The Battle of Poltava was a resounding victory for Peter the Great. He defeated Charles the XII and 14,000 Swedish cavalry with a superior force of 45,000 Russian soldiers. The battle lasted all day with the outnumbered Swedish soldiers making several valiant efforts against the superior Russian forces. Ultimately the Swedish soldiers had taken too many losses to effectively continue the battle and Charles retreated to Moldavia for five years before he could finally return to Sweden. The captured Swedish soldiers were taken to St. Petersburg and they helped to build the great city.

From October 1941 to January 1942 the Germans attempted the invasion of Moscow and then suffered a counter-attack after the city had been defended. Operation Barbarossa called for the Nazis to capture Moscow in four months but the brutal Russian winter and the lessons of Napoleon were ignored. The Battle of Smolensk slowed the Wehrmacht down and the tide was completely reversed at Moscow.

What are the implications these battles have for the modern corporation? Charles of Sweden underestimated the skills of the new Russian cavalry under the innovative leadership of Peter the Great. Hitler underestimated the Russian resolve and the Russian winter that decimated his blitzkrieg. Corporations also make similar mistakes in judgment. Leaders assume that prior supremacy will sustain the organization even when an upstart challenger enters their field of excellence. Charles assumed that the legacy of the powerful Swedish cavalry could not be matched by the new Russian horse soldiers. The skills of the entrepreneurial organization are not to be underestimated. Peter the Great made this point at Poltava. The power of a discontinuous innovation will propel the upstart to the market space and the mature market share will erode. Customers have proven to be disloyal unless they have become advocates of a particular product or service. Other organizations believe that their superior capital will protect them from any onslaught. They also believe that a swift response to competition will quench any threat. The next generation of an existing product or service remedies all challenges. Or at least they hope this is the case. The fickle and ever-changing competitive landscape can render these advantages useless as the money follows the features and benefits of the function being provided. The prevalent corporate force can find itself unprepared for the challenges ahead as the Third Reich experienced as it forayed into Russia.

If Charles had not underestimated his opponent he would not have brought 14, 000 soldiers to battle 45,000. If Hitler had not assumed that his previous victories would be replicated in Russia without consideration of the famous Russian resolve and the accompanying infamous Russian winter things would have been much different. So too, if the corporate leaders of today will prepare for the foe that is coming after their market share, they will not be defeated. Complacency will be their undoing. Leaders must embrace the science of innovation as they have the sciences of productivity and quality. This is the first step in dodging that exile that Charles found himself facing.

Managing Innovation--A View from the Experts

The September 24 edition of the Wall Street Journal contained a special section focusing on their annual innovation awards. A panel discussion (including IDEO, Packer Design, Cisco, and Google) was held. Both the questions and the answers are enlightening in the light of the current surge of interest in innovation. I loved the analogies drawn and want to share them with you and suggest you think about them in the context of your own innovation efforts.

The very first question asked by the WSJ editor Scott Thurm was,"How do you get people to think beyond 18 months if the whole company is focused [only] on 18 months?" Two answers and analogies were truly enlightening to me, even though I've been in this business a long time. Doug Solomon from IDEO said "it's tough to do and very few big companies do it well...... corporate anti-bodies arise and try to envelop and kill any innovation". Let's think about this in a parallel universe. How do we kill invading viruses entering our bodies? We inject antibodies (dead ones typically, or sometimes below the threshold level) and the bodies' natural defenses produce their own antibodies. How does the virus deal with this over time? It mutates! We now have strains of staphylococcus virtually immune to any anti-biotics. How can we "mutate" an organization so that it survives the attack of the anti-bodies? What is mutation? It's converting something into a new form that is unrecognizable and allows the "disease" (innovation?) to sneak into the body (organization?) unrecognized. How would we do that? We frequently try to introduce innovation into an organization with big new programs accompanied by bells and whistles, kick off celebrations, and widespread new training in some technique or process ("shot"). The antibodies (the old timers who have seen all this before) wait it out, knowing that time will kill the newly injected virus. And they are confident because they've seen it before--many several times. A big executive launch and no follow up on a daily basis. Nothing really changes in the business, how people are rewarded, or how new ideas are treated or evaluated. When business goes sour, the interest in innovation wanes, the risk takers are "downsized", and the budgets reallocated. The anti-bodies are vindicated. So maybe we should mutate into a slowly propagating organization (host) whose changes are too subtle for the antibodies to recognize. Maybe some simple steps such as discussing on a daily basis with those who report to you and with whom you work--"What did you differently today? Have you read anything new that might be interesting for our business? Did you see anything on your last trip that struck you as unusual? What was our customer talking about that had nothing to do with what we sell to them? What was unusual about it? What did you read in the daily paper that got your curiosity up? Did you follow up? Make a phone call? Do a Google search? Do ANTHING about it? What is the biggest threat to our business that isn't our #1 competitor?

If these kinds of conversations began at the top and worked down in a slow, subtle, but methodical way and people were reinforced for getting curious and thinking differently (and being recognized for doing so!), they wouldn't notice that their antibodies were being attacked. This can work both ways--there's no need to kill an innovation effort when business sours. It's just the target that changes. Reducing costs dramatically takes just as much breakthrough innovation thinking as coming up with a new product or business idea, and it may be even easier to implement. We just need to mutate the effort slowly so that the skepticism and doubt is planted into the DNA to be remembered when the next innovation program starts.

