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?

As an engineer and someone involved with TRIZ and innovation audits of organizations, I frequently find myself in discussions and conflicts with more right brained creativity individuals. I will define right brained as those who basically believe that in the fields of creativity and innovation it is quantity that is important. In other words, any approach that increases the ability to generate more ideas, the better.

I have been in these types of session where the quantity of ideas generated was the yardstick for success (not useful ideas, but total number of ideas). I have also seen some exercises such as walking around matrices that are supposed to generate significant new ideas. All of you have seen group sessions involving any number of techniques involving balloons, music, etc that are supposed to improve our creativity.

I think I have finally figured out how to have a rational discussion about these approaches vs. more structured, left brained processes. That discussion revolves around understanding the difference between attitudes and tools. To be more innovative requires a desire to do something different than is normally done, a competitor is doing, or something that might be needed in the future that is not obvious. There is no point in learning tools that may be needed to allow this to happen without a basic change in attitude. This attitude cannot be changed for any length of time by executive edict and especially not if the edict is not followed up by sincere and continuous support. If an organization has a long history of incremental improvement, listening only to current customers, and doing only what the boss says, there must be an attitude change, up and down the organization. Replacing people may be necessary.

Some of the soft tools such as breakouts, adventures, and internal parties and kickoffs, are frequently necessary to let people know that there is a step change coming and management is serious. However, if requests for freedom and financial support to do something new and different are denied because we will never do something like that, the boss will not like it, or we have no money to do that, then the truth will echo around the organization as fast as EM can travel.

There must be a fundamental shift to think and act differently. It is critical at this point to also understand and acknowledge what the climate is and that means understanding the profile of the organization, using one of many organizational assessment tools. If an organization is composed of 80 percent Myers Briggs sensors and strongly adaptive individuals as identified with Kirton KAI, the challenge to think outside of the box is going to be extraordinarily difficult. People will be frustrated and the results desired will be almost impossible to achieve. The attitude of wanting to change the status quo must be there. Someone who does not see the value in change is going to be difficult to motivate toward true innovation. By the way, it would be no easier for the opposites of these individuals to deal with a short term structured emergency or a quality control procedure analysis. If there is a basic shift in attitude, then we can discuss how to accomplish the goal of the change in attitude.

What is needed now are tools for innovation that support the change in attitude and environment. If the problem is not too challenging, simple tools such as CPS, or DeBono processes may be sufficient. If it is one that has serious contradictions, is complex, or has been approached unsuccessfully for years, it may take more complex tool kits such as TRIZ. There are areas of overlap between them and ways to combine can be very effective. Each of these tools requires a different kind of attitude shift. All require some level of belief in a structured approach and process as opposed to random brainstorming. To be effective these tools and processes must be used broadly, not just by the troops, but the senior executives who are touting the value of them without having used them. The first use of them should be at the executive level to analyze the challenge of innovation inside their organization.We need to understand there is a difference between attitude and tools. If we want innovation and change, we need to change both and it may require different approaches to each.

Many of you may have seen Google's earnings report announced on Friday, January 22. In the 4th quarter of 2009, their sales (just one quarter!) were $6.7 BILLION and profits of $2 BILLION. This was 5 times the profit of the previous quarter. Let's think about this a second. How would you like to make 30% profit on this large a sales volume without MAKING anything that you can touch and feel. Just information!!

Companies like Intel and Exxon spend over a billion dollars in capital just to build a state of the art chip factory or petrochemical plant. Now Google has offices and spends a lot of money air-conditioning the building that hold all its servers, but this is a fraction of what is required in traditional manufacturing of cars, steel, chemicals, and semi-conductors. And none of these industries make 30% on sales. In a very good year, they might make 15-20% return on their capital investment (not sales and maybe a 30% return on sales on a few real specialty products for which patents haven't expired). These plants have to be constantly maintained, updated for constantly changing environmental and safety regulations, and plans for ultimate disposal of the property and equipment.

Wouldn't it be a lot more fun just to collect and sell information? Isn't that a lot easier? Well, of course it's easier if that's all the further your thought process goes. If it was that easy, everyone would do it. Despite the challenges of Microsoft and Yahoo, Google is still number one and is stretching its business vision beyond web searches. This tell us that information, itself, it pretty cheap and a commodity. It's all around us. But to sift through it, analyze it, and get only what you want is the real challenge.

Information is a critical resource. We know this but not everyone recognizes this. Sometimes it's egos that get in the way--we don't collect information that might be bad news or we "spin" it (now don't get huffy here, but consider the last several elections where the results ("information" as well as votes) are trying to tell the politicians something and possibly not just that "they don't get it").

