IRI Meeting-I was priveleged to present a workshop on TRIZ problem solving at the annual IRI meeting in Philadelphia this year and was able to attend a number of very interesting presentations from senior executives from materials and service industires. I'd like to report on several of these presentations.

Joe Miller, Exectuive VP and Chief Technology Officer of Corning, discussed how Corning had dealt with two major business "earthquakes"--the bursting of the "dotcom" bubble and the recession of 2009. He shared ways of adjusting to the "new normal" and the discipline that Corning used to stick to its knitting and what it knew how to do better than anyone else. From the depth of the bubble burst in 2002 to 2010 their sales grew from $3 to 6.8 Billion, net profit after taxes from (-)400M to 3.3B and free cash flow from (-)700M to 2.8B.A key decision made was to centralize core capabilities and reduce the number of laboratories. Many other companies "globlized" R&D around the globe. While refocusing and preserving their core capabilities, they focused on tough problems where their product was a "system enabler" with demanding requirements and also requiring specialized capital with strong intellectual property and selling into critical markets with high selling prices.

Two of the products he mentioned as having been born from this focus included ClearCurve(TM) fiber and Gorilla Glass(TM) for consumer devices. The holy grain for Corning is thin, strong, damage resistant glass. He made mention of the fact that doing work at 2300C (melting point of glass) is expensive. This means that R&D is expensive, but it also means not everyone can do it.

Learnings that he passed on to his listeners:

1. Constant balancing of the R&D portfolio if required. 5-10 years (new businesses) with "adjancencies" (2-4 years out) and support of on going businesses (1-3 years out). There will be tension. Recongize and deal with it.
2. Very early stage R&D is expensive and risky and must be supported by corporate, not on going business, funds. Giant leaps are risky. R&D must have independence
3. Explore multiple avenues, not just the obvious one
4. Mistakes happen. Learn from them.
5. Know who you are and what your recipe is.
6. R&D is a social activity
7. Need multipe input of ideas
8. Involve all the functions in the process
9. Need different talents at different stages of a project and product development
10. R&D peole are different. Deal with it.
11. Success requires will, patience, and guts
12. Business silos must be minimized

Martin Apple, President of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents presented some interesting global data comparing the US in a global context.

1. China's generation of science degree holders is exploding while the rest of the world is nearly flat.
2. There is no more separate "learing". Learning is the job.
3. We are at risk of species degradation without control of CO2 emissions
4. WIth 6% of the world's population, we use 25% of its energy. We have to move away from the strategy of take, make, and waste.

Dr. Jacomo Corba, Chief Scientist, Quantum Black, made some interesting observations about using communication to design organizations. He suggested using comuncation tracking within a company to see how it really functions (as opposed to what the org charts say). Visuallizing this can create an eye opening experience.

In recent discussions about an upcoming workshop for the Management Division of AIChE in Minneapolis, I got into a discussion about networking and the use of psychological assessment tools in assisting employees with job searches and transitions. I guess I am a bit old fashioned as I believe that enjoying and surviving your new position is more important than finding it in the first place.

The ease with which it is possible, with a few key strokes, to find out about virtually any job opening anywhere in the world is truly amazing. Even the old fashioned head hunters are using LinkedIn(R) and other web resources to identify candidates. These sites and personal resume postings tell a great deal about the technical background, work experience, and academic credentials of an individual as well as the technical needs of the position. Obviously these things have to match as a minimum. But people have preferred styles of behavior and organizations have cultures. The words we see so often, such as "team player" don't tell us much about what's needed to be a team player. These words also suggest that there is no need for differing opinions. Is this really what an organization wants?

There are well established tools for measuring a person's style and approach to relationships and problem solving. Though my two favorites are the Myers Briggs (or one of its spin-offs) and the Kirton KAI(R), there are others including Fyro B(R) and HBDI(R). The amazing thing I have observed over the years is that though many people have taken these assessments, less than 10% of the people I meet remember what their characteristics are, and even fewer have done anything serious with the information. I have to ask myself why do people bother to take these assessments if they don't intend to learn from them?

