Ido Lapidot from Intel in Israel opened his talk on TRIZ in large companies with the Tetris project's video on the history of TRIZ, and then a charming demonstration of his personal history using S-curves. Since he started with the announcement that the benefit of TRIZ to Intel was many millions, this got the audience very engaged. Then he astonished us by saying that we need Systemic Innovation, not Systematic Innovation - - in other words, if the culture is right, it doesn't matter if we have TRIZ or any other specific methodology. But, the current Intel theme that power is not the goal, power/performance is the goal, makes resolving the contradiction the focus of the whole company, so there is a high compatibility with between the strategy, the culture, and TRIZ.

There was great interest in Lapidot's chart showing the correspondence

Vision - - Ideality

Mission - - Laws of evolution

Strategy - - S-Curves

Targets - - Ideal Final Result

Indicators - - Ideality equation: Functions/(Cost + Harm) He emphasized the need to have multiple factors in the indicators.

Lapidot gave the audience very practical advice while simultaneously illustrating the application of TRIZ to cultural change. He used both the separation principles and the 40 principles to show some of what he does; for example, combining the principles of local quality and self ��"service, have people develop their own examples of TRIZ applicability for their own problems, instead of having an expert supply generic examples. His history of the adoption of TRIZ through the company from 1996 through 2010 was sobering for those who wanted an instant solution, and his statement that they do not use metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of TRIZ was a challenge to those who use conventional management.

Lapidot then became a member of the panel for the discussion of embedding TRIZ in large enterprises, with Jagdish Ramaswamy, Chief Quality Officer from Wipro (Software and IT services), and T. Mukhopadhyay, Senior VP and head of R&D for CavinKare(shampoo and other personal care products.) (Picture, Left to Right, Ramaswamy, Lapidot, Bhushan, Mukhopadhyay) All panelists agreed that there is no one formula for introducing TRIZ throughout the organization, and that they used methods similar to Intel's for different people, different departments, and different jobs within their companies.

There was an extensive discussion of what constitutes innovation in software, which extended to innovation in systems and applications as opposed to the innovation in the software tools themselves, and potential areas for TRIZ applications. The audience questions then returned the panel to practical issues of the time spent on training and on projects when introducing TRIZ into a company. Navneet Bhushan gave a very complete description of an experimental approach, in which the people learning TRIZ are encouraged to experiment with it, not just treat it as training, over a 9-month period. The message from day 1, that TRIZ software / hardware / systems / services all benefit from TRIZ became much more concrete for the audience as they heard the commonality of approaches and results at Wipro, CavinKare, and Intel. Both Wipro and Intel have extensive Six Sigma deployments, and there was considerable interest in the TRIZ/Six Sigma hybridization (building on what I talked about yesterday, but with real examples from the 2 companies.)

After a short break, a second panel convened to discuss intellectual property. Krishan Prasad, inventor of global warming solutions and founder of Carbonda Global, Prof. Mary Mathew from the Indian Institute of Science, and Pinaki Ghosh, head of IP at Infosys joined Navneet Bhushan to discuss the methods used by inventors now, and the potential for TRIZ. Ghosh and Bhushan both emphasized that TRIZ is useful both for evaluation of ideas as well as for generation of ideas. Karthik Iyer asked the challenging questions: my favorite was, since TRIZ is successful for patent circumvention, will inventors be discouraged and will they stop generating new patents? The panelists had a vigorous discussion of the difference between the legal, ethical approach of patent circumvention and the improper use of patent information that results in infringement. (Ask your lawyer about this!)

The next paper built on the interest in patents. Priyaranjan Mishra from Philips India teamed with N. Bhushan to show how they search for relevant patents using TRIZ and the patent citation analysis method that was presented yesterday afternoon. Mishra emphasized the financial benefits of a good, fast, accurate, high confidence search system. Bhushan showed a case study using Perfusion Imaging, which combines MRI with cellular metabolism measures. There is a fascinating correlation between the high-ranking patents in their system and high level of invention, using Altshuller's 5 level scale.

Prasanna C. from Infosys Technologies reported on the use of TRIZ to determine qualitative parameters for estimating IP value of intangibles. They start by analyzing the contradiction that is solved by the invention, using D. Mann's business parameter matrix and the principles of invention that are cited by the matrix. The strength and frequency of use of the principles becomes the foundation of the analysis.

Bala Girisaballa, Director of R&D for Yahoo India, opened the afternoon session with a broad analysis of innovation in business models as well as technology, leading to discussion of open innovation methods. Yahoo's view of innovation includes business system patents, mostly from a defensive point of view, since the lifecycle of innovation in their business is 1 week-3 months, and innovative patentable ideas are published, not patented, as a business decision. The scale of Yahoo! is mind-boggling: 9 billion advertisements per day, 600 million people… They have a strong discipline for deciding what areas will be innovative, with a hierarchy of employees, partners, network associates, and their ecosystem. Yahoo! has an extensive suite of methods for engaging and rewarding employee innovation initiatives, some familiar to all readers of the innovation literature (reward fast failure, communicate cross-functionally) and some unique (internal hack days.) The need for common vision, trust, and open communication is the same for both employees and for partners, but very different in details of application. The network and ecosystem relationship are much less close, aimed at long-term relationships that will result in future partnerships. The challenge is to create a system that promotes the diffusion of new ideas from the outside layers to the inside, where they will be developed into implemented concepts. In parallel, they have a concept called radiation, in which problems go out through the layers, to the people who have the most interest in solving it.

Bala Ramadurai from MindTree spoke next about a unique what /if and function /attribute /analysis method to generate exhaustive system test case scenarios. The method was developed for a complex system, where classical analysis produced 80 scenarios, then WI ��" FAA produced 300 scenarios for a much more comprehensive test set. The deceptively simple method uses standard TRIZ function analysis: A does something to B, then ask what happens if the action is effective, missing, insufficient, excessive, or harmful, and what could cause an effective action to transition to one of the other modes.

Bala Girisaballa, Navneet, Venkatesh VR (Sr. VP and head of external innovation at Wipro) and I were the panel for a discussion of open innovation and TRIZ. My view was that TRIZ could be used to refine the definition of problems, and to focus the solutions, so that the mass idea submission approach of open innovation is unnecessary (I'm not sure thatI was a real contribution to the discussion!) The audience had a lot of questions about the technicalities of open innovation and IP, and a very vigorous exchange began, which will continue outside the conference hall.

The final presentation of the conference was planned to be Darrell Mann by remote connection from the UK speaking on TRIZ: Evolution to Revolution for Innovation. Technical difficulties caused cancellation, so Ido Lapidot, Isak Bukhman, Bala Ramadurai, and I did a quick panel discussion with the audience on high points of the conference, and next steps. Summarizing, the challenge is to DO TRIZ, don't just talk about it and don't just study it, DO IT! Second challenge is to keep the momentum going after the conference using all possible mechanisms. There's a live blog of the conference at http://trizindia.org/profiles/blogs/live-updates-trizin-2010 for those who would like a different perspective. Then there was lots of thanking each other and hugging, and people started for their next adventures.

Ninety people enjoyed the beautiful (cool in July!) weather in Bangalore at the opening of TRIZIN, the TRIZ India Summit 2010. Navneet Bhushan, founder of Crafitti Consulting and organizer of the conference, welcomed us with the challenge to develop a country-wide initiative to "define the new world that we want to inhabit," using TRIZ both to define the new world and to solve the problems that are preventing us from getting to that new world. I was impressed by the diversity of companies sponsoring the conference: Airtel "Impatience is the new life, live it with Airtel Broadband" and Micro Technologies, Yahoo R&D India, and Management Next Publications.

This will be a semi-live report to the TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation - - I'll post several times a day, as the conference progresses. Readers: please post questions or comments in the comments area at the end of this post, and I'll pass your input on to the conference. There will be several panel discussions and networking sessions to make this easy. For the agenda, see www.trizind.com

Isak Bukhman greeted the convention on behalf of the Altshuller Institute, and gave a 90 minute tutorial, to give the whole group a common vocabulary of TRIZ and his observations over his career as a TRIZ student and TRIZ Master in many countries about the diversity of applications of TRIZ. Isak's extensive collection of examples of the Laws of Evolution were appreciated by the audience, who also challenged him to use examples in the software and IT services area, which is the focus of much of Bangalore's business.

I gave the keynote speech on the topic of the global innovation revolution and the role of TRIZ in the revolution. The participants asked a wide range of useful questions, giving me the opportunity to talk about TRIZ with Six Sigma and Lean, and TRIZ for school children, among other topics.

The pre-lunch speaker was Mrs. Urmil Satya Bhushan, who is the Hindi translator of Darrell Mann's 'TRIZ Companion' book. She told the audience about her history as a teacher and social worker, and how learning TRIZ had changed her perspective on the kind of creativity that she had used all her life.

The after-lunch program started with Ramkumar Subramanian's exciting series of case studies of application of TRIZ to User Interface Innovation (Ram is a past TRIZ Journal author, and a TRIZ leader at Wipro.) He developed both graphical and tabular methods to help other software developers identify the areas where they can use TRIZ beneficially. There was vigorous discussion with both his colleagues and his competitors.

Karthikeyan Iyer (one of the hard-working and creative conference organizers from Crafitti) and C. Gajra presented "Endoscopy: Evolution and Future Directions with TRIZ" based on Dr. Gajra's experience as a biotechnology research and innovator. Her medical systems insights, and the applications of the laws of evolution to both medical and non-medical endoscopy, were very useful to the audience, judging by the questions and dialog. The application of the laws of evolution to the requirements as well as to the subsystems and the whole system resulted in a very thorough exploration of the possible futures of the endoscope.