The second comment made by Doug related to an agricultural analogy for corporations. He said, "when you're trying to grow corn...you don't want surprises....you change things very slowly". That's because your livelihood can go down the drain with one major false move (lack of rain, insect invasion). Then he made the innovation analogy with a greenhouse where you nurture small plots and surprises are fun, interesting, and not irritating. It's tough to monitor greenhouses and row crops at the same time or in the same way! You don't see greenhouses in the middle of thousands of rows of corn. Doug made the analogy of transplanting to cause us to think about how difficult it is to transplant something new from the greenhouse into the field. It's fraught with peril. Maybe we ought to keep it (the new businesses?) separate for a while. If we do decide to transplant, Doug asks us to think about soil (organizational?) preparation. We don't do this very well. If you are transplanting, you need to know when is the right time, the best conditions, the competitive nutrient environment, the root system,the soil condition, etc. If you fail, do you just give up? Or do you learn from the failure to improve the next time? A few companies (Thermoelectron comes to mind--recently acquire by Fisher Scientific) have done this very well. All major new ideas are treated as separate businesses and then spun off with a stock offering where the original parent still controls much of the stock. Everyone involved has the feeling they are involved in a start up at all times.

How would you make your people feel like they were involved in a start up at all times? What questions should you be asking every single day of your employees and co-workers to slowly, but surely, mutate? How would you change your compensation system? How would you manage parallel greenhouses without interfering with your row corn? What are YOUR ideas for "back mutating" when the economy goes south in the next few years?

In 2005 US Congress passed the innovation act with the intent of increasing research investment, increasing science and technology talent, and developing an innovation infrastructure. The legislation required to establish the President's Council on Innovation for promoting innovation in the public and private sectors. The council is supposed to develop metrics for assessing the existing and proposed laws affecting innovation in the United States.

Research investment implied establishing innovation acceleration grants program for allocating 3% of funds at the federal agencies for high-risk frontier research. It also meant to double the research funding at National Science Foundation by FY 2001, and perpetuating the Research and Experimentation tax credit.

Increasing Science and Technology Talent meant to establish NSF fellowships for providing incentives encouraging more American students to pursue post-graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. It appears that approach to increasing Science and Technology Talent needs to be clarified, and be more specific.

Innovation infrastructure implies development and implementation of advanced manufacturing systems, regional clusters (hot spots of innovation), and deploy advanced manufacturing technologies to improve productivity of the defense manufacturing base.

Well, reviewing the above summary, it doesn't provide a clear impetus to accelerate innovation. If it is going to take several years to figure out what to do, the purpose of the act may be defeated. As a curiosity, I am wondering if anyone has been benefited from the National Innovation Act. If any individual, business, educational institution, or not-for-profit organization has received any support, resources, or encouragement for innovation, I am sure we all would love to learn about it. I am anxious to know what our Government is doing to facilitate GDP growth through innovation and to create new well paying jobs in America.

Look forward to hearing from you, the reader.

Innovation consultant and occasional blogger Jim Belfiore is teasing us with "Why Johnny Can't Innovate – Introductory Article." In this post, Jim promises to deliver us some interesting insights into the challenges that keep engineers and designers from become successful practitioners of repeatable innovation methods.

Six key factors are introduced:

• lack of incentive
• lack of time
• lack of domain knowledge
• lack of innovation skills experience
• lack of simple access to critical information
• lack of vision (i.e. not looking beyond the immediate need)

These are certainly some interesting problems to consider. I have had the pleasure of knowing Jim for five years now, and we regularly talk about what we are seeing in the landscape of commercial innovation practice. So, it is with that understanding of Jim's experience that I am expecting his series to be very interesting, and I am waiting for the first installment.

Of course, thinking about these issues makes me want to ask all of you a question. What do you see as the greatest innovation challenge that you see on a regular basis? Let's hear it. Inquiring minds want to know.

[Crossposted from www.InnovatingToWin.com]

Everything is new at one time or another. Of course, nothing stays that way. I am reminded of this everyday. However, it is easy to forget the innovations of the past as progress continues at its every quickening pace and yesterday's breakthroughs fade into obscurity. I was reminded of this point when I read "Techno Samhain" by fellow blogger and occasional commenter on Innovating To Win, Jim Belfiore. As I read the piece, two thoughts filled my head.

The first thought was how little many designers and innovation workers think about the past. This is really a shame because all innovations build on the past. If you don't have a good understanding of the past and the patterns represented by that past, you won't be able to capitalize on it or avoid the mistakes of your predecessors. The appreciation of the past is at the core of many innovation disciplines.

TRIZ for example is a direct distillation of the past so to speak. Many of the core elements of TRIZ come from a focused study of the past as represented by patent documents. That past is distilled and captured in a variety of TRIZ tools that form the foundation of the methodology.

The other second thought was how quickly we not only forget but also devalue the innovations of the past. I have seen numerous statements calling for the abandonment of the light bulb as the symbol of innovation. Oh, how the once mighty light bulb has fallen in the estimation of the modern practitioner.