I'll bet that many of you collect tons of information in your process control computers and your customer interviews. What do you do with it? Store it? Or analyze it? How? Do you recognize all the informational resources around you? When was the last time you asked one of your employees their opinion about something vs. telling them to be a "team player"? Have you ever asked your folks what skill or talent they have that you are not taking advantage of? Have you ever asked them about what they observed on the midnight shift? What they saw on the last customer visit that wasn't on the agenda or meeting plan? Have you considered what else you might do with the information that's already out there?

Let's consider a very recent example to illustrate these points. If you are a public agency responsible for traffic control and emergency medical repsonse to a traffic accident, how have you managed this for decades? You sit in readiness and wait for someone to call in an accident. Then you respond appropriately. This takes a certain amount of time. What if you could shorten that time? Clear the road quicker? Possibly save someone's life because you responded quicker with an ambulance? What information is at your disposal that could accelerate your response? Before I tell you the answer, think about this for a few seconds without reading further.......

What do people do today (that they didn't do 5-10 years ago) when a situation like this happens? Don't they get out their cell phones and call someone? Maybe it's their kids--"I'll be late to pick you up". Maybe it's a colleague with whom a meeting is scheduled. "I'll be a little bit late". Maybe it's picking up someone from work. "Don't worry, nothing happened, just stuck in a traffic jam--not sure what's going on". Everyone who does this generates an electromagnetic signal that is going to a cell phone tower. The dramatic rise in the level of cell phone calls is a resource and it is measurable. So if there is a sudden increase in cell phone calls, there's an accident! I know where to go because there calls are triangulated by geography and the signals now tell me where to go, almost instantly. Air Sage is doing this and selling the service.

I also recall a talk some time ago by someone from McNeil Pharmaceuticals about their putting cameras in the homes of people who were using their OTC medications (Tylenol(R) for children for example) to observe what customers actually did with their medicines, not what a consumer panel said they did. This allowed them to re-think packaging, dosing instructions, etc. The information was there all along, but no one bothered to make the extra effort to collect it. (It's a lot easier to just send surveys out, isn't it?).

Think about how football strategy has changed now that someone up in a booth, being able to see the whole playing field, can wirelessly communicate to the coach and tell him what the opposition did that he couldn't see from his ground position. What else is possible to do with this new resource of cell phone signals? Norwich Union Insurance is using this information to know when a car is on the road vs. in the garage. Why pay for accident insurance if the car is in the garage? How about monitoring how fast your teenager is driving? (This now combines cell phone signals with the "new" resource of GPS satellites).

What are the lessons here? First, information is an important resource. Second, it is easy to get overloaded. Thirdly, analyzing and sifting through information is what is critical. Fourth, new informational resources appear frequently (the cell phone example would not have been there 20 years ago), so it's good that we take re-inventory resources and ask how this new resource could be used. Last, and most important, ask those around you what they see and observe. Ask yourself if the information you have is really direct information or indirect. Information and its analysis can be the difference between success and failure in innovation.

The conference banquet on Monday night was held in the university's reception hall. We sat at large round tables and shared many dishes, which enhanced the opportunities for conference delegates to get to know each other. The banquet was an educational and cultural opportunity which introduced many of us to a variety of cultural elements. The entertainment included music, dance, and demonsrations of classical caligraphy (See 3 Pictures--more will be on the ICSI website soon) followed by members' talents--I was serenaded in Mongolian, and we were all amazed by Daniel Sheu's karaoke skills.

I gave the day 3 keynote speech on global success stories in TRIZ and Systematic Innovation, which led to significant discussions throughout the day about whether other companies' success stories are useful or not in getting people to try something new. The keynote was followed by 3 parallel technical sessions--I heard some very interesting follow-up to topics from the Computer-aided innovation conference in August by Denis Cavallucci and Derek Tate, among others.

The conference concluded with a tour of local technology site: The Realtek company showed us their approach to innovation and employee education, and part of their art collection, we toured the headquarters of the Hsinchu Science Park, and we visited the ITRI Creativity Lab, a cooperative for companies that want to learn to "play" with ideas.

Start planning now--the Second International Systematic Innovation Conference will be in Shanghai March 24-26, 2011, and the organizing committee is already working to make it even better than this one!

The tutorial speaker for day 2 at the Systematic Innovation Conference is Professor Jay Lee, whose primary work is at the U. of Cincinnati in the US and Shanghai Jia Tong University in China. His talk on "Dominant Design for Product and Service Innovation" introduced the audience to a very organized system of methods for integrating product and service offerings. "Dominant" refers to your market position if you do this! Examples from John Deere, GE Aviation and GE Medical, and GM, all adding information and service components to well-established hardware products were quite persuasive. His Cargill example (matching a US farmer who grows very specialized corn products with a Japanese chicken farmer to produce branded low-cholesterol eggs) was a great example of moving from product (Cargill doesn't sell the corn or the eggs) to an information-mediated service.