Next on the agenda was a "debate" (we changed it to discussion) with Isak Bukhman and me, nominally discussing classical vs. modern TRIZ, but actually agreeing that TRIZ is developing and evolving, so there is no debate. There was a vigorous discussion by both the panelists and the audience about how to get TRIZ started in an organization, should it be introduced top-down or bottom-up (universal answer: it depends), relationships between TRIZ and Six Sigma, TRIZ and blue ocean strategy, TRIZ and blue sky thinking, etc. Thanks from this panelist to the audience for great questions, and thanks to Isak and Navneet for great teamwork!

"Innovation in the security industry" was a brief presentation by Aditya Sekhar from MicroTechnologies, who got the audience thinking about the fact that the harmful elements of society are always innovating, so the guardians must innovate both reactively and proactively.

Karthik Iyer explained the new social network analysis method developed at Crafitti being applied to widely diverse networks, such as influence of people in organizations, influence in governments, influence of suppliers, etc. They then extended the analysis to the network relationships between patents, using the citation indices as a starting point. Karthik's tutorial on social network was fascinating to the mostly engineering-oriented audience, which then easily saw the connections to patent citations; strength comes both from being cited by many others (your idea is strong) and from citing many others (you are connecting many ideas.)

The afternoon's final presentation was "Data and Internet Connectivity Solutions for Emerging Corporate Needs" by R. Vineeth of Bharti Airtel Ltd. He emphasized the need for multiple levels of connectivity within and between companies and within India and between India and other countries.

The rest of the group has now adjourned for networking and dinner, and I plan to join them as soon as this posting is up. Please send any questions that I can pass on to the group.

The annual meeting of the World Future Society was held in Boston this past week and I attended to teach a short TRIZ Futures Course and listen to a few speakers address future issues of concern. It was interesting that 1/2 of the TRIZ Futures class were from the military. Military atttendees and government contractors, charged with future strategy and planning, represented 6-7% of the 700+ attendees. Next to the US, major countries with attendees were Canada (50), Mexico (13), South Korea (11), UK (9), and Finland (8). Major segements of attendees were from academia, insurance industry, entertainment, and the food industry

Some highlights of presentations I attended:

"The City Sustainable"--a presentation by Jennifer Jarrat and John Mahaffey (Leading Futurists LLC) illustrating many examples from around the world of communiites integrating sustainability concepts into their strategic planning. One of the more interesting illustrations was from Greensburg, KS, a town almost totally destroyed by a tornado some years ago. The city, able to build from scratch, incorporated many "green" and information infrastructure aspects that would never have been doable while trying to maintain an existing infrastructure. This raises the question we should all think about and that is, "what would be do if we started all over again?". Total water recycle, use of vertical and 3D geometry, and alternative fuels were all part of many of these examples. That's an interesting think to think about, isn't it? If everything around you went away tomorrow, what would you replace it with? The same thing?

"Keep It Simple Stupid: Energy and Environmental Strategies"--a stimulating presentation by Ysvi Bisk (Center for Strategic Futurist Thinking) about simple and obvious solutions to the energy crisis. He made the analogy to the monopoly enjoyed by salt traders for food preservation to the current stranglehold that oil has on the US economy. He made a passionate plea for the electric car (to be generated by the vast coal and natural gas reserves the US has) to replace the oil infrastrucure. He pointed out that Mexico and Indonesia were now importing oil, and serious shortages of welders, mining engineers, and civil engineers were being seen. He said that we now use the energy equivalent of 1 bbl. of oil to produce 3 bbls where it used to take only 1 bbl to produce 100 bbls. and that the average age of technical personnel in the oil industry is now 50, and the knowledge and skills required to replace this deep knowledge was simply not happening. He broke down the use of a bbl of oil to be 23% industrial (chemicals and materials resources), 68% transportation, and 3% electricity generation. Eliminating the use of oil as a transportation fuel, he argued, was the best way to free ourselves of the current day "salt" monopoly.

"Oceans and our Global Future"--lunch presentation by Susan Avery, President and Director of the Woods Hole Institute. Susan made an impassioned plea to pay attention to our ocean resources that provides 20% of the aninal protein and 5% of the total protein in the human diet. The challenges in possible global warming, drought management, and eco-systems. She had great concern about global warming stratetgies that did not directly take into account the impact on ocean systems which represent 71% of the earth's surface and contain 97% of the planet's total water.

"Navigating the Future: Moral Machines, Technosapiens, and the Singularity"--keynote by Wendell Wallach from Yale University's Center for Bioethics. Wendell highlighted many of the future challenges that we have faced over and over again with increased knowledge--how will we use it? A skeletal bone can be used as a tool or a weapon, the Internet can provide information or invade privacy, etc. One interesting statistic he mentioned was that by 2050, 1/3 of all weapons in use would be unmanned (I.e. drone missiles as an example). He suggested that we have not begun to think seriouisly enough about the extension of the average life span (it was 46 in 1900 and is now 78 and rising). A population with significant perecentages of those over 100 and 110 years of age has significant consequences to society in terms of costs, medical care, indirect employment impacts, etc.

Other topical tracks were focused on the Future of Education, a look back at Brasilia after 50 years, the Future of Terror, Humans in 2020: The Next Ten Years of Biotechnoloogy, Future Military and Civilian Policing, the Changing Landscape of Nonprofit Organizations, and the Unemployment Conundrum

Website for additional information and purchase of particular presentations is at http://www.wfs.org. The 2011 conference will be in Vancouver, BC, Canada in July 2011.

How many of you are old enough to remember some of the original cast episodes of Saturday Night Live? There have been several famous ones including the mimicing of Julia Child's cooking show and bleeding all over the food she was cutting, as well as hundreds of spoofs of politicians from every party and political spectrum. One of my favorites was the one where one of the actors (Rob Schneider) went into an office area and asked someone at the copy machine and asked what they were doing, and the famous reply came back (sorry I can't imitate the accent, etc.) that he was "making copies".

Why do we make copies? Buy copies? Ever thought about this for more than a second? Well, they're cheaper is the simple answer. Could we afford to pay for an original performance from one of our famous actors or actresses every time we went to a movie? Could we afford to hire Neil Diamond to come into our house or car to sing for us every time we felt like hearing one of his great songs? Have the NY Philharmonic set up on our lawn on Friday night? No, we just buy a record, CD, DVD, etc. and pretend they're with us. Could we afford to have original copies of every handout and invoice in our organizations? Sometime we even "lip synch" because we're too lazy to sing in real time. Making copies is a commonly used inventive principle usually used to just save money or effort. But sometimes it gets to be a more serious endeavor with a little bit of serious science behind it.

Many of you are familiiar with what we call the "placebo" effect. Someone gives you a pill and tells you that it's a medication for what ails you and, amazingly, a small percentage of the time, the individual actually feels better because they think they have taken a new miracle drug. This happens in new drug pharmaceutical trials all the time and has to be figured into the data analysis. Let's see how we see this "making copies" inventive principle is used in a pro-active way. Along the 440 mile stretch of Interstate 40 across Tennessee over holiday periods, the state police would love to have manned police cars every ten miles or so to pursue speeders. But that's expensive, and besides, police like to be home with their families over the holidays just like the rest of us. If you make this drive some time, you may see lots of state police cars, but fewer than 10% of them will have people in them. But by the time you get close enough to actually notice this, you've slowed down because you're not sure. Even the radar guns can be turned on randomly without people being there. Making copies of the policemen. People trying to take advantage of multipassenger express lanes frequently put dummies in the passenger seat to make it look like there are two people in the car. Making copies of passengers.

Now, let's get really serious about this inventive principle. Let's make copies of antibodies. Antibodies are the proteins in our bodies produced by the immune system to recognize and neutralize foreign threats like infections, allergens, viruses, and bacteria. Our body makes them all the time, but occasionally in inadequate quantitities, so that our natural system can be overwhelmed. Producing them artificially is not easy nor cheap though being able to do so would be a breakthrough in the treatment of many diseases. In the latest issue of Popular Science (http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-06), we see a fascinating article about the development of PLASTIC antibodies by a research team from the University of California and the University of Shizouka in Japan. This involves creating plastic anti-bodies 1/50,000th the size of the human hair by molecular imprinting antigen shaped craters into the particles which then attached themselves to the real anitgens in the blood. Our rapid development of nano and micro technology now allows relatively inexpensive duplication of what would otherwise be extremely expensive biological materials. These articifical antibodies tracked down threats and allowed mice to have a much higher survival rate. This is molecular imprinting and using the inventive principle of "making copies" (for the TRIZniks out there with your contradiction table, this is inventive principle # 26, resolving the conflict of wanting to improve "manufacturability" (system parameter #32) vs. "device complexity (parameter #36).

Rob would be proud of us--we're "making copies" and possibly saving lives at far lower cost. We'll have to watch and follow this development. Where and how can you use "copies" instead of expensive originals?