When changing jobs, when moving to a different job within the same company, or joining an innovation team, these assessments can tell us a great deal about the stresses and changes that may be required to work with someone different than ourselves and how we might assemble teams to accomplish certain tasks. The preferences summarized in these assessments are very hard wired in us and are unlikely to change over time. We can be someone "different" for a short time with some stress, but being someone different for a long period of time is a recipe for personal disaster. So if you're networking on the web for opportunities, or joining a new innovation team, ask yourself whether what you see and read tells you what the culture is within the organization. Ask yourself if the "style" you use for innovating is going to be acceptable within a new organization ore within the team. If you see and sense stress, then have an open disscussion about those differences and discuss the value of different approaches to problems. Don't bury the differences--use them pro-actively!

Three days to go to shoot my second hole-in-one during the same year! It's possible. I know. Two golfers at my golf club each shot two hole-in-ones this year.I've been surprised at the innovation lessons learned from this thrilling experience.

Let me share three with you.

1. "Lynda, you must be thrilled." "I'm thrilled for you." "How thrilling." I was congratulated over and over again by people who used these words--thrilled or thrilling. And, it was thrilling. I believe this describes exactly the spontaneous response we should get from team members, colleagues, customers, friends, and family when we finally get a new idea to work! There's a level of genuine enthusiasm for the accomplishment. It's one way to measure success.
2. While I was enjoying lunch at the club a few months later, a fine young man at another table got up, came over to our table and introduced himself. He asked me if I was the lady who shot the hole-in-one. He wanted to meet me and discuss what that experience was like. I was surprised. My lesson--we need to make sure we foster creative environments that support approaching innovators on a personal level. You never know who is going to be inspired by what you have to share and what it will lead to next.
3. I realize shooting a hole-in-one is a fluke. It didn't happen because I'm a talented and skilled golfer. However, I have been motivated to keep working on improving my game--10 shot improvement so far. It occurred to me it's no different than learning to be an effective creative and innovative thinker. Sometimes ideas seem to come out of nowhere--like a fluke. Other times ideas come from the skilled application of the creative process.

To be a better golfer or skilled with the creative process it takes lessons, practice and coaching. Learn tools--practice using the tools--apply the tools--get better and better--work with a coach to keep pushing you to do even better. My golf coach is part of my game plan. Who is your innovation coach?

Steve Kaye suggests success brings us more interesting problems to work on. The better my golf game gets, I find myself encountering more interesting golf problems. This is such a great motivator to improve. May your work with innovation continue to improve and your problems become more interesting.

Until next time.

Stop the Innovation Wars is the attention-getting title of this month's Harvard Business Review attempt at controversy by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble, both on the faculty at Dartmouth, and co-authors of a new book on innovation, due out in November. (See www.hbr.org July-Aug. 2010) What is the Innovation War? It is the battle between corporate operations groups, responsible for ongoing operations and support of existing products and services, and the teams formed for new initiatives, usually given names like innovation team. The authors' description of the powerful, extremely negative reactions to the idea of creating an innovation team with special responsibility for a new strategy and how it gave rise to their research is fascinating, but familiar; readers of Real Innovation and the TRIZ Journal are likely to ask what is the excitement, and what calls for academic research.

The authors rename the operations groups the Performance Engine of the company, and prescribe a partnership modality, in which the Performance Engine partners with dedicated project teams tasked with innovation projects. They present an interesting series of case studies: BMW's regenerative braking team, West's (the legal publishing branch of Thomas Reuters) creation of database products, Lucent's service businesses, and WD-40's new dispenser to demonstrate the universality of their proposed method as applied in a product, a service, and a component part.