Key attributes of service innovation in Lee's model are:

1. Be Customer Intensive
2. Use System Instrumentation (smart agent)
3. Work through Smart Operation Analytics
4. Incorporate Knowledge Management in Business
5. Avoid Potential Issues for Customers

His primary tool is a matrix (no surprise to this audience) that maps the customers' raw needs, both visible and invisible, against the market opportunities. His stories about moving from industry to the university consortia then back to industry as an academic were both illustrative and entertaining! (Picture of Prof. Lee)

The featured talks after lunch were "real world" success stories from Samsung and Hyundai. Mr. SeHo Cheong from Samsung told his personal story of TRIZ learning mixed with the Samsung company story in a very effective way, starting with his trip to Russia in 1999 to hire TRIZ experts. (Picture of Mr. Cheong)

He showed us a great variety of case studies, starting in 2001, with washing machines, refrigerator door design, and the whole developement cycle of the OLED product family. Some early case studies were considered significant because they persuaded senior management to support TRIZ, and some are significant because they gave Samsung early market dominance in their fields. Now in all product development reviews, engineers are asked if they use resources, if they focus on major contradictions, if they have a concept for future super systems and sub-systems, and other TRIZ-based questions. Since they know the questions will be asked, they use TRIZ extensively in development. In SMD (Samsung Mobile Device) only 9% of projects were defect improvement projects; the majority were new products, or processes for creating the new products. Mr. Cheong offered serveral lessons from experience:

1. Verification is important. Verify new ideas immediately. Waiting kills creativity
2. Top-down project selection is very important. This protects projects from getting cancelled early.
3. Select people for the "Creative elite" (internal TRIZ promotion and education team) who have both the technical ability and the personality to help other people succeed.
4. Use a task force for big projects , with the project team and the TRIZ team as partners, dividing the work.

The Samsung teams use a very basic flowchart, with many tools of TRIZ/ARIZ/OTSM used where appropriate for the specific project. There was considerable interest by the audience in the training system, and particularly in the note that the CEO had graduated from the basic level class! The TRIZ training is accompanied by a support system of consultants and patent writing advisors. A TRIZ Festival is held annually--last year the 12 best of 62 projects were selected, and 7 awards were given, to promote TRIZ. Samsung has an internal "webzine" and a conference for their own TRIZ association (6 of the Samsung companies share their experiences.) Future plans are to develop a broad base of projects (not just top-down), to increase the number of people with higher-level tools, to modify tools and methods for business problems, and to continuously improve the effectiveness of the education and support systems.

The second paper in this remarkable session was from the TRIZ organizer at Hyundai, and formerly at LS Cable, Mr. Young-Ju Kang, who personally has more than 52 patents from his work in the automotive industry, using TRIZ with Value Engineering and Axiomatic Design. (Picture of Mr. Kang, holding the plaque showing the conference picture.)

He echoed Mr. Cheong in the rejection of benchmarking, choosing instead to create new paradigms to win in the market. TRIZ is used in multiple areas: patent circumvention, system improvement, cost reduction, process innovation, technical forecasting, and general creativity improvement. History: 1995 -2005 TRIZ in the LS and LG companies, with more than 60 patents, and an internal TRIZ Association started to support all the related companies. In Hyundai, 2007-9 there have been more than 40 projects and the development of internal training and support systems. In contrast to Samsung, at Hyundai the TRIZ team selects the projects.

Mr. Kang also discussed the problems of TRIZ propagation, especially the difficulty of assessing the return on investment, and the difficulty of overcoming ignorance and psychological resistance (what can you do if people are convinced that the system cannot be changed, or that all problems can be cured by spending more money?) An equally important problem was selecting easy, unimportant problems as case studies--then the results were not They are now very disciplined about finding the right question before starting work on the solutions. He reminded the audience that early pilot projects were published in the TRIZ Journal in 2005, and that this helped draw attention to the work.

He had a very nice analogy between the complete technical system for a product and the complete technical system for a TRIZ implementation (Picture of Mr. Kang's slide).

Both LS and Hyundai use cash awards and public honor as motivational rewards, and have internal TRIZ conferences to show project results and reward the participants. Similarly to the Samsung efforts, they are now modifying methods to use for business problems, and reaching out to universities and other companies to develop a network of resources.

Mr. Kang concluded with a case study of a wheel system improvement that simplified the brake system, reducing cost and improving energy efficiency, and a patent circumvention case of waterproof optical cable--both cases emphasized trimming in very different ways. His conclusions were somewhat different from Mr. Cheong's, particularly starting bottom-up, then going to top-down in the organization--the audience reacted very positively to his step 4: be ambitious and confident.