I'm in the beautiful suburban environment (all the trees are in flower!) of Washington DC this week for the 2010 DoD Performance Symposium, which is the USA's Department of Defense Six Sigma meeting. People from all services present their projects(for feedback, for sharing, and for bragging), attend workshops, and get the opportunity for in-person networking. iSixSigma Live, a division of CTQ Media which also owns TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation is the organizer. For the full program see http://live.isixsigma.com/dod2010

The incorporation of TRIZ into LeanSixSigma has been well-documented in articles and commentaries, so I'll focus this report on how the DoD is working at real-time improvement. The live Innovation/TRIZ networking element is very active - " Phil Samuels (BMG) and Dana Clarke (RACE) are familiar faces to TRIZ Journal readers. The emphasis throughout the day was on the need to innovate to meet the every more stringent improvement goals.

Leadoff speaker was Mr. J.D. Sicilia, director of DoD's Lean Six Sigma Program Office. He used a lot of humor (some military, some just human) to set the theme of performance excellence - " not just one time, but for sustained benefit to the military and to the taxpayers. He called attention to more than 40 storyboards that documented success in projects in all areas of process improvement - " the organizers considered skipping this element because formatting the presentations takes a lot of time, but the participants wanted it, so they used a very TRIZ-ish "local quality" solution -" the presentations are in any format that works.

Eric Fanning, Undersecretary of the Navy, gave the keynote address, and surprised the audience by saying that he had changed the talk he planned to give, because of Secretary Gates' speech last week about the importance of efficiency to achieve the same mission with $28billion less cost. This is THE opportunity, THE "game changer" for continuous process improvement/Lean SixSigma. Fanning said that this could make it easier to report savings, and will be a challenge to distinguish between cost avoidance and cost savings. His distinction between the "tail" and the "tooth" of the organization applies to non-military organizations as well; the goal is to save a lot on the "tail" (support) processes and move those savings to the "tooth" (mission).

"How do we show the value of continuous process improvement to the Navy?" Fanning proposed aligning problem selection with the Secretary's commitment to dramatically reduced energy use. His statistics on the cost in money and in casualties of delivering one gallon of gasoline to the front line were persuasive, and the benefits to the improvement community of working on projects that the leadership is pre-committed to.
Audience questions dealt with specifics of the DoD's organization issues, which got the audience some interesting answers to difficult questions.

General C. Robert Kehler, Commander of the Air Force Space Command, gave the second re-structured presentation, focusing on how to apply the techniques of Lean Six Sigma to make operations efficient and effective, regardless of the technologies involved. He had a very strong focus on the functions of the users of the systems that his group (46,000 people world-wide) provides. He made the point very dramatically that "we have been on this road before" recalling both the successes of Total Quality Management, and the failure (which was proliferation of a TQM bureaucracy and emphasis on procedures rather than results.) "It was doomed because of how we went about it." His claim to being a "card carrying skeptic" was greeted with good humor by the audience, and his openness to try again, with awareness of all the lessons learned from earlier efforts, was very positively received.

General Kehler's story of work in progress emphasized the cultural and business change from spot inspection by outsiders to rigorous, continuous self-inspection and improvement. The objective is making sure that leaders have clear view of the capability, rather than the enthusiasm, of their people and their systems. He handled the delicate question of inspection (bad in Six Sigma, good in military history) quite nicely, challenging the audience to find the careful balance of people and achieving process excellence in difficult situations.

120 of the 450 attendees participated in my TRIZ workshop after lunch. Thanks to those who pointed out that TRIZ is now in the official DoD "Lean Six Sigma body of knowledge" document!

The entire group reconvened to hear from Elizabeth McGrath, DoD Assistant Deputy Chief Management Officer. She did an eloquent job of explaining the new orientation of DoD improvement as well as the elements that are frankly re-used from earlier initiatives. She used her 22 years' government experience as a basis for lessons learned from past experience as well as explaining plans for change in 10 significant areas ranging from energy use to acquisition processes. McGrath concluded with an announcement that www.defense.gov will feature requests for innovative solutions to the problem of taking cost out of DoD business operations.

David Tillotson III, Deputy Chief Management Officer of the Office of the Undersecretary of the Air Force spoke on "Shaping the Air Force Future through Business Transformation." For a TRIZ perspective, he focused on the contradictions in the present environment ��" a traffic jam due to construction is bad, but people having jobs is good. He showed the alignment of the Air Force's strategies with the overall DoD strategies of the previous speaker. Priorities are now assigned to projects that have measurable ROI, that are desired by the commands, and (surprisingly) where anticipated resistance to change is low. The results of benchmarking commercial organizations were another set of surprises which resulted in an initiative called "Clean Audit" that Tillotson pointed out is no fun at all, but absolutely necessary as a precursor to realigning spending (in TRIZ terms, he really emphasized ideality -" more benefit at less cost with less harm/waste.) He concluded with a strong message, backed up by numerous cases: Mission effectiveness is dependent on business efficiency.

"American Freedom Festival" was a unique video presentation by Jack L. Tilley, the retired Sergeant Major of the Army. The American Freedom Foundation helps military members and their families. The Festival is a series of concerts that raise money and raise awareness of the need and the campaign.

Chairman J. D. Sicilia returned to the podium to present awards to the winners of the DoD Performance Bowl which was a Six Sigma contest held yesterday. The Air Force "Team GD" were the winners.

A wine tasting featuring the Six Sigma winery followed, with plenty of opportunity for networking and learning.

Rosabeth Moss Kanter (well-known management author and Harvard professor) presents her observations and challenges to CEOs who are embracing innovation during the recovery in the article "Block-by-Blockbuster Innovation" in the May 2010 Harvard Business Review. See http://hbr.org/2010/05/column-block-by-blockbuster-innovation/ar/1

I agree with many of her points, but I also noticed that with a bit of TRIZ orientation, much of what she says would be a lot stronger--they would stand as part of the database on human innovation that is the foundation of TRIZ, rather than as the observations of one person (although she's a very well-qualified observer.)

Prof. Kanter starts with the observation that some company leaders are ignoring risk, calling for breakthrough innovation, and even denigrating incremental innovation. She sees the positioning of continuous improvement as the opposite of breakthrough innovation as a false dichotomy, that increases the risk of innovation. I disagree with her contention that innovation must be risky, while agreeing with the other points. She is in complete agreement with the classical patterns of evolution in TRIZ, pointing out that breakthrough systems are the result of many incremental changes in product, processes, and the environment (including the customer!) that make the breakthrough possible.

She proposes an innovation pyramid with multiple ideas from many sources at the base (TRIZ concept "somebody, someplace has solved your problem"?) a portfolio of ideas in the middle, competing for resources, and a few strategic ideas at the peak, given dedicated attention to develop future directions for the company. This could be seen as a business example of the separation principles (the parts have different characteristics from the whole) or even an example of multi-dimensionality.

Did this article stimulate your thinking about innovation? Comments are welcome.

Do any of you use water in your processes? Why? How much? Most likely it's to cool something or to dilute something. Clean water is becoming more precious all the time as a Florida resident such as myself can testify. Though we are surrounded by "water", it's salty seawater and unusable for drinking or most crop irrigation. In fact, Tampa, FL has just (finally, after a year long struggle) brought on stream the country's largest water desalinization plant, supplying 10% of our county's water supply. This water is far more costly than the ground water typically used, but its raw material source is reliable.

Water (fresh water) is not going to become any cheaper. All the inexpensive sources such as dams and lakes are, for the most part, already committed. When a resource, whether it be water, energy, or air, becomes scarce, the processes that rely upon it bvecome very expensive and ultimately unstainable. An interesting book that I purchase every other year or so, Vital Signs,2010, published by the Worldwatch Institute, has a number of very concise graphs and summaries of the world's resource use. One of these that caught my eye was a table (p44) showing the water required to produce selected foods, in cubic meters of water/ton of foodstuff:

Beef 13,500

Pork 4,800

Poultry 4,100

Soybean 2,750

Eggs 2,700

Rice 1,400

Wheat 1,160

Milk 780

Now, I was aware of some of these discrepancies, but not to the degree that I see here. If we're in the innovation business, what does this tell us? First, there will be a crying need for more efficient and effective means of desalinating water, treating brackish water, and recycling used water. This will not be easy since fundamental thermodynamics tells us that water wants to be with salt and it will always cost energy to separate the two.

But more importantly, where do these numbers say that we should focus our food research efforts? Soybeans and eggs are both sources of protein, just like beef, but use 1/5 as much water. The opportunity to make these foodstuffs more palatable to meat eaters is clear. We have seen some of this over the years in the form of soy burgers.

Right next to this chart is another chart showing the water consumption by various energy types:

Solar .0001

Wind .0001

Gas 1.0

Coal 2.0

Nuclear 2.5

Oil 4.0

Hydropower 68

Biofuels (current) 178

More interesting data. Wind and solar have continuity and power density limitations and hydropower is limited by natural locations (and is for the most part already used), but the driving force for natural gas is very clear as well as the tremendous incentive to increase the power density of solar power. Processes that use energy that is both readily available and not as highly dependent upon water as a resource to make and use will have a natural long term advantage.

It's amazing what two simple charts can tell us about where to focus our innovation energy in the water and energy areas.

Comments are welcome!

Theme for the Day: Moving Beyond the Core: New Business Model Creation, Keynote: Vijay Govindarajan, Professor of International Business and Founding Director of the Tuck Center for Global Leadership, gave a fascinating presentation highlighting the ignorance of many in the West about global markets and totally unique concepts for new businesses that escape the mind of someone trying to do business in India.