Step one of the partnership process is dividing the work between the Performance Engine and the dedicated project team. One insight that I found quite useful was that it is not just the work to be done and the skills of the people that should be assessed, but also the past working relationships of those people. If they have always worked in a hierarchical relationship, they may not be able to work in a flat organization. If they have always worked on projects that have well-defined deliverables, they may not be able to work in an exploratory environment. And, of course, vice versa: one example showed how people who had typically worked very independently, or with a small technical support staff, were not well-suited to working in a large, structured team with complex, interdependent roles. The new organization will also need new metrics of success, new compensation/reward systems, and its own unique culture. Trimble and Govindarajan task management with creating these elements, but I've seen management fail more often than it succeeds as creating a specific culture - - it seems that the best that management can do is be sure that the metrics and reward systems are not contrary to the desired cultural elements.

For a short article, they did a good job at illustrating the kinds of problems that will occur in this partnership. TRIZ readers will recognize the physical contradictions in the situations of loose â€" tight management, team â€" individual metrics, and the technical (trade-off) contradictions in the schedule vs. completeness and new technology vs. traditional methods and new suppliers' creativity vs. traditional suppliers' reliability, etc. Disappointingly, the authors did not use any of the insights available from business applications of TRIZ to propose solutions to these contradictions. Their solutions to the problems of innovation are remarkably un-innovative. Equally disappointing, they do not present any data or case studies showing that their proposed method work. Case studies from which the method was derived are interesting, but obviously are available because they were successful for those companies in those circumstances. The test should be to apply the method to new situations and evaluate its effectiveness, and iterated the method based on both failures and successes. I am particularly dubious about the effectiveness of changing the names of the operations and innovation teams as a key success factor!

Readers are invited to contribute their case studies and observations, and particularly any methods they have found effective in Real Innovation and TRIZ Journal-reading companies.

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

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

Beef 13,500

Pork 4,800

Poultry 4,100

Soybean 2,750

Eggs 2,700

Rice 1,400

Wheat 1,160

Milk 780

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

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

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

Solar .0001

Wind .0001

Gas 1.0

Coal 2.0

Nuclear 2.5

Oil 4.0

Hydropower 68

Biofuels (current) 178

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

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

Comments are welcome!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The questions for you are:

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

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

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

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

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

Get to know your folks---NOW!

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.

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.

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.

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.

In a column two weeks ago, I made some serious suggestions regarding thinking about innovative discoveries and their ultimate outcome prior to investing tons of money. Let's take the other tack to see both sides of innovation and discoveries.

We can't afford to chase every idea that comes along and that's why we have to ask the right questions early on. And we can't rely on serendipity to provide all the new products and business growth that we need. But we need to keep our eyes and ears open. We cannot rely solely on QFD interviews and Six Sigma studies to provide all the breakthroughs we'd like to have. All of us have to keep our antenna out and our senses tuned in to make sure that we're not missing a major opportunity. And that in turn comes from hiring the kind of people who see things that others don't and are willing to explore down a path a bit before quitting (you do have some of these folks don't you? And you do reward them don't you?).

Let's remember a few examples that are now the roots of billion dollar businesses, none of which would exist if hadn't been for unique individuals making links between unexpected observations and potential customer needs. First Teflon(TM). A DuPont scientist experimenting with low boiling fluorocarbon gases noticed that a cylinder regulator showed no pressure. How could that be? He could have just assumed that the regulator was defective and gone about his work. But he was curious and opened up the cylinder and found some white powder. Again, he could have assumed that someone made a mistake and contaminated the cylinder, but no, he took a sample, analyzed it and characterized it. A plastic that didn't melt until 450-500F. Wow! Such a thing did not exist---and the rest is history. A multibillion dollar business with numerous spin offs in the household area as well as process piping and others.

Then there's the famous Viagra(TM) story. Merck, in late stage clinical trials of a medication to improve circulation. The human subject interviews could have stuck to the script but the interviewers heard something interesting from many of the clinical patients---"I don''t know about my heart, doc, but let me tell you what else I notice...." Apparently, the original developers of Viagra forgot that blood flows everywhere. And we now have a billion dollar drug.

And how about Goodyear and tires? An accidental mixing of sulfur and rubber at home in Charles Goodyear's kitchen at home and the observation that the lump had turned into a rubbery mass which was flexible at both high and cold temperatures. Vulcanization! Tires that would survive and be comfortable in both winter and summer.

