Commentary by Katie Barry

PDMA's 32nd Annual International Conference - Day 2

My second day in Orlando was about as busy as the first so forgive me if I gloss over some of the details as I try to share as much as I can from my audience view.

The first two keynotes focused on architecture. "How Architecture Shapes the Way We Think: A New View of Collective Intelligence" was presented by Dr. Gunter Henn (Henn Architekten) and Tom Allen (MIT, Sloan School). They co-authored The Organization and Architecture of Innovation and shared some of their findings from their years of research. A main finding? Internal technical communication is needed to excel at innovation. "Eighty percent of all innovative ideas arise from face-to-face communication."

Henn and Allen explained that innovation can’t be organized, but the innovation process can be. They broke down the idea further by saying that innovation happens with a synchronization between time and space. (The challenges of remote team problem solving was looked at in the June 2008 issue of The TRIZ Journal – take a look for more on this topic.)

Next up was Dr. Andrew Lippman from MIT’s Media Lab on "Architectures for Innovation: The End of Products." Things are changing in that agility and relationships trump stability in today’s global marketplace. Globalization isn’t unimportant, but socialization is more important. It boils down to a "we" vs. "I" debate – the "solution" vs. the "problem." Once again, the importance of defining the problem comes into play!

This afternoon I headed back into the Guru track. First up, Jeffrey Phillips (VP, Innovation at OVO, also this track’s chair AND a Real Innovation author) with Kim McEachron (VP, Human Resources at Medtronic) on "Innovation: A People Centric Process."

Who should be on an innovation team? Someone comfortable with ambiguity! They identified four primary roles:

1. Innovator or idea generator (involved in the first step)
2. Scouts or trend spotters (often spread out in companies, so they can be hard to take advantage of/synthesize)
3. Idea sponsor (usually a more senior employee – business owner or project manager)
4. Evaluators (often an ad hoc process with a broad array of people involved)

Along with those necessary team members, there are also five barriers to developing a successful innovation team:

1. Compensation
2. Evaluation
3. Training
4. Recognition/reward
5. Cultural barries

Along with that, another message repeated throughout this conference: fail! And fail early. Failure is not mistakes. "Mistakes produce no new or useful information and are without value." Failure, and learning from those failures, can lead to later successes.

The last session of this track was a shared presentation among three speakers: Frank Tyneski (Executive Director, Industrial Designers Society of America - IDSA), Lou Lenzi (SVP, Product Development, Audiovox Accessories Corporation) and Bruce Claxton (Motorola). They each talked about industrial design and its importance in the product development process. A favorite buzzword was "no compromise!" For those of you who have delved into TRIZ, you know that eliminating trade-offs/contradictions is an important tool of the methodology. Although TRIZ wasn't mentioned in the presentation, the importance of designing the ideal and not accepting compromises was clear.

All in all, it was an interesting two days of engaging speakers and conversations. Thanks for sharing the experience with me!

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