He summarized the the basic breakthrough new business thinking process as:

1. Manage the present
2. Selectively forget the past and
3. Create the future.

The future needs to be at least 2030 in the thinking.If #3 is to succeed, it is critical to succeed at box #2. #1 is linear thinking as typified by Six Sigma and operational excellence. #2 and #3 have major discontinuities where the fundamental business model shifts. Box 3 is easier than box 2. It's hard to forget.

Strategy is business model innovation. In emerging markets such as India and China, one can't use US models. He cited a classic example of Ford's first attempt to penetrate the lower cost Indian market by taking a basic $20,000 US car and removing features. One of these was removing the power windows in the passenger seats, forgetting that most Indians who could afford a $20K car had a chauffeur and easily opening the back windows was an essential element. The alternative approach, of scaling up and making a $2,000 car by scaling up two wheelers will disrupt the rest of the world. Strategies such as this will transfer back to the West and cause major disruption.

Change the customer, change the value, and change the architecture. He cited Dell computer as a US example.He emphasized this "doing the impossible" (I.e. $2K car) by reminding the audience of the original goal to get to the moon, originally considered unrealistic. (Note to TRIZniks: the Ideal Final Result!). Without a serious challenge goal, we rarely exceed our ambitions. If we are rewarded for meeting goals, that's what we do. We need to focus on "next practice", not "best practice".

He described another Indian business success where a company was founded whose strategy was to lend to the poor (Another TRIZ note: Do it in reverse). Strict small dollar limits were set, women (vs. men) were the primary borrowers, no collateral was demanded, and the "bank" went out to the people (people did not come to the bank). With no bailout money, they lent over $10B in increments of $15 each along with self help groups. 99% loan repayment was experienced and the concept is being expanded to loan money to beggars after asking them what they need. They can get another $20 by repaying. It is estimated that Mumbai has 500,000 beggars and half are now salesmen. This business opportunity could apply to 130 countries globally.

Vijay also went over the top 11 things to deal with a dead horse (http://vjaygovindiarajan.com/newlsetter.html) as abstracted from his newsletter site. A few were quite humorous:

1. Maybe the horse isn't dead,
2. Hire a consultant to study the horse, and
3. Replace/fire the jockey.

We need the VOO, not the VOC. VOO is the voice of the outside. In the Hindu religion, there is the god of the present, the god of destruction, and finally the god of creation. We have to follow this (be born, be preserved, be destroyed. Doing this in our personal lives has value as well.

Presentation: Deb Mills from Corning discussed their recovery from the "valley of death" in 2002 when their stock price went from $110 to $1 in one year. They started a major new business and innovation effort with the goal of doubling the number of breakthrough products and businesses. These new activities were "fire walled" from the rest of the organization until their revenue stream could be said to be predictable.

Presentation: George Glacking from P&G (85,000 employees, operating in 160 countries with 300 product lines) reviewed their box 2 and 3 successes, including Tide and Pampers. Gillette was added in a major acquisition. In 1996 came Fareze and Swiffer. Many of there new businesses were the result of ad hoc activities where team leaders came and went. Not clear to P&G whether it is better to separate these types of ventures as opposed to embedding them. Many teams has 50% representation from outside the natural business area. Staffing choices are critical. The key early stage question in not whether it is possible to do something, but is there a way to capture value. Without a "yes" to that question, a project does not proceed.

"Fishbowl Commentary" Nine Sigma is working hard to change their business model from a transactional one to one where they take ownership of the goal and result for the client. As an outside resource provider they are free to use all tools (not just the clients' ones) as well as to work with the competition in a way the problem owner cannot. Alcoa commented that they used a joint venture approach when the new opportunity does not align sufficiently with their core business. Corning is looking at contract manufacturing much more than in the past. In general, these firms commented that a shortage of the right people, not money, was the primary barrier.

Keynote: Teresa Amabile (Harvard Business School) presented her latest case study findings on morale within organizations as it related to innovation by contrasting a two company study done on outstanding and poor new product development performance. Her findings bottom line finding was that business issues such as ownership form, incentives, personalities, and whether Stage Gate type processes were used were not the key distinguishing difference--it was quality of work life. This study covered238 professionals, 26 project leaders and the analysis of 12,000 diaries! None of the findings were not new, in my opinion, just further reinforcement fo the things we know we should do, but seldom do. Collaboration is one of these. Joy and pride in one's work vs. a culture of anger and fear coupled with project and personal support for individuals play key roles. Frequently goals change and management does not listen. Desired needs from management (again nothing new here, but certainly reinforcement of what know is critical) include recognition, clear goals, support for progress made, providing mentors, and extra personal support. Mundane events matter to people. One bad day has a much more negative effect than a single good day.

Presentation: Bob Wolf and Sandy Linetta (Glaxo Smith Kline) described their efforts to ignite the innovation fires. These included many fairly convention items including hiring some "weird" people, hiring of expert out side consultants, changing organizational structures, basic creativity training, book reading, etc. They did not set up an "innovation center". They felt that inclusion of marketing people with R&D was a excellent "fusion". They took action to move from a functional to more brand siloed groups, moved to a more ext external focus, and had more face to face vs.virtual interaction with customers. Their building of new facilities with "hubs" that included all functions raised key matrices such as "easy access to colleagues" (50-90%) and "easy access to decision makers" (40-80%)

Keynnote: "Innovation is Successful Only When it is "On Code" (Clotaire Rapaille, Archetypes Discoveries Worldwide and Author: The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do

Clotaire made an extremely interesting presentation on the internal "coding" of our thinking and brains, meaning why people do what they do and why they frequently say one thing and do another. An individual's "code"is defined as why they accept or reject new ideas and types of innovation. An example he started with is the difference in approaches to the challenges and opportunities in airline travel. The airplane builders, in trying to improve the qualitry of the air travel experience are thinking in terms of leg room and food service where the big issue in the mind of an airplane user is the time involved (travel, security, etc.) getting on to the plane much more than the flight itself, which in many cases is much shorter than the comiing and going from the airport. No airport at all is what would be desired. He also mentioned the different strategies employed by Boeing and Airbus with Boeing's smaller, but longer range 787 providing more non-stop capability. He suggested that we go beyond getting out of the box and get rid of the box (airport?). (TRIZ folks: Ideal Final Result: Something performs its function and doesn't exist!). Clotaire says that our code of analysis and reference is imprinted early on from our experiences and there's no second chance for a first experience. He pointed out his surprise that in the US conference rooms usually have no windows vs. lots of windows elsewhere. He pointed out the most important code within us is the one related to survival. In this regard, we have 3 brains: reptilian (both an inside version relating to food, care, etc. and an outside, and emotional one). He used the example of the very sucessful PT Cruiser from Chrysler as an example of a product appealing to both inside and outside codes of our brains. The exterior design was very round, shapely, and "feminine" (appealing to our emotional side) while the inside was more like an Al Capone escape vehicle. It was an example of a love/hate car crossing two codes in our brains. Digitial watches vs. hand watches in another example of appealing to different "codes". Then we have the cortex analytical part connecting with other people and facts, data, reality, statistics, and prices. This last part ontrols the other two functions and cleans the plate ccasionally (men and women very diffrent about this). Men tend to react to the aroma of coffee vs. its taste and a mother relates it to breakfast and feeding the family. An innovation in this area must be "on code"--aroma. He related this to the eleimination of the PT Cruiser when Chrysler was taken over by Daimler Benz who did not see the need for a "feminine" code product. He also speculated about the changes in store now that Fiat, an Italian company, was the owner. Chrysler employees must feel very schizophrenic! The American "code" is that they do not want smaller cars. From Geneva in Europe you can be in Italy, France, etc. within 30 minutes or at most 3 hours. In America we can drive for a week and still be in one country. Space and efficiency are both important. That's the "code". In Japan minimal space is the norm--there is no word in the Japanese language that we would interpret as "privacy".

Innovation has to make life simple. Adding one step of complication causes a 20% loss in market. No cables for anything! Approach a car and it starts!

Corporations have cultures and replicate themselves without awareness and then cannot adapt. Terrorists have no structure (vs. the Panzers in WWII Germany). With little investment, big results are achieved. The 9/11 incident involved the purchase of 10 plane tickets.

We don't use outside resources enough to break our "codes". Having seven engineers on a "brainstorming" team is 6 too many, he says. Find a priest, a baker, a car dealer, etc. Multi-cultural diversity to understand "codes" is important. The Japanese perception of cleanliness in a bathroom is different than a Chinese perception since Chinese bathrooms are so much smaller and the focus in on how clean the celliing is since that's the only thing that can be seen. (When was the last time you looked at your bathroom ceiling?). The Japanese and Americans have very different "codes" about time.

It takes only one second to create history. December 6 and 8, 1945 were distincly different for both the US and Japan. He made other comparisons of Japanese and American "codes". Doing things right the first time in the US is "boring. Americans don't read instructions--they make mistakes. The Japanese read the instructions 500 times. We frequently don't use the additive strengths of the different "codes" in people. Be suspicious of any CEO who only knows one language.

In the US we are only interested in what's impossible. That's what we need to ask our teams to do (Note to TRIZniks: the Ideal Final Result)

Jim reviewed his research in the use of collective random intelligence highlighting a study done by placing an oxen on display and asking all passerbys to guess its weight. After collecting hundreds of ballots, the "average" guess was 1197 pounds vs. the actual 1198 pounds. No one guess was correct but the average was. We need to tap into colective intelligence and reach across all inputs. He pointed out that studies have shown that crowd predictions on elections are more accurate than Gallup polls 75% of the time. How do we make sure we "reach across"? Use diveristy (multi-cultural, age, gender, type of training) and expand the range and type of diversity you're considering. Everyone is not making the same mistakes!