I remember a Dow development scientist casually looking out the window at an airport and noticing that someone was applying a colored film to the tail of a jet to get the logo--he wasn't painting. The company made films but had never even given a thought to airliner decals as a market.

I could go on and on but the point is not to over program your people and their objectives. While we have strategic goals and objectives, make sure that you've told your people it's OK to see and report things they see that are different and interesting. Don't assume that your business managers know it all. Keep the curiousity antenna up!

Joey Bloggs was nervous. He paced the corridor as he waited for his turn. To Joey, it felt like the first time when he ventured into the ocean with his surfboard. A creative entrepreneur with big dreams, Joey was eager to pitch his business and prototype to the panel of seasoned Venture Capitalists. Joey was seeking an investment of $300,000 for his startup business in an economy plagued by global recession.

With only ten minutes to present his case, Joey focused on talking about his highly innovative ‘visual search engine' which provides a brain-friendlier way to organize massive amounts of information. At the end of Joey's presentation, Bob Rich, the chairman of the investment committee commented: "Joey, I'm impressed with your technology and I think that your innovation could positively change the way people organize information as well as help reduce the problem of information overload. But Joey, what is your business model? How do you intend to make money with your visual search engine?"

Joey replied, "I think my search engine is more visually appealing than Google's. People will flock to my search engine. And we'll make money by selling ads just like Google does."

"Don't you have a more innovative business model?" Bob asked.

Joey was familiar with methodologies of creative problem solving and innovation such as Lateral Thinking, TRIZ, and Value Engineering. However, Joey was struggling in coming up with ideas for developing an innovative business model for his visual search engine.

If we had access to Joey Bloggs, how would we help him? How would we help Joey innovate on his business model? How should Joey go about innovating on his business model?

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Hi, my name is Rod King. And I'll be writing articles as a commentator on Real Innovation. I like collaborative approaches to creativity and innovation. And as a fan of open collaboration and "Wisdom of the Crowd," I'd like to invite the community to contribute and join me in exploring ideas on how we can help Joey Bloggs generate ideas for an innovative business model. All ideas are welcomed.

A few points of clarification though. Joey Bloggs and Bob Rich are figments of my imagination. The context of the above story is based on my experience as well as imagination. In short, I've used TRIZ Inventive Principle #5: I've merged bits of facts and fiction. I just thought that the discussion would be livelier, if the topic of business model innovation is presented within the framework of a "factional" case study. I therefore look forward to hearing your feedback.

Did I mention that Joey was looking for a definition of a business model because he couldn't find a satisfactory one? Joey's working definition of a business model is as follows:

"A business model describes the way an enterprise functions as well as delivers on its value proposition for customers and investors."

A wordy definition of a business model? But, what do you think?

Best, Rod.

The current economic scenario has triggered several discussions on emphasizing an innovation action plan for Obama administration to revitalize the US (and apparently the world) economy. The recent Business Week article by Thomas D. Kuczmarski proposing a step-by-step innovation action plan for Obama is encouraging at this juncture, because the growth of several other countries around the world has been depended on US innovations. An unbiased view of Kuczmarski's plan as an "outsider", and indeed by supporting him for his proposal, the question remaining to me is how the government should rationalize the implementation of this plan when the priority is dealing with the reality at the grass root level problems of unemployment, reduced consumer spending, and over and above the looming negative sentiments leading to a deep recession? Is there a way President Obama can tie the innovation policy to bring the changes immediately that we are looking for, so the action plan for innovation can yield benefit quickly?

In his previous post The 4400, Jack Hipple seeded some excellent thoughts on using the "free resources" effectively. Taking the cue from there, some wild ideas to ponder..