The light bulb and its attendant infrastructure ecosystem have been truly transformational in the impact that has been felt by mankind around the globe. We have emerged from the dark, not only figuratively, but quite literally. Yet in the span of 127 years, the incandescent electric light bulb has gone from liberating technology to trite and antiquated symbol of innovation.

Personally, I like the light bulb. I think it represents a rich tradition of innovation and the transformational power that forward thinking can have. Don't you?

[Crossposted from www.InnovatingToWin.com]

Ideating takes place in cycles. Cycles of convergence and divergence that is repeated through the definition and resolution phases of problem solving. The process is also iterative. This means that the cycles continue indefinitely as a solution to a problem creates new problems and so on.

The first step is to define the current problem and create the scope for problem solving. This is convergence to a specific problem statement. Then the problem solver needs to diverge to create the identity of the perfect solution (the IFR in TRIZ vocabulary). Once the ideal solution criteria are established you then converge to the acceptable solution criteria. These steps continue until the right problem is scoped and the success criteria established. Then the techniques that are used to create solutions are divergent. The problem solver ideates inside the scope previously identified.

Once solutions are created, convergence to an implementable solution must take place. The process may be represented like this:Converge to problem – Diverge to ideal solution elements – Converge to IFR – Diverge for ideation – Converge to solutionThis process is iterative at any step. Also, the implemented solution may create secondary problems and this then repeats the process.

My colleague Akhilesh Gulati recently ran this essay on the use of limitations to stimulate innovation in the Radical Thinking column of his newsletter www.pivotmc.com which I recommend to our readers. I have seen this limitation effect many times, so I wanted to share Akhilesh's paper with our TRIZ Journal and Real Innovation Commentary readers:

In today's world, it's almost expected to have product/service innovation to gain competitive advantage. So how does one innovate? One approach is to hire genius employees and to combine the attributes of a number of tools (e.g. Theory of Constraints, Experimentation) or use specific methodologies such as TRIZ (Innovative Problem Solving).

However, if the intent is to gain competitive advantage, your weakness itself may be a source of competitive advantage. To cite an example from many years ago, Thomas Edison was known to be deaf and he used his limitation to help him solve problems as well as develop new inventions. On one occasion, he was called to New York to help solve noise problems associated with the newly elevated trains in the city. Many had tried to reduce noise levels but could never identify the exact location of its source. Due to his deafness, Edison could hear only the worst of the noise. This allowed him to more quickly pinpoint the problem area, rather than be distracted and sidetracked by other noises made by the elevated trains. Ultimately, the noise was due to structural problems with the elevated tracks and not the steam engines that ran the train. While most observers couldn't hear past the engine, Edison could hear the heart of the problem due to his ‘disadvantage.'

Such is the issue when we place limitations on ourselves as we seek new innovative solutions. Imposing constraints, yes, that's right, putting ON constraints rather than REMOVING them, allows us to stretch our thinking and become creative. It allows us to break our bounds, get outside the comfort level and seek solutions we might have otherwise avoided. Success of many kaizen events can also be attributed to imposing constraints or limitations: limited time (typically 5-10 days) within which to accomplish the task, having a very limited budget to achieve results, seeking unimaginable results, dedicating ‘operational experts' full time to the task at hand for an interim period of time, etc.. Kaizen events often allow us to accomplish tasks that we may have been struggling with for months, in a matter of days, with generally unbelievable results.

Some examples of how these constraints have led to creative / innovative results follow:

• Personalized or vanity license plates on cars can allow for only seven characters. Check out the creative messages with a mix of letters, numbers and spaces: 2L82W8, MTBRAIN, GU10TAG.

• TV commercials and print ads have limited time/space in which to get their message across; therefore verbosity is not allowed. A mix of images, words, sounds etc. must be formulated to advertise in different media so as to grab the viewers' attention and deliver the message – all, without being much of a distraction.

Limiting our way to innovation does not necessarily mean creating self-imposed constraints to motivate greater creativity. We should examine our organizational weaknesses (this can be identified via a SWOT analysis) and determine if we can use them to our advantage; after all no competitor would want to emulate our weaknesses! Southwest Airlines was forced to offer short-run flights in the regulated industry; however, as deregulation set in, they chose to continue to offer short-run flight (something no competitor wanted to do) and has posted a profit every year!

Determining our greatest weakness or constraint might just point the direction towards our competitive advantage. It is said that necessity is the mother of all invention. Might it be that limitation is the mother of innovation?

As Blaine McCormick writes in his book ‘At Work With Thomas Edison', "Like Thomas Edison you may find that putting limitations on yourself will spur you to even greater creativity," and innovation.

Everyone is talking about innovation in the corporate world. Books, conferences, courses, and presentations abound. Corporate executives are surveyed, and results publicized. Corporations are becoming more innovative just by availability of more information, and networked environment in the flat world. The question remains how does a CEO make his or her company more innovative? What should a leader do?

I have been thinking a lot. I sometimes give answers but the question remains the same…how to lead the innovation initiative? An organization can become innovative in two ways:

1. Allocating specific resources at a disjointed location to come up with a breakthrough solution, or
2. Institutionalize innovation through culture of creativity and thinking workers for developing innovative solutions continually.