Mr. K. Lee then joined Mr. Kang invited us all to the Korean TRIZCON 2010 in March.

The technical progam concluded with parallel sessions in 6 classrooms on a wide variety of subjects related to innovation, and the social program concluded with the banquet

This conference has been planned for over a year, and features many innovations in conference organization, as well as the many papers, tutorials, and discussions of all aspects of systematic innovation. For example, tutorial sessions were planned for Saturday and Sunday morning, so that people could participate who might have trouble leaving their jobs for conference sessions. Skype was used (with mixed success due to an overloaded wireless connection) so that Mark Barkan, President of MATRIZ, could give his personal and organizational greetings to the audience. A mix of government agencies, universities, professional societies and organizations were all sponsors of the conference. (See photograph of Welcome sign.)

Even the coffee break was innovative, with the snacks arranged to form a map of Taiwan, with each food item placed in the province where it was made (see photograph of food map.)

Yesterday, participants from the China, Japan, Korea, Russia, the US, Taiwan, and the UK took a tour bus from Hsinchu to Taipei and toured the Chaing Kai Shek memorial, the 101 building, and the National Palace Museum, for a cultural orientation to Taiwan. Today, I was the first tutorial speaker, focusing on the TRIZ aspects of Systematic Innovation, and emphsizing ideality, the use of resources, and the resolution of physical contradictions. The audience of over 100 was participative (well, they laughed at my jokes and made a good effort to apply what they were learning to their own work situations) and appreciative.

The main conference started with a group photo of the 150 participants from 14 countries. We were welcomed by Professor L.J.Chen, President-elect of the National Tsing Hua University, which was both sponsor and venue for the conference. He invited us to take advantage of Hsinchu's resources as the science center of Taiwan, as well as the universitiy's scenic, technical, and cultural resources.

Professor D. Daniel Sheu, Chairman of the conference and President of the Society for Systematic Innovation, welcomed us and gave a detailed overview of Systematic Innovation, to establish the context of the conference. He mentioned some of the innovations in conference organization, including the launch of the new Journal of Systematic Innovation (an academic, reviewed publication), developed in parallel with the conference, and announced the planning for the second conference in 2011 in Shanghai. (See picture of Daniel welcoming us informally at the reception on Friday evening.)

Darrell Mann's keynote address challenged the audience to expand their skills in innovation beyond TRIZ and beyond many of the standard tools that are usually related to TRIZ (QFD, strategic planning, TOC, DOE, Stage Gate, ...) to the dozens of tools and methods that are now part of Systematic Innovation. He developed both a high-level matrix for selecting tools (the rows are the people in your organization, with a row each for senior executives, marketing, product development, and operations, and the columns are the 4 stages of the S-curve) and a "periodic table" showing a way of grouping 60 or more conceptual tools. Since many participants were "graduates" of Darrell's classes in Taiwan in the last several years, they were well-oriented to appreciate the elegance of this form of organization of the constituents of systematic innovation. Of course, Darrell took advantage of the opportunity to announce the publication of 3 new books, as well!

The afternoon was capped off with six simultaneous breakout sessions, with 4-5 papers in each (3 in Chinese, 3 in English) and a poster session with 15 papers in Chinese and English. There were many case studies from a wide variety of industries. I was chairing one session, so I could not move around much, but I saw examples from automotive safety, steel processing, paint production, and university research management. The session chairpeople were asked to recommend the best papers in their sessions for futue publication, so I anticipate that Real Innovation and TRIZ Journal readers will see a sample of the best of these papers in the next few months.

More tomorrow...

About two years ago, I wrote a commentary on teaching innovation as it has been my passion to pursue, source of inspiration, and reason to develop teachable innovation methods. About the same time I also started teaching Business Innovation. Students have loved learning about innovation.

Among all the commentaries I have written during 2007- 08 at RealInnovation, the Teaching Innovation has been the most active one. . Many inquiries were received for emailing the course syllabus that I teach at Illinois Institute of Technology. Having fulfilled all requests, I have yet to hear from most of the people who asked for the information. I have no idea what happened after they received the syllabus. Has anyone started teaching innovation? Are there any challenges experienced in teaching innovation? I would be very interested in learning more about various programs initiated or designed for teaching innovation. I believe all of us would benefit from our collective wisdom.

Continuing my work on teaching innovation, IIT has developed an innovation certification program. Maybe, we should create a group on RealInnovation to raise awareness to teaching innovation. I believe new jobs can only be created, or standards of living be raised by creating new businesses based on new discoveries. To achieve these objectives we need to prepare a larger pool of innovators that can only be accomplished by teaching innovation.

What do you think? I need to hear more voices about teaching innovation besides hearing myself.