Most meetings are echo chambers. He related how the term "devil's advocate" came about. In the early days of the Roman Catholic church's practice of naming "saints", there was great concern about the significance of this decision and a single dissenter was always included in the discussions and just as importantly, the "dissenter" was constantly changed. People dissatisfied with their "team" experience tend to be ones who like consensus and prefere homogeneious teams that can reach consensus easily. Good decisions arise from conflict. This needs to be made explicit at the start (Personal input here--if we made more proactive use of psychological assessment tools, this would be much easier). Imitation and group think are potentially dangerous in innovation. He mentioned a study done in Times Square where one person looked up at the top of a building and 5% of the surrounding crowd looked up. When 5 people looked up, 20% of the crowd did. When 8 people looked up, 45% did.

Be careful about oral responses and talkative people in group decision meetings. Knowledge and incites come from unexpected sources and people and leaders cannot dictate this in advance.

This group discussed their individual company approaches and processes for corporate wide idea collection. Avery Dennison has an "idea bank" which collects employee input and ranks against business needs. Award systems are used but not strictly related to dollar impact. There are special rewards for ideas relating to REPLACING current products and businesses. (Personal note: that's a great idea!). Motorola has an inventory of 16,000 ideas via an Open Idea Market. No special rewards, relying on WIIFM, helping, sharing. Clorox makes heavy use of both internal and external social media.

This session used a very interesting format which may be of value to you. The speakers were on a small stage in chairs, and after their brief oral (no slides)presentations took questions. The person asking the question was invited to join the panelists and participate in the Q/A, providing a "build" on the idea inputs. It suggested to me a possible format to replace the management lecturing presentations followed by Q/A in many companies. The employee asking the question would join the management group, replacing a manager who then beome part of the "audience". Might provide some interesting dynamics!

Sony described their efforts in future scenario planning, primarily based on bundled functionality and bundled services. As a service provider, Pitney Bowes uses the concept of a "challenge architect" in thinking about the service process they provide. They see the "democratization" of innovation. This is a reinforcement of trends mentioned by many other speakers. They use a RGB framework to categorize ideas (red--now, green--procede, blue--blue sky concept). They listen to the "voice of the retailer". Sony pointed out the change in photography trends as an electronic camera allows the user to take many more pictures and then delete them later (Personal TRIZ note: cheap and disposable principle). This is a miniature version of the information age challenge of having too much information and trying to sort what is valuable.

Dr. Vandebroek sumarized Xerox's corporate strategy as combining the customer's wishes and wants with Xeroxx capabilities to produce breakthrough products, services, and $$. She also mentioned their partnership with Fuji in Japan and mentioned their R&D budget was $1.5B and having 50,000 patents and generating them at a rate of 10/day. Xerox sales are $22B and it employs 130,000 people.Business focus is documents, document management, and business proffess outsourcing.Their Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), formally an only internal Xerox research center now gets 50% of its revenue from outside Xerox. Their R&D budget is split approximately in thirds: exploration, incubation of new businesses, and current commercial product lines. They use Customer Innovation Councils with P&G, cited as an example. They collaborate on space design, types of printers, solid ink waste. One of these efforts reduced printer power use from 400kwh/day to 70. She mentioned that there are 3 TRILLION pages/yr. being generated and less than 5% has been digitized. There are 9B times more electronic data than is in books

Internally, employees are required to participate in their "dreaming" process. They observe and categorize opportunities by remote knowledge workers and mobile knowledge workers.

They have recently purchased Lulu self-publishing. A book can be published in 5 minutes and downloaded within 20 minutes.

This talk highlighted the importance of platforms as an innovation engine. A picture of the original Sputnik satellite in 1957 was shown but the point was not the satellite (and its repercussions in the West) but the fact that the signal from this satellite was not hidden. Now satellite signals are use to accurately locate submarines and form the basis for GPS navigation. GPS is now a platform, not just a signal. Ideas are also networks. They start as a network of neurons firing and then making new connections. The history of the Philadelphia Coffee House where Ben Franklin and other early American inventors gathered to not just drink, but to exchange ideas. Platforms build and cross pollinate. We now have Google maps, Twitter, SMS cell phones, HTML, http:, etc Four Square is new business concept using all of these. Clusters, not corporations, are what is important. These are not necessarily exclusive.

The disruption was the flash microchip, but the challenge was culture barriers and roadblocks. In 1975, the first digital image was captured on a TV.The charge coupled device in the late 60's allowed the exploration of image capturing in an electronic fashion. Initially there were no specific business goals. The first digital camera has .01 megapixels, only B/W, and a 120X160 mil active area, and required a custom setup. There was no budget (he had to personally buy the CCD), they had no dedicated space and only 1 technician. The prototype was the size of a toaster, had a digital cassette, and used 16 batteries. With the Kodak "culture" of perfect image quality, the quality of the picture at that point was a major barrier. In 1977, a technical report was written, a patent filed in May 1977, and the first digital camera patent issued in Dec 1978 (#4131919)

The internal reaction was curiousity and caution and there was hesitation to show around. It generated more question than answers (no film? no paper? It's too far out). People don't want to view an image on a TV! How to store the images? (No mass market PC's at that time) How to make reliable? The paradigm is the paper picture is reliable almost forever. The PC, the Internet, wide bandwidth, photoprinting in the home were all paradigm changes. The context of its use was not imagined. In 1976 the question was asked, "when will it impact consumer photography?" In 10-15 years, they went from 10,000 to 1 million pixels and 200X improvement in resolution. There was zero interest in memory cards. There was much more support outside of Kodak than within. The development of digital circuitry in terms of speed, power, and size were just not imagined. Image compression (.jpg) was another enabler. It removed 90% of the image that the eye couldn't see anyway and allowed the introduction of artificats. The D5000 camera introduced in 1989 ran into significant cultural issues ("you can't change film sales", "call it in an image accessory, not a camera"0. The bottom line issues are to understand the corporate culture and view your innovation in their context, have friends (they're had to find!), and be honest and positive with your internal PR. Don't make yourself the issue. Remember all roadblocks are temporary and plan for what's next. Be patient, persevere, and be persistent. The key learning was the need was an image, not the film. Now the internal gospel is "no more film projects"! This was a fascinating presentation by someone who has more patience than anyone I have ever seen make a presentation since Art Fry's Post It Note story.

For those of you who are not aware of or don',t shop at Target, you are not aware of the concept of the "Guest" in the store. At Target, the guest (not the "customer") is at the center. It's an ethos vs. a process. Open innovation is part of Target's DNA along with the emphasis on diversity of intellectuality. Challenges they have been dealing with include balancing the Target store brands vs. the brand names. Their market demographics are getting older and more diverse.

They encourage teams to share results across the company, and strive to diversify the interests and include critical thinkers. Some time ago, they arrived at what they called the "Moment of Truth" and that is that the guest comes first and the vendors/suppliers are second. "Speed is life"--need to learn quickly. "We must not forget what we learned" as the economy gets better--don't let up!

Target now has a Director of Guest Insights to ensure they continue to gather information from the "guests'" perpective.

This division of GE sells CT and MRI machines and has a very engineering focused R&D team. Their challenge is in selling their technologies and products and bringing ethnographic research into their planning. 90% of the time the product technology is there but the design aspects come at the end They have sent a number of their engineers to a design course at Stanford to try to improve the understanding of the product/customer interface to their engineers. In other words, what is the customer "experience"? It's usually not very pleasant, frequently requiring sedation, especially for children under 6 and adults who are claustrophobic. They have made some interesting changes in the design and the experience to try to change the perspective to one of an "adventure" for a child (make it a spaceship with stars projected for example), and introducing comforting sounds and smells, as well as decorations. "We need to get away from the image that we're "torturing people"! Part of the Stanford course involves teaching some basic creativity skills to their engineers to improve their ability to be more right brained in their design thinking to hopefully produce a more user friendly experience, not just a better product.

Day 3 tomorrow!

I am attending the Front End of Innovation conference in Boston and would like to share highlights with RealInnovation readers. This conference was started many years ago by Joyce Wycoff, a creativity consultant in California, primarily for her clients. It was originally called the Fuzzy Front End conference and blossomed into a fairly large conference over time, was merged into the IIR conferences, and has morphed into the Front End of Innovation. IIR's business model, as a profit making conference provider, includes many "paid" speaking slots and workshops, so the material being reported on is a little biased, but valuable nonetheless.