In case of a dedicated team of few brightest people working together in isolation appears to be a paradigm of the last century where one has to get away from the noise of the factory, or smoke off fighting fires. Today, people have flexible hours, think 24/7 due to globalization; gain new experiences through Internet; and exchange new ideas continually. The world has become a community that can not be separated or isolated.

The process of creating a culture of thinking employees innovating continually appeals to me more as a leadership initiative. I can imagine in an organization of 100, 500, 1000, or even more than 100,000 employees there will be tons of innovative ideas. You are right when you think that ideas are dime a dozen. But once employees can think freely, the leadership can play the role of exploiting employee ideas into breakthrough solutions. Filtering ideas can be a process based on market requirements, feasibility criteria, and return on investment analysis. Breakthrough solutions will comprise multiple innovative ideas. New products or services will have to be developed fast through the new product development (NPD) process. Thus, the NPD process must be streamlined. Innovations with optimal designs perfected through operations and synchronized with customers' love to have requirements tend to have high ROI. Given the product life cycle, from cradle to grave, is shrinking, we would need many breakthrough solutions every year. We simply would not be able to live with one new product every nth year. We actually need "n" innovative products every year!

What should then leadership do? Liberate employees from shackles of ‘it is not your job' ‘we do not have time' ‘we already have so many ideas' or ‘we don't have resources.' Instead invest some resources in streamlining and speeding the NPD process, and synchronize the Idea Management process with the market demand. Make new products or solutions a priority, culture of creativity the corporate DNA, and management processes efficient. Instead of explaining why not to do something new, encourage why not try it out. Give employees time and freedom to come up with crazy, stupid, or funny ideas. They will go through the feasibility and ROI filters and come up with breakthrough innovations. Do not be afraid to have too many ideas. We have learned that crazy, stupid and funny ideas take more time to think, and are more innovative to begin with. Commercializing the right idea is the leadership challenge.

I am sure we would love to hear more opinions about this topic. Challenge and speak up!

Well, it's official. Yesterday, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, the first baby-boomer, filed for Social Security benefits. She becomes the first of as many as 80 million individuals who will qualify for benefits in the coming years.

This should be a major wake up call for corporations. With many of their most experienced and capable workers moving ineluctably towards retirement, companies must consider what this means to their capacity to innovate. Don't fool yourself by thinking that these are stodgy old geezers who have passed their prime. These people are many of your most creative and valuable resources.

Have you thought of how you will capture their expertise and pass it on to the next generation of innovation workers? What does your enterprise know, and how can you mobilize that knowledge? Are your innovation systems capable of feeding the ideation engine in real time, or will your product pipelines run dry just when you need revenue stimulation most?

Are you addressing these questions? Or, are you getting ready to hit the beach and go fishing?

[Crossposted from www.InnovatingToWin.com]

Success Through Innovation: "Profitability and Competitiveness
in the European and World Markets" - The EIPC Management Council Meeting

Copenhagen, Denmark, Oct. 10, 2007 (www.eipc.org, www.ipc.org)

After lunch, Konrad Wundt, General Manager of Multiple International Europa talked about the European PCS industry and its impact on the European EMS industry.

Growth rate in Europe is 2.7% while it is about 10.4% in China. Europe and USA are still experiencing decline while China and many Asian countries are growing faster. New growth areas are optoelectronics, and renewable energy segments. Standard PCBs are experiencing no growth. Interestingly, German companies produce 1/3rd of PCBs in EU, and number of PCB companies has reduced by nearly 50% in EU.

Konrad Wundt

The final presentation was given by me on the topic of measuring and managing innovation for building value based customer relationships. Summary of my presentation included the following:

1. Commit to sustained profitable growth by driving innovation
2. Achieve excellence in idea management
3. Invest in building customer relations to learn customers' ‘love to have' requirements
4. Innovation is mandatory to deliver value to customers

Allow employees to give ‘funny' ideas freely without fear for engaging them intellectually. Three initial measures of innovation are the following:

1. CEO recognition of employees for innovative value solution
2. Number of employee ideas
3. Revenue growth with innovative products or solutions

Learn the following about customers to create the opportunity for delivering value through innovation:

• Forces playing against customers
• Customer's inconveniences
• Customer's customer needs
• Customer's own application and needs
• Customer's cost of ownership model
• Customer's pain points
• Customer's preferred or ‘love to' have requirements

Build relationship with customers based on the following:

• Compete on value, not just the cost
• Emphasize usefulness and appeal of the solution
• Build strategic relationship with and invest in the customer
• Create customer confidence in your capability and reliability
• Demonstrate priority to customer needs

The Management Council meeting ended with a roundtable discussions emphasizing need to continually developing innovative solutions.

Roundtable Discussion

Success through Innovation: "Profitability and Competitiveness
in the European and World Markets" - The EIPC Management Council Meeting

Copenhagen, Denmark, Oct. 10, 2007 (www.eipc.org and www.ipc.org)

Electronics industry has been the driver for dramatic progress for over last twenty years. Remembering about Motorola envisioning year 2000 in 1985, rate of change in the electronics industry has been phenomenal. No other industry can claim price reduction of as much as 90% of products. For example, DVD players used to cost over $400 about five to seven years ago, today it can cost practically nothing. Cost of laptop computers has come down from over $3000 to below $500 today. As a result the industry has been going through dramatic changes, shifts, and continual relocation to lower cost countries. For example, Chicago, Illinois (USA) used to have roughly 100 PCB manufacturers, today we have about 20.

