trender, innovation
Invention is Alive and Well
If you have any question about the passion or interest in invention, here's a few tidbits for you.
First, the growing number of reality shows featuring inventors:
ABC's American Inventor
PBS Everyday Edisons
The New Inventors (Australia)
Second, the growth of invention brokers and service bureaus, though many are unfortunately getting rich on the backs of inventors (versus making money based on success in the market). I'll be writing a separate post on this whole trend and what's being done about it.
Finally... and what spurred me to write this post this morning was the overwhelming response we've had to our own little inventor search contest. In partnership and support of EntrepreneurshipWeek USA (just ended), Venture2 decided to conduct an inventor search of our own, with the grand prize being some free publicity and 2 months support in helping an entrepreneur get connected to a leading company with their idea (at no cost of course, or it wouldn't be a 'prize'!). Here's the link to our inventor page for more details.
So anyway, this morning, our website statistics show over 43,000 hits and over 4,000 visitors to our Venture2 website, in one day! (Our corporate website normally averages between 50-100 visitors per day) Though it's intended primarily as a local event to be held at our Launching Pad facility, we're getting applications from as far away as Vietnam! So we'll probably allow a few of these 'remote' applications via teleconference if they're strong ideas.
It gives me a lot of pleasure to see such interest in creativity and invention. I hope that we can do just a little through this event to inspire a few more inventors, and hopefully get at least one great idea connected to a great company that can scale it up!
Stay tuned!
March 01, 2007
Upcoming Events For Inventors
From Inventor’s Digest Newsletter:
Saturday, February 24 … Upcoming PBS-TV show, Everyday Edisons, is holding its next casting call in San Diego. Inventors of all ages are invited to participate. Of course, those under 18 will need a parent to sign the registration form and give their consent. The auditions will be held at the KPBS Studios, which are on the San Diego State University Campus, 5200 Campanile Drive. Doors will open at 7 a.m. Be prepared with a great prototype and a very well practiced presentation.
March 18-22 … Games Expo 2007, the trade show for the games industry, will be held in Las Vegas at the South Point Hotel & Casino. Check out their web site. If you are selling a game, the Expo may provide a great opportunity for you. It is not open to the general public.
March 24 … This is the deadline for the 3rd annual Mothers of Invention Challenge that is sponsored by the ABC-TV show Good Morning America Weekend and Mom Inventors, Inc. If you’re a mom who has a great idea for a new invention, go to the ABC web site for contest rules and entry requirements.
April 6 … This is the deadline for the 3rd annual “Invent-a-Toy” World Games national competition that is sponsored by Mattel and By Kids for Kids. The competition is open to children ages 5 through 19, and its goal is to spark the creative and imaginative spirit of America?s kids and to discover the blockbuster toys and games of tomorrow. So, get your kids and grandchildren thinking of toys they wish they had and go to bkfk.com to submit their ideas.
April 15 … Today is the deadline for submissions to the Henkel Innovation Trophy competition. Henkel is an international company operating in three strategic areas of competence - Home Care, Personal Care, and Adhesives, Sealants and Surface Treatment.
May 8-10 … The National Hardware Show in Orlando will again have a special section set aside for new inventions and products called “The Inventors Spotlight.” If interested, contact Denise deLuca at 203-940-5982.
June 8 - 10 … It’s never too early to sign up for the Minnesota Inventors Congress. This year promises to be an extra-special event … it’s the 50th Anniversary of the nation’s longest running invention exhibition. If you provide services to inventors, take an ad out in the Congress’s show book. If you’re an inventor and want to exhibit your invention (and visit Redwood Falls, a small town the epitomizes all that is great about America), sign up today.
Photo by Rube Goldberg.
Why "duh"... isn't.
Critics of this blog love to say, "Duh!" or "Thanks for stating the obvious." My response is, "While the idea is dead obvious--the problem is that we don't do the obvious." When I hear comments like, "You wasted all that space to say, "Care about your customers", I wonder why we don't. Or rather, I wonder why we all say we care about them, yet our actions reflect a more selfish view. When it comes to our users/customers...