Day 1

Workshop: Increasing Value through Continuous Open Innovation Improvement

This theme of open innovation has greatly permeated this conference over time, recognizing the value of incorporating outside perspectives and resources to improve and accelerate the front end of innovation. Participants included Sealed Air, Hallmark Cards, Philips Consumer Lifestyles, and Nine Sigma (sponsor). Key advantages of open innovation cited by this group included more thorough benchmarking, acquiring talent, and the learnig of how to emotionally connect with consumers on products. Hallmark highlighted their positive experiences using the talents of the MIT Media Lab as well as the acquisition of Crayola that allowed them to successfully commercialize sound cards at an appropriate cost and with an emotional connection with the product. There was significant resistance to a traditional "art"design company to the the use of electronic and digital technology. All the participants cited the importance of high level management involvement and support, including regular reviews and support for external technology search. Hallmark discussed going beyond sound to recordability, and how to use the desire of suppliers to help them as opppsed to telling suppliers what they they (thought they) needed. Sealed Air talked about the advantage of putting out more general inquiries that generate more "serendipitous" outside in ideas. They also discussed the challenge of maintaining excitement for this effort and their partial solution of having quarterly meetings with their CTO and regular weekly conference calls. Their use of an organization such as Nine Sigma helped them to identify technologies and capabilities from totally different markets and very different solutions.(TRIZ practitioners take note!). Hallmark discussed how they targeted the music greeting card by clearly defining the goal as 3 pages of paper plus music at low cost, and clearly identifying the cost of the sound module as the cost breaker. Now the innovation challenge is to go "beyond sound" (recordability, dual sounds). Sealed Air discussed unique challenges in licensing technology from small firms outside the US. Small firms don't think like large firms and don't understand their processes. Language barriers need to be dealt with as well as the inability to accept delayed payments from large corporations. The observation was made that open innovation can actually take longer, but in the end usually is justified.The group, when asked about the future of open innovation, answered by saying that better VOC was needed, product linkage with a company's web site, and forcing the organization to be more deliberate as well as more flexible. Blaine Childress from Sealed Air described a coporation as an aircraft carrier trying to deal with attack boats of smaller, more agile competitors. Graham Mott said Philips hade condensed their learnings into a "cookbook" globally available across 40 different sites, put short time limits on CDA's, and the use of third parties for outside assessments.

Presentation: "Bringing Innovation to a Technology-Enabled Service for Seniors" (Bill Prenowitz, Philips Healthcare)

Bill Prenowitz talked about selling the integration of a product and interactive service to seniors. The fundamental difference is the person needing help can describe symptons to a trained professional vs. just calling 911. The service can also provide follow up calls. The system includes monitoring, calling, and response--all of which need to work to provide a great service. They have achieved 50% market share with only 20% total market penetration for such services. They learned early to hide all the complicated electronics and interfaces---this complexity (how it works) is irrelevant to the consumer. In this area it was critical to provide real product prototypes and not just concepts, as well as to triangulate market input. Their market research showed that seniors WANT to receive calls (they're lonely). Device design is critical in this area. Shrinkage of buttons on a phone makes it more difficult to use for seniors, but large buttons hurts their self-esteem. Large buttons with more space between requiring lower pressure is the compromise. They also discovered that slides on the side of the phone to control volume was preferable to dials.Vision and hearing impairments must be taken into account as well as providing response to varying strength and range of voice (TRIZ folks: Dynamism). In designing the software, functional mapping was used with embedded dynamism if a wrong response is detected.

Keynote: "More Meadows" (Robin Chase, Founding CEO, Zipcar)

Robin reviewed breakthrough products and services (in addition to the idea of Ziipcar, a car rental service with no large storage area) on the Web. Chat Roulette is an interactive web chat that started out with an old computer and in 3 days had grown to 30 million users! Web 2.0 where users are providing the content (TRIZ Folks: Do It In Reverse). Bed sharing in private homes vs. hotels now has 70,000 rooms. The analogy to Skype was made. The I-Phone now has 150,000 apps with 3 BILLION downloads.She pointed out that there are a lot more people outside the room of any ideation or innovation session. The wide availability of information and resources on the web is now allowing a person who used to do just one job to do seven and soon seven jobs at the same time. The paradigm is shifting from ownnership to sharing as the path to success.

Keynnote: "Unreasonable Behavior: A Driving Force for Innovation" (Mark Harrison, Innovation Director, Diageo and Eric Wilkinson, Cambridge Consultants)

Diageo is the parent of Bailey's Irish Creme and other premium liquors. Mark reviewed their long term business journey from growth to acquisition to cost reduction and finally to innovation. He reviewed one of their liquor breakthroughs--Bailey's Irish Creme, a blend of creme and liquor that no one thought would be viable. Significant technical challenges had to be resolved to keep the liquids separated until appropriate. He also reviewed a new product concept of frozen mixed drinks on tap whose major cost constraint was the large cost (80%) in the scraping system to clean the dispensing system. Details were not provided but one design parameter, which had originally ruled out the use of plastics because of low thermal conductivity. However, surface chemistry properties had not been considered and more than made up for the conductivty property. Need to be careful to consider all aspects, properties, and resources in the system. Other words of wisdon: Don't wait for a crisis to innovate. Think how your technology can provide the unthinkable.

　

Anyone old enough to remember that song? "Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All About You..." Well, I am still in a state of amazement and it took 4 days of contemplation to write a column after seeing the article, "Can GE Still Manage?" (Business Week, 4/25/2010, p27-32). As most of you know, Jack Welch thought long and hard about which of his senior executives would take his place and he chose Jeff Immelt, then head of the medical products business. He's had a rough time with GE stock half what it was before, selling long standing businesses, and people beginning to question his strategies and plans.

I don't have enough information to make a total judgment on someone like Mr. Immelt and I doubt that I could run a corporation as global and as diversified as GE, but there are some fundamentals that apply no matter what the business is or how big it is. One of those is having an intimate relationship and thorough understanding of your senior executives and direct reports who, after all, are the ones that actually run the company for you. In this article, Jeff, in an admitted attempt to "bond with this team", invited each over to his house for a Friday night conversation (I'll bet his wife was happy with 150 of these!), and then off to a hotel, only to return on Saturday for a more comprehensive discussion. The article further goes on to discuss his putting his own management style "under the microscope". The perception is that too much "warmth, wit, and attention has been beamed outside the GE family. Inside ...he has been less visible and less available".

What's wrong with this picture? Waiting ten years to have a serious down to earth conversation with the people who run your company? How can you run a company and not be available to the people who make it happen for you? Who are you? What motivates and excites you? What do you want to do ten years from now? How else could the company use your talents? How could we do things differently? What talent do you have that we aren't using? And on and on. Isn't this a conversation that should occur within months of someone taking on a job like this--not ten years later when the seeds of possible mediocrity have been sowed? How in the world can someone expect to achieve corporate goals if he doesn't understand the people who not only work for him, but on whose capabilities and interests rest the success of the company? Shouldn't this conversation take place on a frequent basis? Before you say 300 days divided by 150 is every other day, what else could possibly be more important? I can assure you that over a long period of time Six Sigma, the Crotonville Academy, the price of oil, and the competition in network television pale in comparison.

The questions for you are:

1. Do you run a business with people reporting to you? What do you REALLY know about them? What motivates them? What do they do in their spare time? What do they (really) care about?

2. Do your people wait to be invited to a sleepover to say what is on their minds? If so, why? What kinds of barriers to communication have you set up and don't even recognize?

3. When was the last time you spent talking (not Emailing) with the people you work with for several hours?

4. Do you know what is the most important thing your employees would change if you asked them?

5. What kind of a feedback loop do you have that tells you that you aren't spending enough time with your people? Or do you find it out when they tell you they'er leaving?

Get to know your folks---NOW!

Those of you who are not chemists or chemical engineers probably don't read Chemical and Engineering News which, once a year, reprints the acceptance speech from the recipient of the American Chemical Society's most prestigious award, the Priestley Medal. Dr. Richard N. Zare was recognized for his work in laser induced fluorescence and the study of single molecules in solution that assisted in sequencing the human genome. In his talk, he discussed none of that, but instead chose to discuss creativity. His focus was on the teaching of creativity vs. the learning of it. As most of us in the TRIZ community would agree, creativity CAN be taught and LEARNED. It is a teachable skill and science and not a mystery based on our DNA. This article is on pp 19-21 of Chemical and Engineering News (http://www.cen-online.org).

Dr. Zare says that creativity is the intersection of three things:

1. Your capacity to think outside the box and putting together existing ideas into new combinations (Amen!),
2. The knowledge and information you have (without that you have nothing to put together), and finally
3. Your motivation to think about something different.

All of this requires passion, resources, and daring to play with ideas and concepts that risk that what you are doing may completely fail.

He showed an example of how difficult it is to think outside the box by using the 9 dot illustration that many of you may have seen where you are asked to connect nine dots with only four lines and the recognition that the only way to do this is to go outside the geometry of the nine box. He goes on to show how the assumption that we must put the lines through the center of the boxes prevents us from seeing how to do this with only three lines and finally, by using a spiral, it is possible to connect all the circles with only one "line". (We assume the line needs to be straight, but no one told us that!). The only way to escape the original biases we have about this it to break the inertia in our minds and move on to irritation and the desire to solve a problem (does this sound like resolving a contradiction?). Then we move on to imitation--has someone else solved this problem before? The more and different problems you solve, the easier this is. Finally, he says we move to "intuition"--a thought process he describes as the balance of wild hypotheses and evaluation, requiring one to be a balanced schizophrenic. Finally, inspiration arrives when you see a connection you did not see before. The ability to do this once leads you to try a more difficult problem, and so on.

At a high level, the two key ingredients are confidence (you can solve this problem) and passion (it is important to solve this problem). This again should resonate with both general innovators and TRIZ practitioners. Interesting perspectives on innovation from an industry leader in creativity. What does it say to us?

1. Take off the blinders in both how you analyze and solve problems.
2. Keep your creativity and innovation genes active. They will atrophy just like bones and muscles if you don't use them. There is no shortage of problems in your organization or in the world around you--lots of things to practice on.
3. Keep the balance between analysis and hypothesis. I have been in too many "brainstorming" sessions where the judgment about success was how many ideas were generated, not whether a practical solution was obtained.
4. Look around you for people and industries with similar problems and use their solutions.