On December 7th this lively panel discussion was hosted on CSPAN by Mathew Bishop, Business Editor of The Economist. The panel of excellent innovators includes: Dean Kamen, Inventor, Segway; Kai Huang, Co-Founder, The Guitar Hero; Rob Carlson, Principal, Biodesic; Dwayne Spradin, President and CEO, InnoCentive.

They shared their thinking about the state of the economy, economic and business innovation, and opportunities for growth. Among the topics they addressed were use of technologies, alternative energy uses, and health care. They also responded to questions from the audience.

For those of you who would like to watch the discussion--50 minutes, here is the link: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/290481-3.

We head into 2010 with uncertainty. Things look like they may be turning up a little, but many people are still cautious, considering all the financial turbulence. In times like this, it's always best to fall back on things and principles we know will stand the test of time. Let's review a few of them as we plan our business and innovation strategy for 2010:

1. Cost reduction pressures will not cease, especially with continued globalization of business and technology. So how do we decrease costs? We lower the price of what we pay for raw materials, capital, and people. We beat up on our suppliers. Incremental improvements in these areas come from renegotiating contracts, changing delivery times, reducing overtime, automating--all the things that have been known for years and everyone else knows too. So what can you do that is special? Don't reduce costs--eliminate them! How do you do that? By not using the materials or resources at all. Now I don't mean brutal downsizings--there has been enough dumb non-innovative practice of that. I mean the scientific concept of "trimming." Black and Decker uses the empty volume in a paint stick to help people avoid paying for buckets and paint pans, while at the same time not paying for wood or aluminum volume not needed. CNN uses I Reporters to save all the time of jetting around their reporters around the country and gets the news faster and at NO cost! Put the toothpaste in the handle of the toothbrush--save the plastic as well as the cost to the consumer of buying a large tube they won't finish in a year's time. Email your bills--don't spend postage. Get rid of the tire--use the Tweel (R)! This is downsizing done with logic and science. It may or may not reduce people costs, but it sure opens the door for patentable products, margin improvement, and increased appreciation by your customers.
2. Keep from being "trimmed." Your customers may/should be doing the same thing. So what are you doing to help them get there? How can you reduce their costs, not just yours? How could the function performed by your product be done in a way that doesn't use your product? Think about that before they do. This may force a hard decision about what business you're in, an acquisition that may be needed, or a new approach to your business. If you don't do it, someone else will. Be first to figure out how the function your product performs can be done without it. This is very hard business strategy thinking but it's essential for survival in these times. Don't spend time working on a better "non-spilling" paint pan--it's not going to be needed.
3. We've been brutal with people and their loyalty. How are you going to get it back? How do you change the culture and memory from "shut up and do as you're told or you won't have a job" to "we really need you and your input and ideas".
4. We've written columns about style differences in people. We use all kinds of psychological assessment tools but we really don't USE them. They are discussed and the paperwork stored in a drawer somewhere.We put teams together without any thought to its composition except for the titles and backgrounds of the people. They are asked to work on problem 1. But problem 2 (how the team "gets along") is swept under the table and the problem 2 energy saps that necessary to deal with problem 1. People have different styles of relating as well as problem solving that are very hard wired. Measuring these and making sure that the composition and dynamics of the team are critical to success. Make this the year that this issue comes out in the open and is dealt with pro-actively.
5. Globalization pressures continue to increase. Inventors are figuring out how to deliver PCs and drinking water to third world countries in ways we have never thought of in the West. Potable water is delivered by sucking through a straw with carbon/other adsorbent materials embedded. No central drinking water facility. How much money does that save? What if these approaches are modified and scalable to other situations? Maybe we can learn from these approaches.
6. Egos are still with us. Make this the year you stop using acronyms and jargon to discuss your problems and make them sound fancy, unique, and sophisticated to any one who does not know the special language. Let your hair down and talk to a sixth grader about your problem. Then you'll find out that your problem is not all that special and that video games are the same as air traffic control systems, dissolving heart stents are the same as decomposing garbage bags, and high precision grinding diamond dust generation is the same as blowing the stems out of peppers.

I took some time off writing commentaries for RealInnovation about a year ago. Reflecting over last 12 months for innovation activities, I have seen great interest in innovation all over the world. People are talking about innovation at all levels. Students, teachers, schools, colleges, businesses, professionals, and even national leaders, all have been talking about innovation. However, creating a culture of innovation at a group, community or corporation level still remains a challenge. There is no shortage of strategic planning for innovation however executing the strategy still remains a mystery.

In December 2009 President Obama hosted a Jobs Forum at White House. Everyone is talking about creating jobs, but none is asking the question, "How to create jobs?" It has been forgotten that more people are employed by small businesses than large corporations. Doling out money to large organizations in the name of "too big to fail" will not create jobs. Stimulus packages worth about three trillion dollars have not created many jobs so far.