I don't think they think what we think they think.
It's similar to all those other statistics you hear about, like that way more than 50% of the population rate themselves "Above Average" in everything from looks to smarts. We think our customers generally love us, although of course we're not perfect, but then... who is? Sure we have a few issues, but we're working on it. And besides, we're so much better than the competition.
When we first came out with the Head First books, and talked about brain-friendly learning principles, people said, "Duh. There's nothing new here." And we said, "Of course not. We didn't invent anything. We just applied it. And if implementing these principles were truly "duh" (which they should be), then everyone would be doing some variation of it, and readers/learners would not be struggling to learn tough technical topics.
If helping your users kick ass were truly "duh", then our users wouldn't feel frustrated, confused, angry, stupid, humiliated, or furious. If writing good user manuals were truly "duh", then there'd be no acronym for RTFM.
This is no different from any other part of our lives, of course. Eating healthy is a "duh." Exercising five times a week is a "duh." Saving money is a "duh." Keeping our kids off TV is a "duh." Flossing is definitely "duh." Managing stress is a "duh." Greeting your significant other and kids with a smile and full attention is a "duh." Empowering our employees is a "duh." Changing the oil is a "duh." Being on time is a "duh." And I might as well end this paragraph with a totally lame cliche:
There's a big difference between saying, "Eat an apple a day" and actually eating the apple.
If "duh" is so damn obvious, why aren't we DOING it? (I say "we" because I'm just as guilty) More importantly, why do we drastically overestimate the extent to which we are doing "duh" things?
There are too many reasons to list, and many I hope you'll add, but a few highlights include:
Downplaying the importance
Denial (we think we are)
Inertia
Fear of change
Too risky
If the competition isn't doing it, why should we?
Ego (making a change means admitting you weren't doing something right)
etc....
But I think the most important one is that we never actually take the time to really think about the "duh" thing. I try to ask people, "Sure, taking care of the customer yada yada yada is "duh", but what would it actually mean if you really REALLY did it? Stop. Think. Deeply. How much of what you do might feel like it's for the customer... or you tell yourself that story, anyway... but it's more about what's good for you? What would it mean if you took the "duh" thing and spent one hour--just ONE hour--brainstorming what that really means?
When people ask for the secret sauce guaranteed recipe for success, we say that it's quite simple: just do the "duh" thing. The Big Secret is not about knowing what magical thing to do--it's about taking the "duh" things seriously enough and actually doing them. If you could pick just one "duh" thing to work on, what would it be?
And yes, this post is one big "duh." A "meta-duh", if you will. ; )
What are your thoughts?
[Update: In comments to this recent post on Tara's blog, Martin Wells said something similar:
"And readers continue to buy into the idea that if they can just somehow find the right formula -- the "secret" -- they'll succeed.
The irony is most of the books are right, it's just a matter of applying all that knowledge correctly and intelligently."
National Academy of Engineering Seeks Public Input on Greatest Technological Challenges
The National Academy of Engineering is asking the public to weigh in over the internet with their ideas for the greatest technological challenges of the next century. The project, called the "Grand Challenges for Engineering" program, is aimed at gathering up all those ideas and distilling them into a list of 20 puzzles for engineers to solve — in fields ranging from energy to communications to aerospace to advanced materials. Over the next few months, comments and suggestions will be sorted and ranked, then reviewed by an 18-member blue-ribbon committee.
- William Perry, Committee Chair, (Former Secretary of Defense, Michael and Barbara Berberian Professor and Professor of Engineering, Stanford University
Alec Broers, Chairman, Science and Technology Select Committee, United Kingdom House of Lords - Farouk El-Baz, Research Professor and Director, Center for Remote Sensing,Boston University
- Wesley Harris, Department Head and Charles Stark Draper Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Bernadine Healy, Health Editor and Columnist, U.S. News & World Report
- W. Daniel Hillis, Chairman and Co-Founder, Applied Minds, Inc.
- Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice of International Development,Harvard University
- Dean Kamen, Founder and President, DEKA Research and Development Corp.
- Raymond Kurzweil, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc.
- Robert Langer, Institute Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Jaime Lerner, Architect and Urban Planner, Instituto Jaime Lerner
- Bindu Lohani, Director General and Chief Compliance Officer, Asian Development Bank
- Jane Lubchenco, Wayne and Gladys Valley Professor of Marine Biology and Distinguished Professor of Zoology, Oregon State University
- Mario Molína, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California
- Larry Page, Co-Founder and President of Products, Google, Inc.
- Robert Socolow, Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University Environmental Institute
- J. Craig Venter, President, The J. Craig Venter Institute
- Jackie Ying, Executive Director, Institute of Bioengineeringand Nanotechnology
This project is sponsored by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Award # ENG-063206. For more information, please contact Randy Atkins at engineeringchallenges@nae.edu
US Maintains Global Lead in Patent Production
The United States is still the global leader in international patent applications, according to a report released Wednesday. The International Herald Tribune reports that statistics released by the World Intellectual Property Organization found that the United States still accounts for 34.1 percent of the world's international patent applications. The report also found that China and South Korea are moving faster up the chart than any other countries. WIPO Deputy Director-General Francis Gurry said he expects global patent filings will continue to rise in Asian countries. "New centers of innovation -- in particular in northeast Asia -- are emerging," he said, "and this is transforming both the geography of the patent system and of future global growth.
Innovation in urban warfare
The global war against terror is apparently sparking a rise in the number of innovation prize competitions with a distinctly military flavor. For example, Singapore has launched an innovation prize contest to build a robot that can operate in urban warfare conditions without the assistance of satellite navigation or any kind of remote control device. Such a robot would be able to conduct search-and-destroy missions in war-torn, densely populated urban areas:
"The country's Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) is offering one million Singapore dollars ($652,000) to whoever develops a robot that completes a stipulated set of tasks – yet to be revealed – in the fastest time possible. DSTA said individuals, companies, universities and research institutes are all welcome to participate in the contest, dubbed the TechX Challenge, although foreigners must collaborate with local partners. "Operation in urban areas represents a significant challenge," DSTA chief executive Richard Lim said at the launch of the contest. "Recent military experiences in Iraq, the Middle East and other locations have clearly illustrated these challenges."
One day soon, instead of a "troop surge" in Iraq, I suppose the U.S. government will be announcing a "robot surge" in various terrorist-infested locations around the world.
[image: Black Hawk Down video game]
Innovation Dominates Winter Governors Meeting in DC
The nation's governors who are meeting in Washington DC have declared innovation as a top theme, building on NGA Chair Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano's Innovation America initiative. This Sunday’s plenary session at the National Governors Association Winter meetings will be highlighting the importance of STEM in creating an "innovation environment" in every state—and the nation.
The goal of the Innovation America initiative is to assist governors in developing and implementing short and long run strategies to enhance the innovative capacity of their states, particularly in existing regions of innovation. A combination of Governor’s Guides, direct technical assistance and forums for exchanging ideas and best practices will enable governors to attain the goal of creating innovative states. As part of the initiative, the National Governors Association will:
-- raise national awareness of the urgent need to embrace innovation as the U.S. path to maintaining competitiveness;
-- share examples of best practices and provide a “tool box” of effective policies and strategies;
-- present each governor with an economic profile specific to their state, including high growth innovation centers and science and math proficiencies;
--host regional learning labs and workshops to help states improve education in the areas of science, technology, engineering and math; and
--create new science and math academies to improve student achievement and grow a workforce in emerging occupations.
INNOVATION AMERICA TASK FORCE. To guide the Innovation America initiative, Gov. Napolitano and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will co-chair a bipartisan task force of governors, business leaders and university presidents. Working with the NGA Center for Best Practices, the task force will take the lead in developing strategies to create clusters of innovation and new approaches to math and science education for all students.