A great recipe to follow!

Technology Review magazine's listing of the world's most innovative companies has just arrived (see www.technologyreview.com/tr50). For the first time I am not going to rant about lists of "most innovative" that don't have the criteria for selection or the definition of innovation! You may disagree with the TR editors' definitions, but at least they have them.

Innovative companies: demonstrated superiority (that implies some measurement method that is not detailed) at inventing technology and using it both to grow the business and to transform how we live.

I'll take issue with the dual requirement, and use trivial cases to demonstrate the point:

1. Suitcases with wheels transformed how we live, and put a whole class of porters and baggage handling people out of business. The "technology" involved was nil (using skateboard wheels) - the big change was in marketing, using (male) pilots to show male business travelers that wheeled cases were acceptable.

2. Curved shower curtain rods have, in a modest way, changed the comfort level of our bathing experience, and the "technology" change is nil. This is a nice demonstration of the TRIZ principle of migrating a technology from one field to another, but not of creating a new technology. It is a favorite TRIZ teaching case because curving the rod uses 2 of the 40 principles (17- dimensionality change and 14 - increase curvature) and demonstrates how one improvement can cause the need for others (attachment to the wall has to change, for the early designs)

In both cases, there was technology development, 10-30 years previously, in another industry, for another reason, paid for by another company for its own reasons. And yet there was impact on the way consumers live, and creation of profitable business.

The article has a fascinating selection of companies and technologies, and businesses ranging from some of the biggest to relatively small. I suggest reading it with the idea that the technologies being honored are usually doing one specific thing for their customers...how could you migrate that technology to a different field, and do more things for different customers? Thermoelectric SI chip cooling, integrated photonic circuits, superconducting power cables, yeast that makes biofuel (didn't we have this 3000 years ago, and called it wine-making?)...

Let me know what you think.

There will always be a need for creating jobs. Governments around the world are looking into ways for creating jobs. President Barack Obama held a Jobs Forum like meeting at White House in December, 2009. I read that $5000 per new hire was offered to corporations. It sounds like that everyone expects to buy jobs from somewhere, get them by waving a magic wand, imagine them through an elegant strategy, or hope to energize inspire people through eloquent speeches. Creating jobs takes work. Foundation of the current jobs was created by earlier generations through sheer hard work and creativity.

One thing for sure businesses create jobs, and people create businesses. Shouldn't our focus be then creating new businesses instead of creating jobs? We should plan for a number of new businesses to replace lost jobs and more for maintaining even certain level of employment. Government should develop a policy for, let's say, creating a million new businesses at a specified rate, then appoint a champion for achieving the goal. Businesses make our nation strong. This would require mobilizing people and it is the job of leadership.

I believe we should empower our unemployed friends with education in innovation and entrepreneurship, reward them for creating new ventures, support their new businesses, and collaborate with them to create new jobs. I see this as a more viable approach than merely talking about creating jobs.

What do you think? Love to hear readers' comments.

After years of talking about innovation there is insufficient progress in deploying innovation in organizations around the world. There are tools and methods to gain new skills but a framework needed for deploying innovation in an organization is still missed. Learning from standardization practices, I feel we must develop a maturity model for deploying innovation. I have developed a Business Innovation Maturity Model (BIMM) to assess the innovation maturity level of an organization. BIMM consists of the following five levels:

I. Sporadic Innovations level is the initial awareness level with pockets of innovations and excitement

II. Idea Innovations level is launching the organization-wide innovation initiative to engage employees the idea management process. Excellence in idea management is a critical step in sustaining innovation.

III. Managed Innovations level is focused on deployment of innovation in developing products, services or solutions for achieving profitable revenue growth.

IV. Nurtured Innovations level is to institutionalize innovation in all departments for processes, projects, activities, functions, business model, or supply chain innovations.

V. Sustained Innovations level is for managing innovation deployment to achieve profitable growth continually.

Center for Innovation Science at the IIT School of Applied Technology is developing assessment tool to help corporations on their innovation journey.

How is your corporation pursuing innovation deployment? Tell us.

I'm at the Queens School of Business First Annual Innovation Summit in Kingston, ON Canada (Friday-Saturday, March 19-20). Over 160 students, faculty and alumni are talking, listening, and being creative about the process of innovation, with a few visiting speakers sprinkled in to stimulate the discussions. Keynote speaker Stewart Beck, Canada's consul general in the San Jose/silicon valley area of the USA, gave a very personal view of innovation, starting with the Grateful Dead (music group, for those of you too young to know...) and the experience of his 4 friends (physical education majors in college, now a London solicitor, an Ottawa dentist, the consul general, and a business school administrator.) His conclusion about the Dead: you don't have to have a technology - you need a good idea and understanding your customers. The Dead only had one song on the top 10 list, but they have a 40 - plus -year history of fanatical followers, a concert and product sales business, and a gigantic business that is seen as non-business. They did it via social networking with the telephone and personal contacts (now a lot easier with Facebook, MySpace, Twitter) but if they hadn't done what they did in the '60's and '70's, it is possible that the technology - based social networks wouldn't have understoon the potential.

More history: in 1985, working with Canadian companies in the US, the model was to help them find a distributor in the US,ke and the entrepreneurs would frequently back off from the relationship, wanting to fine tune the product before introducing it. Now, 25 years later, his observation is that Canadian companies are much more likely to be willing to take the product to market, but they are reluctant to pay local distributors for their services - they want to apply their home culture methods to doing business abroad. This took Mr. Beck into a discussion of the need to innovate business methods as well as innovating products and services. He used the S-curve model, and showed Canada's strength is at the low end (academics applying R&D, developing concepts) and the high end (successful big companies) but with a big gap in the middle where the small companies grow, and the products/services are propagated into the economy. He is observing some slow changes in the Canadian innovation ecosystem - more willingness to take risks, more experimentation in customer relationships and financial structures, more willingness to work on a global level - but he encouraged the university audience to take leadership in all these areas. Beck's personal experiences in China during the scale-up in globalization of production and consumption and in the Silicon Valley on his first assignment in 1985-90 have both strongly colored his views. He compared the traditional Canadian view of bankruptcy to the Silicon Valley view (disaster, vs. something that happens that you learn from) and the traditional Canadian view of international commerce to the Chinese view (something risky to be very careful of, vs. something that is part of everyday operations of the company.)

Beck concluded with a report on Canadian leadership in the game industry, and in the health of the financial industry, and showed the mostly Canadian audience the video that he uses to tell people elsewhere about Canadian innovation (a few shots of Cirque du Soleil as well as green electronics industries and the Vancouver Olympics) to general audience delight.

For the full program, see www.qsbis.com. As always in these travel reports, I report on the sessions that I personally attend, so readers need to rely on the organizers and the program links to the speakers' own sites to learn about the other points of view that were presented at the conference. At Queens, I'm speaking in one of three morning sessions and doing a workshop during of the afternoon sessions, so my report will be more limited than usual. In the first breakout session, Bill Burnett's presentaion "The Foundational Elements for Business Innovation: The Antecedents of Successful Innovation" was filled with charming (true!) anecdotes ranging from Einstein and Feynman in physics to Domino's pizza. His observations on the contradiction between reward and innovation were right on target - he spoke to the business students about all the aspects of business school training that are just wrong when it comes to creating an innovation environment. His concluding technique, the howitzer method, (Ask "How", use wit, call other people "sir" or the culturally appropriate equivalent) is universally applicable as a way of demonstrating the trust and empowerment that are essential foundation elements for innovation. Thanks, Bill!

My first talk about TRIZ (the afternoon talk is a "how to" workshop) got a great crowd. Thanks, QSBIS! Maybe we'll have more TJ and RI readers in Ontario. I met Queens' students and faculty who had TRIZ experience in Germany and in multi-national situations, so I hope that I helped them gain a wider audience.

Stephen Benson from the UK presented both the theory and the reality of open innovation communities. His success with moving from 90/9/1 (joiners who don't participate, those who produce useless contributions, those who produce useful contributions) to 30/30/40 is both impressive and exciting. Innovation Exchange is the particular group he used as his example, but the learning applies to many communities of practice. Benson's discussion of intellectual property in the global, self-organizing communities, and the issues of trust between the customers (generally large companies) who need to reveal their needs to get effective suggestions, and the idea generating teams, who need to reveal enough about the solution to get the customers to pay for an idea, stimulated considerable lunchtime discussion.

Robert Brands used his own experience as a entrepreneur/product developer and his book "Robert's Rules of Innovation" as the basis for his keynote talk. A quick summary doesn't do justice to the depth of Brands' research--see his www.innovationcoach.com site for lots of extracts from the book.

I had a great audience for the afternoon TRIZ workshop--50 people, about 2/3 students in the Queens MBA program, the rest faculty and members of the Ontario business community, with a sprinkling of other speakers. It was a great opportunity to teach some TRIZ skills to people who will be in a position to use them very intensely in the next year. This is a very global group - one student from Germany had extensive TRIZ experience in the automotive industry, a faculty member was a "fan" of the TRIZ Journal, and students came from 8 countries and 3 Canadian provinces.

The concluding plenary talk was by Claude Legrand, "Walking the Talk on Innovation." Claude brought together many of the themes of the day, emphasizing that leadership has to be a daily, physically visible activity to be effective. The day concluded with organizer Jameel Lalji thanking the university, the sponsors, and the 20+ graduate students who pulled the QSBIS together. I hope that "First Annual" is an accurate label, and encourage the innovation community to consider a trip to Kingston next year.