It is impressive that EIPC and IPC (USA) have taken the initiative to explore opportunities for the electronics industry to sustain profitable growth. Electronics industry has been very innovative in its own rights, but it also represents the field open for accelerating dramatic innovation. The EIPC Management Council Meeting was held to address topics of management, market, status, and innovation. (http://www.ipc.org/calendar/2007/ipc-eipc-conf-1007/IPC_EIPC_conbro1007.htm). The picture below shows members of the organization team at IPC.

(l to r: Thomas Berger, Kirsten Smit-Westenberg,
Anouk Seeverenn, Susan Filz, and Sharon Starr)

Susan Filz, Director of Executive Programs, IPC welcomed executive delegates to the EIPC Management Council meeting.

The keynote presentation was given by Stefan Herr of Simon Kucher & Partners, who said, "Success in the electronics industry was defined as profitable growth." The extremely market-share-oriented industry has experienced a significant adverse relationship between the price and market share. Stefan mentioned the following equation about relationship between the price and profit:

Profit = (price – variable cost) x volume – fixed assets

Slight increase in the price to improve margin leads to fear of losing the market share. Pricing is a major issue thus emphasis was given to learning how to price effectively. Smart profitable growth means price optimization and studying the entire value chain. Pricing excellence means pricing strategy, price analysis and optimization, price enforcement, and monitoring and controlling information. Stefan's firm has identified about 40 levers to assess pricing, and determining areas for improvement. A question was asked about pricing lifecycle. Do we price the product for its entire lifecycle? Message was that the price should be determined based on the customer's ability to pay, however, the challenge is that customer in electronics industry is getting used to pay less and less over time. One of the participants correctly said that market price is given, how can one increase the price?

Stefan Herr

Stefan demonstrated that many times discount offered to the client has been arbitrarily set, thus an optimal approach and discipline in pricing were recommended. For example, he showed his analysis of how the margins varied by sales representatives which could be as much as 10%.

The gap between the hope to charge more from the customer, and customer's intent to pay less creates a conflict, which may be considered as an ideal opportunity for innovation. Actually, it is not an opportunity but it is the mandate to innovate.

The next presentation was titled The Global Electronics Market for EMS/ODM Suppliers. Charles Wade of Technology Forecasters, a think tank based in California, said that outsourcing to countries like China did result in cost savings, but there were additional costs that were overlooked. The electronics market is realizing CAGR of about 6.7% with a market of $1,617 Billion by 2011. Key segments growing in the electronics industry are medical, communication, instrumentation, computer, military/aerospace, automotive, industrial, and consumer from over 9% to 5%, in decreasing order respectively. Need for better healthcare, and miniaturization in telecommunication are driving growth in the EMS industry. Asia is controlling about 74% of consumer, 65% of computer, and 50% of communication products. It is not a surprise as growing customer base is in China and India, as well as the low cost manufacturing there.

Charles Wade

An interesting comment was made by a participant that Toyota makes about 90% of Toyota hybrid in house rather than outsourcing, thus suggesting that companies tend to produce innovative products internally instead of producing at low cost manufacturing centers around the world.

Work in progress

Low cost regions are not the answer, as other factors play a critical role in determining the overall cost of outsourcing:

• Local infrastructure
• Labor availability and skills level
• Productivity and quality
• Logistics

In a recent discussion at an innovation conference, someone made a point that scheduled innovation is a contradiction. Innovation is considered to be unpredictable due to uncertain amount of time involved, or the product development cycle.

We have seen two ways in which innovative products are introduced. One offers a totally disruptive, significantly innovative, and new capability. These innovative solutions are more technology or development driven that need to be sold to users. For example, iPod® or iPhone® are two technology driven innovations that were offered to consumers, and they loved it. There are many more innovations that were offered to consumers and did not fly such as digital dashboards in cars, or New Coke. The success rate of technology driven innovative offering is about 4-5%.

Other way to introduce innovative products or solutions is to identify opportunities, and offer innovative solutions fast. The opportunity could be new energy solutions, new features for phone, search engine, computer, container, toys, or appliance. This is where one needs be an opportunist in order to exploit the demand for innovation. How do we identify such opportunities? We need to be aware of pain or contradiction in society, and its magnitude to decide whether to pursue an opportunity or not. Depending upon the opportunity one can determine whether the required innovative solution is of Fundamental (conceptual), Platform (new system), Derivative (multiple options of the new system) or Variation (new applications) type in nature. Given the domain expertise, and networked resources one can determine how long it will take to innovate a solution. While fundamental and platform type of innovations take months to years, derivative or variation type of innovative solutions can be developed from on-demand to weeks. .The success rate of such innovative offering tends to be much higher as they are developed in response to customer needs. Customizing innovative solutions on demand are examples of scheduled innovations. Even customers are part of the innovation process.