Egils Milbergs, president, Center for Accelerating Innovation, commented: “The drivers of economic competitiveness and innovation are in large part at the regional level. The Innovation America initiative is terrific and a promising effort by our governors. Innovative policies and public private partnerships, particularly in advancing learn to learn competencies, are essential to a state’s global dynamism and creative capacity.”
For more information, visit www.nga.org.
· A Call to Action: Why America Must Innovate
· Building a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Agenda
· Cluster-Based Strategies for Growing State Economics
· The 2007 State New Economy Index: Benchmarking Economic Transformation in the States
You’re never too old to get back in the game!
We’ve been following closely the Blue Ocean Strategy-induced success of Nintendo’s Wii (check out some of our previous postings here and here) and their push to open up video-gaming to untapped markets, more specifically, non-gamers.
That’s why, when we came across this amusing story about the Nintendo Wii being cleverly introduced to an entirely new audience, we thought to share it with our Creating Blue Oceans community as an ideal example of turning non-customers into customers:
The marketing minds behind Nintendo looked beyond the traditional gamer mediums and advertised its innovations at targets as far from gaming as you can imagine, such as retirees. Nintendo even went against the current and took the Wii to an AARP convention. “The AARP thing was a little bit tough at first. They were like, ‘We don't really want to talk to you because we're all grandparents and we already buy stuff for our kids,’ and so we said, ‘No we want to talk to you about you,’” said Perrin Kaplan, VP Marketing & Corporate Affairs for Nintendo of America. “It took several attempts for them to finally say, ‘So why do you want to talk to us?’ And it's because we have products for them as well now.”
Nintendo’s efforts seemed to have paid off. The Chicago Tribune is reporting (registration required) that the Wii is now the latest rage at the Sedgebrook retirement community in Lincolnshire, where the average age is 77. In particular, the Wii Bowling component of Wii Sports has members of the retirement community hooked on playing the Wii installed inside the Sedgebrooks’s clubhouse lounge.
“I've never been into video games, but this is addictive,” said 72-year-old Flora Dierbach. “They come in after dinner and play. Sometimes, on Saturday afternoons, their grandkids come play with them … A lot of grandparents are being taught by their grandkids. But, now, some grandparents are instead teaching their grandkids.”
Nintendo’s Wii is improving the quality of life for retirement community residents, their families and friends, and carving out new customers for itself. That’s Blue Ocean Strategy in action.
Photo via Chicago Tribune.
Banking on 'better customer experience'
David Polinchock, in his blog The Experience Economist on a story run by NBC station in New York on how banks are changing to create a better in branch experience. The article points out that the driver behind these kinder, gentler banks is fierce competition. Radical new design of branches and services create new levels of experience and relationship with the banks customers. Amenities like childrenís play areas, cafÈís, more open spaces, and free standing tables for interacting with bank staff etc. They appear to be proving some value, the manager gave a compelling argument for the need to create better experiences:
An average bank in the suburbs will do about $1.5 million a month is deposits. In the first 25 weeks with our new branch, we've done $1 million a week. This roughtly translates to, the traditional branch doing about $9.4 million over 25 weeks, versus the $25 million they've done in the new branch.
See the whole article here
Also see an article in BAI , by the Bank of Smithtowns Executive Vice President and Chief Retail Officer John Romanoextract: ìYou have to find a way to differentiate yourself, and for us, that was through branch design.î
ALSO SEE DEUTSCHE BANKS 'QIIO'; BANK OF THE FUTURE
CScouts reports on Deutsche Banks new pilot branch, named Q110. Finally somebody thought about banking of the future and how to present financial services in a more innovative and customer friendly way. In addition to regular bank operations, this distinctive complex houses an exhibition space, a trend shop, a reading corner, childrens play area, and a cafe.
For full details click here and link through to images