I believe that instead of talking about creating jobs our leaders should explore creating new businesses. Only thousands of new businesses will create millions of new jobs. I understand that some of the stimulus money goes for workforce development where the money is available for skills development through training or certification that will help in getting a job, Given that economy is shrinking and jobs are not available; any training for teaching innovation and entrepreneurship does not get funded.

I have been wondering when President Obama would do something about his promise of Change and give a vision for Americans to pursue.

I am sure you have your story to tell. I can hardly wait to hear your innovation story.

Trimming is a TRIZ technique of improving something by simplifying it (and a small joke in English.) Most often in TRIZ it refers to products or systems where the complexity has increased cost or decreased maintainability, serviceability, ease of use, etc. My husband and I got a gift that let us experience an extreme form of trimming used to create an innovation in experience.

We walked into Opaque, a dimly lit empty nightclub in Santa Monica, California. (There are others in Vienna, Paris, San Francisico and elsewhere. See www.darkdining.com) We are greeted and given menus with limited choices--2 salads, 4 entrees, 2 desserts, wine by the glass only. After choosing the meal, we are introduced to Michael, our guide/waiter/helper, who is blind. I put my hand on Michael's shoulder, Bill puts his hand on my shoulder, and we "elephant walk" into the darkest room I have ever been in except for a cave exploration trip. Yes, what has been trimmed from this dining experience is light, and the diner's ability to see the food, the table setting, the presentation of the food, and one's companion. The theory of the restaurant is that taking away light will enhance the diners' other senses and focus the diners' attention on the taste, texture, and aromas of the food. And yes, they reject all the dogma of the restaurant industry that presentation of the food is important, "we taste first with our eyes."

Michael guided us through sitting down: "Put your hand out. This is the back of your chair. Touch the seat, now move forward a half step and sit down. In front of you on the table is a napkin, wrapped around the fork and a butter knife...." We started with an amuse bouche that was a tiny tomato stuffed with herbs and goat cheese, served on a ceramic spoon, as a single bite. This was the easiest part of the meal! When Michael brought the bread basket, the butter was in a small dish which Bill and I each put fingers in trying to find it, and we eventually just dipped the bread in butter rather than using the knife. The salads were very good, but it took a combination of fork and fingers to get the greens.

I was surprised that Michael did not give us orientation to the entree plate. The steak was cut into fairly large pieces, and we did get sharp knives in case we were brave enough to cut it smaller, but we didn't know where the broccoli or the spinach was. Aroma didn't help, since everything was heavily garlicked.

Desserts were both soft (eat with just a spoon) and probably the best food of the meal, but again, there were surprises: the chocolate lava cake was decorated with raspberries which we found after eating the cake, and the mango panna cotta also had hidden fruit. Michael guided us back to the lobby, where we washed up (very little damage), paid, and departed just as the nightclub part of the operation was getting started.

Did the "trimmed" experience work? The diners definitely focused (hmmm, optics analogy) on each other and on the experience. We tried to guess how many tables there were, what the relationships between the other diners were, why the chefs and designers had made certain choices about the food and the method of presenting the meal, etc. Unfortunately, the food and the wine were just OK, not excellent, and that interferes with my ability to evaluate the experience of the blind dining. It was definitely interesting, but too expensive to repeat for the actual dining.

Trimming lesson: In this case, they removed one element of the experience in order to be unique, not in order to simplify the experience. They succeeded in being unique, but the question is still open whether they will be a commercially successful innovation.

You could duplicate this experience at home, if you have a room with no windows, or try it in your city if you have one of the other "Dark Dining" venues. Readers' comments are welcome! Best wishes to all our readers for a happy, healthy, and INNOVATIVE 2010!

ISPIM (International Society of Professional Innovation Management) Meeting, New York, NY Dec 7-9, 2009: "Stimulating Recovery: The Role of Innovation Management"ISPIM (http://www.ispim.org) is primarily a European based innovation organization with a combination of academics, consultants, and industrial practitioners. They hold two meetings a year and occasionally one of these is held outside of Europe. This year's meeting was hosted by the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. FIT is a very practically focused art and industrial design school. Below are commentary on several of the presentations over the first 2 days which I attended, and editorial comments with both my general innovation and TRIZ hat on.

Dr. Rita Gunther McGrath from the Harvard Business School discussed "Growth in Uncertain Times". She made a very interesting presentation on thinking ahead in starting up a new business--asking the important questions first and looking at upward integration for value, which is not a new concept for those familiar with this line of evolution in TRIZ thinking. She illustrated this point vividly with the example of Build-A-Bear, a toy store company (and also on line now) in which a shopper chooses a "basic" bear and then outfits it with whatever clothes, ribbons, etc. that wants, in the store.