In the information age, the need for solutions on demand, or scheduled innovation will continue to grow. In the open innovation environment, networked world, and knowledge economy innovation is occurring continually somewhere, and can be offered to the consumer and customer anywhere. Customers or consumers will become more impatient with suppliers for innovative solutions to their pain points or contradictions they face. This shall continue to increase the demand for scheduled innovation. And, speed of innovation will become a competitive advantage rather than innovation itself.

I believe we need to learn to innovate on demand, and offer innovative solutions to customers' schedule. What do you think about scheduled innovation? Can we schedule innovation?

The International Space Station is a massive undertaking coordinated by five national agencies (US, Russia, Japan, Europe and Canada) with participation from about a dozen other countries. In all, hundreds of companies and 100,000 people have been responsible for the building and operation of the Space Station, planned to be completed around 2016 at a cost of about $130 billion.

Some other facts about the International Space Station:

• It will have a mass of about 500 tons when completely assembled and will measure the length of a football field (361 feet).
• It will provide 46,000 cubic feet of pressurized living and working space-equivalent to the interior volume of one 747 jumbo jet.
• The solar-powered electrical system is connected with 42,000 feet, or about eight miles, of wire.
• The batteries, lined up end-to-end, measure 2,900 feet, more than ½ mile long.
• Electrical and electronic parts include 1,900 different types of resistors, 500 types of capacitors and 150 types of transistors (note that this is not the part count; rather, it is a count of different types of hardware).
• Fifty-two computers will control the systems on the International Space Station. There will be more than 400,000 lines of software for 16 of those computers which, in turn, talk to 2,000 sensors, effectors and embedded "smart" hardware controllers.

It's the complexity of the Space Station – and its associated technical challenges – that initially drew TRIZ into the problem-solving mix. In many cases, typical "compromise" solutions would not meet the strict performance requirements the system demanded, and more creative solutions were needed.

For example, the Space Station is built by adding pressurized and un-pressurized modules to the system over time. Each module in the system exists to perform some specified scientific or research purpose. One such module, the Japanese Experiment Module, is a product of the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, and is scheduled to make its trip to the International Space Station in February 2008.

A pressurized mating adaptor is needed to attach such modules to themselves as the space station is built over time. Just one technical challenge involved in building a pressurized mating adaptor (PMA) is that the heat generated by welding together its structural rings can damage associated sensitive electronics. In TRIZ terms, this is a physical contradiction that required the use of the separation, or isolation, principle to solve the problem of achieving proper welds but not damaging associated systems.

Initially, the electronics were attached to the internal wall of the PMA, and for good reasons that benefited the overall system. But the isolation principle behooved engineers to reconsider the spatial proximity of the electronic components, and decided they could isolate those components from the PMA structure using Fiberite™ bushings at attachment sites.

This worked very well, introduced little cost and complexity, minimized intrusion of the electronics into the internal volume of the PMA, and did not require any changes for the component suppliers.

Also, NASA engineers were challenged by the difficult procedure of attaching modules together in space – a task that required attaching well over a dozen power and signal couplings together. Imagine all those wires hanging or taped to the PMA need to be connected with similar wires on the space modules.

This was a difficult task in space that utilized a several-step, manual, module-interlock system. First two modules are brought together by an astronaut according to a "key system," whereby their respective anodized aluminum fittings align. Next, the astronaut pushes the two fittings together until they snap in place. Finally, the astronaut uses a special aluminum tool to apply torque to the threaded sleeves of the two fittings until they lock down tightly.

Simulating conditions in space by working under water, this process was difficult and posed unacceptable mission risk. The design team, therefore, considered various TRIZ approaches and ultimately decided to use the Physical Contradiction technique.

The physical bi-polarity was this: they wanted the module interlock to ensure proper physical mating and powersignal distribution. At the same time, they didn't want the interlock system because it was so difficult to perform.

The team applied the separation in time principle to compress the mating steps—combine all actions (align, connect, lock) into a single action instead of three. This required a re-design of the locking system whereby, upon pushing two keyed fittings together, the astronaut activates a mechanism that aligns, connects and locks the parts together in a simple, single motion.

This one solution yielded significant cost savings. One part, not many, for each necessary connection were now required. There was no longer a need to design and produce specialized tools. The time and cost of training astronauts was significantly reduced as well. And the new simplicity factor made the procedure safer and lowered overall mission risk to acceptable levels.

Still another formidable challenge was the extreme difficulty and variety of problems around the Space Station's solar power array, a large system with a surface area of 27,000 square feet, or more than half an acre. The shear size of the structure posed extremely difficult problems. The surface finish on each piece of the mirrored tiles had to be near perfect. And assembling each of these panels into the overall structure posed difficulty as well.

During assembly, when panels and tiles were added to the system, adjacent pieces might be damaged, for example by tools or equipment falling on them. By applying the TRIZ principle of the other way around, designers inverted the solar panel structure for the assembly process so installers were looking up at the structure while working on it. This simple action dramatically reduced damage to tiles as others were added.

Also, the biggest reason for panel and tile damage was that many were removed, moved andor placed in other areas of the system; such transportation and turnover increased the opportunity to incur damage, and damage was in fact incurred more frequently than acceptable.