There is a fundamental law of product and business innovation that says that systems integrate into their super-systems over time. What does this mean? Let's take an example. You are in the business of making paint roller pans. You have worked hard over the years to add stability to these simple devices so that they don't tip over on ladders, added coatings to minimize sticking, and even made disposable ones in the hopes that people will buy your paint pans. You may have even gotten together with a paint roller supplier in a joint promotion at a local hardware store. Then you go down to your local Home Depot, Lowes, or Menards and see the Black and Decker Paint Stick(R)requiring no paint pan. Your product has been replaced by the void in a hollow stick, normally thought of as only a means for reaching places too tall for the painter. Being replaced by a void must really hurt an ego!

This is only one example. Here are some others to trigger your thoughts:

1. The elimination of labels on men,s, underwear shirts (don't know about women's!) eliminating the need for sewn labels and the materials used in making them. The shirt is the label.
2. The elimination of bank deposit slips through optical scanning of checks, eliminating the paper, all the chemical used in producing paper from pulp, and the printing inks used in making them. The check is the deposit slip.
3. The incorporation of toothpaste into the handle of a toothbrush, eliminating the need for the toothpaste tube and all the metal used in making it. The toothbrush is the toothpaste tube.
4. The incorporation of a toothbrush head into the end of a flosser, eliminating the need for a normal toothbrush and all the plastics used in making it. The flosser is the toothbrush.
5. The incorporation of a punch out spoon in the lid of a yogurt container, eliminating the need for a separate spoon and the plastics or metal used to make it. The lid is the spoon.
6. The use of the Internet for newspaper publication, eliminating the need for millions of pounds of paper used for printing, and once again, all the chemicals and machinery used in making the paper. The Internet is the newspaper
7. The incorporation of multi-functionality in office machines, eliminating the need for tons of plastic and metal used in manufacturing these separate devices. The fax machine is the copier
8. The incorporation of multi-functionality into home lawn products, eliminating the need for the plastic and paper materials previously used in making these extra product containers. We have also seen the incorporation of a lawn care business under the umbrella of the services of a termite service provider, eliminating the need for two separate business structures and their associated costs. We now have a "home service" provider. The termite provider is the lawn care provider.
9. The selling of duty free products on overseas flights, eliminating the need for a "duty free" store on the ground and all the costs and jobs associated with building and running it. The stewards and stewardesses are the duty free shop.
10. The integration of a tire structure into a wheel by Michelin, eliminating the all the rubber, additives,and the jobs used in the production of conventional tires. The wheel is the tire.

What's the point here? There are two very fundamental ones.

1. First, if you are providing a service or product to someone, rest assured that no matter how much they like you and your product, someone in that company or organization is trying to figure out how to get the function you provide without you. No offense intended, but there's a lot of money to be saved and possibly the invention of a new product or business that will delight their customers. Look at your product or service and and how or why it is used by your customer and ask how could its function (not what it is) be provided within your customer's product or business. Then help make that happen and patent the concept to allow for at least some royalty payments when your product is not needed any more. Or maybe buy your customer and implement the idea!
2. Secondly, if you're the buyer of something, start figuring out how to get the function provided by what you purchase without buying it--preferably by incorporating that function into what you already sell. This will most likely delight your customer and give you some patent rights that could be very valuable.

Can you teach other people to be innovators? Or can you teach yourself to be more innovative? TRIZ practioners learn to generate innovative ideas, but they don't always get their ideas adopted in their organizations.

Sarah Miller Caldicott is co-author of Innovate Like Edison and author of a very good blog on innovation: http://www.powerpatterns.com/newsletter/newsletter_jan2010_online.htm This month she combines some of her experience and Edison-based research with the work of Dr. Jacqueline Byrd on innovation in 14,000 organizations.

I won't repeat the full research discussion -- see Caldicott's blog or Byrd's book for more details, but some of the exercises may help TRIZ Journal/Real Innovation readers see why I think this is research that will help.

Byrd finds that there are 8 corporate competencies that interplay with each other in the course of innovation, that can be defined on a two-axis matrix of Creativity vs. Risk-taking, with the 5.1% who are high on both parameters identified as the Innovators.

She finds that there are 4 ways to encourage creativity and 3 ways to encourage risk-taking.
Creativity increase exercises: Encourage the ability to deal with ambiguity, to work independently, to be inner-directed, and to be unique and value uniqueness in others. I would personally add development of TRIZ tools and methods here, to give people a WAY to use what these attitudes encourage.
Risk-taking increase exercises: Encourage authenticity, expand resilience, and strengthen self-acceptance. I need to learn more, since there seems to be a lot of overlap between authenticity as a risk-taking element and the independence and uniqueness elements.

The other corporate competencies have their own ratios of creativity to risk-taking (for example, the Challenger is high on risk-taking but low on creativity, and the Synthesizer is high on creativty and mid-level on risk-taking.) Future issues of the newsletter will look at ways to improve these competencies, and the interplay between them.

Weaving Caldicott's research on how Edison brought new people into his research lab with Byrd's research on 14,000 companies should give us all some new insights into the process of learning innovation.

I decided to be fit this year and reduce my personal carbon footprint by introducing a bicycle in my daily life. I spent more money (considering this will be a worthy, onetime investment) than I would spend in a high class fitness center on this. This one is an imported bicycle, weighing about 5 -8 Kg (I heard there are cycles weigh just about 5 Kg!), and attracts lot of attention when I ride :)

As we all know, the reduced weight is an important aspect of racer bikes to provide enough comfort, speed, modularity etc to the rider, but the reduced weight is also a big problem in India for the high end cycle consumer base, and may be in many other countries too. Here is why;

I want to use this cycle for all my local travels, including going to shops, going to restaurants for my dinner etc. But, I'm really afraid to take the cycle for anything other than a morning fitness ride so that I don't have to "park" anywhere. I'm afraid of the theft if have I parked, even after locking the rear wheel as usually done; the reduced weight means even a 10 year old boy can lift the cycle and simply walk away!

One obvious option is that I lock with a long chain, but we need some fixed, "intermediary" object to do that. This is the common solution available in some countries, but the super-system (government, perhaps?) has provided the options.

Well, this is not my own problem by the way. I did a small search including the shop I purchased this. Interestingly, all the high end bicycle consumers are not using their cycles as much as they would like due to this reason. The bicycle industry is in India is growing. Unlike in the past, there are bicycles available for USD 4000.00 (costs more than a Tata Nano) and interestingly there are buyers (any bicycle above USD 500 will have a lead time of 3 weeks) for these varieties.

Other obvious solutions are :
- Encourage government to provide parking areas for bicycles, including the "fixed, intermediary" option to lock it : About changing the system
- Dismantle the parts and take away the small parts with you, without which the cycle is not usable. Still, not sure..
- Encourage people around where I park the cycle to keep an eye on :) Use the free resources around me..
- Insurance coverage for bicycles: One company in India is already providing this for high end cycles, but at a premium, and nowhere close to the 10% of the cost

As usual, I have tried to use this problem as a case study in my TRIZ sessions, and also wanted to hear from others through this commentory. While this is explained here only through the contradictions, application of 9-Windows, IFR and Trends would be more interesting for a real solution.

Looking though the sub-system contradiction: I want a light weight cycle(for all the good thing I mentioned above) Vs I want the cycle to be heavy (So that no simple lifting is possible). There are more contradictions we can talk about, at sub-system, system, and super-system. What do you think are the contradictions, and solutions?

I also shared this problem with my TRIZ friends, and here is an interesting illustration of TRIZ applied by Dr. Ragunath.

In fact you cannot have a meaningful system contradiction with improving parameter being (weight of moving object) and worsening parameter being (weight of the stationary object) as the contradiction matrix for this is empty!

If OTOH you read the classical TRIZ books you will find similar problems about ships to be light & heavy at different times and the solution being filling in/emptying out of sea water into the buoyancy chambers in the hull. This is separation in time principle for the resolution of this physical contradiction. Assuming that the weight of the bicycle does not change when it is moving or when stationary (except for your weight :) ), what other parameters are there to conflict resolution?

if you forget the fact that heaviness is insurance against theft, what worsening parameter do you map theft to? Loss of substance :)? I used to attend college in Canada where lots of students come cycling. They used to detach their seats and front wheels and bring along with them to the class leaving only the frame and back wheel chained! The fear there was people used to steal the detachable parts of the bike :(

Probably people won't steal what is not a whole bike (?)

If you think of the worsening parameter (due to reduced weight of the (stationary)cycle - param 2) as Object Affected Harmful Factors (param 30), you get the following principles as applicable:

2 : Taking out

19 : Periodic Action

22 : Blessing in Disguise

37 : Thermal expansion

Is potential theft of a light-weight cycle an object generated or object affected harmful effect? OTOH if you take the worsening parameter to be param 31 - object generated harmful factors you get the following principles:

35 : Parameter Changes

22 : Blessing in Disguise

1 : Segmentation

39 : Inert Atmosphere

If the bike is so flexible that it can be rolled up and pocketed then may be parameter changes works.

Inert atmosphere - is it a benign environment where you leave the bike without worry of theft? Or is it that you don't worry if it is stolen - like you cantrack it through GPS? Looks last solution is feasible but expensive than insurance? Even when one insures, the insurer would like to track, right?

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