This model (the same one used in "cutting your own" Christmas tree farms, or the Chucky Cheese franchises (where the emphasis is on the party and not the pizza) allows individualization of the shopping (and innovation experience) and generates 70 times as much sales volume per square foot as a typical Toys R Us store, upon which they had benchmarked and simply could not generate the sales volume desired in the space they could afford. This also allowed "quantification" of the fantasy as seen by the shopper. Another point during this presentation, as this company's development was reviewed, was the constant tracking of assumptions in a new innovative business.

We all make assumptions and Build-A-Bear made a list of there assumptions, dates, changes that occurred, etc. and then reviewed these on a rigorous time basis. All this takes is a simple spread sheet. The learning here is to constantly review the assumptions made and react before their changes become crises.

A very simple new business innovation tool.Dr. Jody Holtzman from AARP discussed the challenges faced in trying to expand innovate within the traditional structure and original mission ("retired persons") of AARP. The dropping of the "retired persons" from the organization title and moving simply to the AARP acronym has not been successful in removing the stereotype image and prevents a barrier to new business and product offerings to younger individuals. This non-profit organization currently has 40 million members with $1 Billion in annual revenues, 65% of which comes from the sale of auxiliary products, endorsed by AARP. Membership dues, by themselves, are a losing proposition.

The linkage they have discovered for new product offerings and potential broadening is the 18-34 old age segment which is linked to their traditional older membership by the "sandwich" generation issues associated with elder care and college costs. In the US, 10% of people aged 18-34 still live with their parents, 1/2 of whom are retired. AARP has now formed 400 on line communities to share ideas, listen, launch test visions of new products and services. They have 400 on line communities for market research under the heading of Lifetuner.org This is providing support and market research to overcome resistance from senior management. They "fly under the radar", and work remotely, but still report to senior executives in the organization. These on line communities are a vehicle to learn and minimize cost of failure of new ideas. The expert advice supplied as part of this effort is not linked to any sales effort.

An observation made by Jody was that people question methodologies but not results. The key in this effort has been to link the needs of younger people to the current needs of their present membership. (TRIZ principle of using existing resources) This effort has allowed this innovation effort to not threaten the current organization business and structure. There's a lesson here for innovators---linking innovative ideas to an existing business or structure, not only not to be threatening, but also enhance existing product offering. A point made by Jody was that what seems to be "radical innovation" for a given organization may not really be radical innovation in its traditional sense.

It's important to know the difference.Dr. Gina O'Connor from RPI reported on a long term research study tracking the life of internal venture groups, showing the familiar story of less than a 5 year life in the early days of these programs (this author has led and published a similar study also reviewing the psychological profiles of these groups vs. the corporate surroundings). Beginning in 195 through 2000, these efforts took on a different character, using multi-disciplinary teams to produce "radical innovation". After 2000, these efforts focused more on capabilities rather than specific products or businesses, allowing them to respond to a broader variety of challenges. This mirrors the emphasis in TRIZ on understanding the function of a system and analyzing that vs. focusing on a specific product.

Her vision of a radical innovation hub includes a mandate and scope, the skills and talents required, appropriate processes and tools, and integration with decision makers. These observations parallel those made in the 2001 study of failed innovation champions published in Chemical Innovation.Robyn Raybold from Microsoft provided some fascinating statistics on the Web as well as the thinking behind their new Bing search engine product. Since 1997 there has been a 10 million fold increase in content on the web, an increase from 700K to 160 million web sites, and an increase from 256 million to 1 trillion URL's. During this time there has also been a huge increase in video and audio content. She also stated that their research showed that searches drive by visual content and images was 23% faster than with word content.

An example of what they have tried to do with Bing (Note: I have no first hand experience with this search engine) would be someone searching in the new car area would automatically be provided picture and rating information without being asked for it. (TRIZniks: the need identifies itself and comes to you without asking--the IFR). The decision to design the system this way was in part driven by data that says that 25% of user clicks on a web search are to go back for additional information, only 65% of users are satisfied with their search experience, 50% saying their searches take too long, and 42% saying their searches need refinement. An example used was the narrowing of search from "New York" to "New York restaurants" to "Chinese restaurants in New York". She also made the point that a lot of people used to be satisfied with the first cell phone from Motorola (true--do you remember how big and bulky they were? But they did something you could not do before. Think about the original microwave ovens that cost $499 and all they did was boil water!)

66% of people make decisions based on web searches. 43% of searches are in the health care area. It's interesting that in the food industry food products such as Prego now have over 20 variables and Bing is going in the opposite direction with consolidation. Again, from a TRIZ perspective, one can make breakthroughs and make a product or service more ideal by either adding useful complexity or by consolidating and simplifying. A bit of trivia that I found fascinating was that on average, web users check the weather sites 2.6 times a day!