The reason panels and tiles were moved so much was that the system was vulnerable to heat differentials in different areas due to surface aberrations on certain panels and tiles. If such surface variation could be minimized or narrowed to the right extent, then no such heat differentials would occur, and the system would not be compromised or malfunction.

The engineering team measured and studied the problem, moving and replacing tiles in the system according to what the empirical data said. The more they did this, the more the problem just moved around from area to another. This was a serious problem because, in space, surface aberrations can cause one or another part of the solar panel system to overheat – or just create heat differentials that cause panels and tiles to break as they expand or contract according to those differentials.

A TRIZ technique called the System Approach was employed whereby the engineers studied their problem through the lens of the system, sub-system and super-system. It turned out that they had the system and the sub-system well covered in their consideration of solutions theretofore, but they needed to change their paradigm to include the super-system as well.

The System Approach forced the engineers to consider the larger system surrounding the solar panels and tiles, including the power distribution systems as well as the software that controls those systems. Ultimately, the engineers left all the panels and tiles where they were and solved the problem with software.

They determined that they could survey the panel array and record aberration information. They could then write correction algorithms for the analysis software that would adjust differences in performance based on surface imperfections. In other words, the software would make adjustments to how the system drew and distributed power from the various panels and areas of the overall panel assembly – thereby making the system robust to surface aberrations and fluctuations.

There were about 100 other problems encountered and solutions achieved using TRIZ on the International Space Station, each of which demonstrates that innovation is not typically robed in the fancy cloak of One Big Idea, like the Space Station itself. In practice, innovation is the ability to meet specific challenges and solve specific problems with specific tenacity over and over again until they add up to a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.

(Excerpted from Insourcing Innovation, Francis and Taylor, 2007)

Finally, thanks to everyone at the forum, and special thanks to Julie Gatzkiewicz for her superb photography!

Thanks to Simon, Joe, Don, and Shelley Stern Grach for inviting me to the Microsoft National Innovation Forum, and for granting permission to post notes here. Thanks to Katie Barry for her help with these postings. I am still learning about writing blogs.

Praveen Gupta

Here are some pics:

The Forum in progress

Joe Boggio, Simon Floyd, and Don Richardson

Simon Floyd, Praveen Gupta, Joe Boggio

Having ball!

Bill Buxton and Harry Flotemersch

Bill Buxton, and Praveen Gupta

Randy Granovetter

The Scanlon Leadership Network, with 21 member companies, is committed to learning all they can about Innovation. The members of the Network have always been innovative in their products, process and people systems but they decided to formally study innovation during and Executive Retreat in 2003. Innovation came to the forefront again when the Network members made "The Leadership Roadmap" by Dwane Baumgardner and Russ Scaffede the theme of their annual conference in May 2006. (The roadmap will be published in the fall of 2007). The Roadmap makes the case that for organizations to win in today's competitive world they must master innovation, and lean processes and they must do it with their people.

The innovation journey continued with a tour of 3M in Minneapolis, and a tour of Motorola in Schaumburg, IL. The final tour will be a seminar on measurement systems in Baltimore, MD on November 12th. The 2008 Annual Conference will be May 5-8 in Dearborn and will feature tours of the Wright Brothers and Edison Labs as well as workshops on innovation.

The purpose of the Motorola tour was to learn about innovation, and starting practicing innovation. The agenda for the tour included Innovation Survey Findings by Praveen Gupta, Barriers to Innovation by Adam Hartung of Spark Partners, Integrating improvement and innovation by Bill Grundstrom and Pat Iaconetti of Dell, Innovation Workout by Praveen Gupta of Accelper Consulting, Teaching innovation by Bob Carlson of Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Building Winning Organizations by Mary Clark of Winning Workplaces, and Leadership for Innovation by Paul Davis, President of the Scanlon Leadership Network. Majel Maes, Director of the Network facilitated the tour of the Motorola Innovation Center along with the Motorola staff.

The innovation survey indicated that there is still a long way to go to improve innovation knowledge and systems, with 20% of the respondents implying that the field of innovation is yet to mature. One of the points highlighted in the presentation was taken from Bill Gates's presentation at Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, where he emphasized that building better customer relationships is critical to drive business innovation, operational excellence, and supply chain management. Business innovation must be deployed to meet growing customer needs.

Adam Hartung highlighted an organization's success formula is its biggest barrier because everyone likes to perpetuates the success formula that has worked in the past but that may discourage innovation. Thus, white space, which is an opportunity to innovate something new totally outside the current organization, or system, is needed. Adam emphasized that it is difficult to disrupt the current behavior, hierarchy, and costs structure of your own organization. However, one can easily identify competitor's limitations and attack them innovatively to grow a business. Adam's "Lock In" is described in his upcoming book The Phoenix Principle.

Bill Grundstrom, Director of Dell's Business Process Improvement, shared Dell's infrastructure, strategy, tactics, and processes for continually improving processes and products innovatively leading to over $1B per year. Dell's Central Command Control was highlighted in interacting with customers, and ensuring customer satisfaction. Dell recently, at the request of Michael Dell, launched Customer Idea Storm and Employee Idea Storm to listed the customer and employees for pushing the envelop of innovation. The idea management process is now being improved upon using the Six Sigma methodology.

Innovation workout consisted of two activities pushing the left brain and right brain envelopes. In the interest of time, the left brain activity, leadership ‘things to do' was assigned as home work, and the right brain activity meant writing poems about innovation and Scanlon. It was amazing to see that in 20 minutes, four teams wrote four poems. Each team read their poem out loud and acted-out to make it fun!

Prof. Bob Carlson shared how IIT is collaborating with the industry through its IPRO initiative. Multi-departmental student teams tackle real-world problems with corporate sponsorship and develop innovative solutions. These solutions are then used by the sponsoring corporations. These solutions are real!

Mary Clark, Executive Director of Winning Workplaces, shared benefits of being Winning organizations. These organizations are similar to the Fortune's Best Companies to Work for in America. These companies outperform the S&P index in many areas such as stock performance, sales growth, profit growth, profit margins, and return on investment. Interestingly, the Best Companies, irrespective of their industry tend to be more innovative deliberately. They focus on growth, human relations, innovation, and recognition.

Paul Davis presented a white paper summarizing what the Network has learned so far about creating a culture of innovation. The white paper lays out concrete practical proven steps any leader in any organization can take to increase innovation.

The Motorola Innovation Center has multiple pods where guests can see the technologies Motorola is developing to help people connect. One pod focused on Motorola's strategies to connect first responders. Another showed how Motorola is developing systems for home and recreation. Another pod showed what Motorola is doing in third world countries. The purpose on the innovation center is to not only share some of Motorola's history of innovation, but to focus on the future and what Motorola is doing to help to shape it.

I believe what Scanlon Leadership Network has done a terrific job of raising awareness of innovation. It is amazing to see the enthusiasm about innovation in a network of companies. This speaks for the Scanlon principles that are about helping everyone in a company understand the reality they face while building personal, professional and organizational competency.

The Scanlon Network invites all those interested in innovation to join them as they continue to study innovation.

From Passion to Prosperity: How to build your business, sell your ideas and change the world...

I believe innovation is a people process; that it requires individual leadership. This professional development conference, sponsored by the Los Angeles chapter of the National Speakers Association, reinforced my belief, fed my mind and left me with lots to think about. Below are three ideas that captured my attention.

1. "Emotions are 24 times more powerful than logic." Scott Baily of the Sandler Sales Institute made this statement during his presentation. I don't know if there is a study that supports this provocative statement. It does make me think about the selling step in the innovation process. We can have all the facts lined up; the logic is solid and still experience resistance to a useful new innovation. Who hasn't run up against this challenge? It's very frustrating. Emotions, hunches, gut instincts, feelings play a part in selling.

Emotions are often messy. They don't fit neatly on a graph or chart. They can be unique to the individual. They can appear illogical. Perhaps some good questions to ask each person on the team once the data is established..."What's your hunch right now about how successful this innovation will be?"..."What's your gut instinct tell you about how people will embrace this?"..."What's your feeling right now about what we need to do next to advance this idea?". These questions can help get below the surface of the data to help guide what to do.

2. NO MORE EXCUSES. Sam Silverstein, our luncheon speaker, trademarked this phrase. It's his innovation. I share this with you because I think the phrase "No more excuses" partly answers the question posted by Praveen Gupta - how does one find not-so innovative companies in his article "Least Innovative Companies" posted on July 16, 2007. Look for companies where too many people are failing.

Here is Sam's list - Ten Reasons People Fail

1. Make and accept excuses
2. No space to try new things and grow
3. Surrounded with weak people
4. Abdication of responsibility
5. Don't think strategically
6. Low expectations
7. Ego or emotion
8. Impatience
9. Stupidity
10. Fear

Companies are not innovative. People are. People make a company innovative, or not. Think about the items on this list and how they could be impacting your ability to bring valuable innovations to life. What are you going to do about that?

3. Glenna Salsbury closed the conference with her powerful presentation, "Leaving A Lasting Legacy". She shared this thought, "A legacy worth leaving is founded upon our standard of life, not our standard of living. A legacy worth leaving is founded upon our measure of giving, not our measure of getting...and upon our simple goodness...not our climb to greatness." Doesn't this strike you as a meaningful screen to help determine new idea power?

It's with pleasure I share my musings with you.

There is a view that the clearest view of the Innovation horizon is from the top of the ladder but is this a fact or fiction? It is true that industry leaders need to set an environment that enables creativity and trusts individuals to turn that creativity into reality but the role of C-Level Executives must be to run the company to the satisfaction of shareholders. In my opinion, leading Innovation from the top usually forces incrementalism because shareholders want stable results, not risk takers.

Could you imagine the scenario in a major record company about 20 years ago where a group of African Americans suggested a new form of music that related to their lifestyle, that included shouting lewd and cursed lyrics to show their anger and had a thumping beat that gave most listeners a headache at best and loosened the teeth at worst. The C-Level Executives would have laughed before throwing them out.

What actually happened was an underground music scene was set up, usually in ghetto areas, that allowed people the freedom to create their own music, reflecting their own views and dealing with their personal issues. Rap music was Innovation in every sense of the word, but it was born out of the need of consumers, not the idea of a genius C-Level Executive. Today, Rap is by far the most popular and successful form of music in our culture.

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