Dr. Howard Moskowitz, in his talk and participation on one of the panels, made the analogy of our progress in innovation as the same as moving from astronomy (observation) to physics (understanding the basic science of the universe). In his primary talk, he made the point that the US has virtually given up manufacturing and that the only thing left is knowledge to distinguish it in the future. He also shared his experience in observing and working with customers and clients and made the excellent point that customers do not tell you in clear detail what they want. Better coffee can mean strong and dark or weak and milky and unless you've actually watched them make their coffee, you can't be sure. He's a fan of the fail early, quick, and cheap school and developing what he calls "rule developing" experiments (sounds like the 40 Principles!)

Dr. Jayakanth Srinivasan from MIT reviewed his work with Rockwell Collins emphasizing the combining of lean principles with innovation. He mentioned the "10X" principle, meaning that a true breakthrough idea could be stimulated by such thinking. This is very similar to the IFR concept in TRIZ except TRIZ goes further! Part of this operates as a suggestion box program independent of the business units (I have my doubts about this). His model is a combination of open innovation, technology scanning, and internal R&D. A quote from 1927(Schumpeter): "Changes of the combination of the factors of production as cannot be affected by infinitesimal steps or changes at the margin. They consist primarily of changes in the methods of production and transportation, or in the production of a new article, or in the opening up of new markets or of new sources of materials". A lot of wisdom from a long time ago!

Andres Stuckl from Swiss Post (post office) discussed their approach to open innovation. Two key thoughts. "Industry related factors determine the need for open innovation, while internal culture determines how it is implemented.Sabube Brunswicker from the Fraunhofer Institute discussed how we have begun to use open innovation concepts in looking for technology, but not sufficiently in looking at the open innovation process itself. This was the only paper to mention TRIZ and of course TRIZ is a tool kit and mental mind set that can assist us in looking for parallel universes with similar problems not thought about previously. The key elements of an open innovation program, according to Brunswicker, are (1) define where is the open innovation needed, (2) where to look [Note: this is a key area for TRIZ assistance through generalizing the function that is needed], (3) what to source--the specific function required, and (4) governance and control (details and mechanics of the search). Key factors to be considered in these activities include trend and competency analysis, abstraction of the problem [Amen!], and domain and firm selectionMy short presentation on inventive principles and TRIZ generated a lot of discussion and I was very surprised at the lack of awareness of TRIZ, especially with all the TRIZ activities and organizations in Europe, including many large corporate and organizational users such as Siemens, Nestle, and the Fraunhofer Institute.The next meeting of this group is in Barcelona in March of 2010. http://www.ispim.org

Why do we go to movies? Because for less than $10, we can see famous movie stars that we could never afford to pay to come to our house for a private showing. Why do we use copier machines? Because we could never afford the time or money to hand write all the copies we want. The Gutenberg printing press was one of the most significant inventions in history. Why do we buy records or CD's? Because, as with movie stars, we could never afford to pay for these singers to sing for us individually whenever we wanted. Copies are cheaper.

Why do we benchmark against the industry's best? Because we hope we will learn something that we can apply to our own situation without having to pay for all the consultants and hard work that was done to get there. We want to "copy" them without having to invest all the time and money they did to learn what they now know.

Making copies is also a significant inventive principle and every once in a while we need reminded of that. Over the past few months, two very clever new products have appeared which solve some long standing every day problems.

1. The first is the problem of people stealing sandwiches from group refrigerators within a common lunch area. What would make you NOT want to steal a sandwich? Maybe because it's not the kind of food you like, so you look for someone else's sandwich more to your liking. But what if the sandwich had mildew on it? You wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole, would you? A very new sandwich bag is now on the market with pre-printed mildew stains on the film! Not expensive to do and commands a hefty price. Check out: http://www.thisnext.com/item/7BBC47F6/4ED4FA3B/anti-theft-lunch-bag We "copy" the mildew. The mildew performs its function without existing. Note that there are some interesting product improvement opportunities here. What are they?
2. What's another minor inconvenience? You're on a diet and need to measure portions with special cups or spoons and then put the measured portions on a plate. Several new products have come to market in which the portion sizes are painted on the plates or controlled by sectioning. Type in "diet portion control plates" into your browser and see all the products, or take a look at one of your airline or holiday catalogs. Again, the plates now provide the function previously provided by the extra utensils.

In Europe, a painted image of a highway "slow down" hump that's not really there causes cars to slow down. Where else are two items needed to accomplish something where one could be eliminated and its function provided by "copying" it on to or within another system? What product do you have that could perform the function of something else? The other product gets eliminated, you get to raise your price, and maybe even get a patent. What a deal! Copy something! Eliminate the second thing. Raise your price for the "new" product that does two things instead of one.

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