• Setting up micro-venture capital fund to help people at the grass root level for the area they have expertise in. May be it is ok to tax the wealthy more but force them to invest in the new businesses as micro-venture capitalists.
• Encourage the huge pool of unemployed, diversified, experienced group of people (resources) to build their own businesses by providing a federal grant, entrepreneurship support, and tax break(must be better than bailing out the banks). Well, can even infuse creativity by ensuring that there are people coming together from different discipline to build a business.
• Leveraging huge unemployed talent pool to setup private educational institution to educate the future generation. Remember, the future gets hands-on education from these diversified, experienced people if we don't enforce the teachers should have high qualification. to teach. ( Kuczmarski mentioned about training people on innovation)
• For those ready to get their hands dirty; encourage, support (money and other) for the community farming. (Another way to focus on "what is consumed in America is built in America")
• And how about letting the community driving the energy initiatives (especially green) by allowing them to setup their own community based power grid (You don't have to be a nuclear scientist to setup a micro wind turbine). Also inline with Obama's commitment to invest in infrastructures, energy. Clean energy, new jobs..

A thought plane for you to think further; what are your ideas?

It's all around us. The language of hard times is everywhere, in every journal, every newspaper, in the State of the Union address, in your stockbroker statements, and in your daily conversations. In a short, but insightful article in Chemical and Engineering News on February 2, Melody Voith summarized the dilemma facing industry and how different companies are approaching the situation.

In my last commentary, I described the brute force approach being used by some companies and the huge loss of human energy and resources that result. In Melody's article, some more creative approaches were described. One of the most striking and simple was that used by DuPont, which also saw the signals early and set a plan in motion before a crisis occurred. Each employee was asked to identify 3 things that he/she could do to immediately conserve cash and reduce costs. How much more positive than laying a large number of people off and then asking the rest the same question!

This approach illustrates the use of the TRIZ problem solving principle of "Do it in Advance", as well as that of "trimming". If you recall this simple tool, we just look at a system and arbitrarily remove a part of it and then ask how we can retain the function that was provided with the parts of the system that are left. We are normally applying this thinking in products such as the Michelin Tweel(TM), the toothbrush with the toothpaste in the handle, the cleaning system without a bucket, a fireplace without a fire, and many more.

But the principle works in a business and strategy sense as well. This needs to be done in the right way to pay off big time. We can say we need fewer sales people if customers will come to us on the web. Now that the need for some of the sales force has been eliminated, we could just lay them off. Or we could take them and explore new applications and markets that we always said we didn't have time to look at. We could use them to assist in that long range planning that we know is so important, but never got to. They could look at patents that get in our way and suggest the ones to circumvent.

One of the more interesting innovation tools that can be used is to ask everyone in your organization, "What skill do you have that we are not aware of or are not using to its full potential"? This will generate a very interesting discussion list for you.Layoffs and downsizings are easy. Using resources in a clever and competitive way is not, but far more productive in the long term.

More and more the economic pressures will increase the need for proficiency unilaterally. One way for us to respond to this challenge would be to optimize those things that we currently do. This means of course that we need to get better- and we may already be very good. So although this sounds logical that doesn't mean it is easy to do. In fact, it can be very difficult. Especially as financial resources cause us to reduce headcounts and streamline other expenses. That compounds the issue adding the complexity of having to do more with less. And the more has to be more efficient than it was before. This forces the less into a higher state of expectation. So it is quite a conundrum. Clearly we cannot proceed with a business as usual mindset. Things have to change.

You can't expect things to change just because you need them to. The type of change needs to be intentioned. Also, capability must be provided to those expected to deliver the needed change. This makes these difficult times an ideal opportunity to provide training. As more is expected with less, it seems natural that the innovative ability of all needs to be increased. Therefore, intentional and structured innovative techniques are found to be more important than ever before.

The impetus for change is here. Take advantage of that and get the capability of your staff increased. Let innovation guide us through the storm. It has before and it can again.

The last week of January I posted a commentary telling our readers that I had been asked to substitute for a speaker on the subject of "how to persuade your boss that innovation is a good thing." I decided to have the audience members answer the question for themselves, since this requires close knowledge of their own culture. Many thanks to the readers who contributed questions and their experiences that helped me structure the event.

My first question to the group was "When have you had a great success persuading your organization to change ANYTHING? What did you do?" The answers varied widely, from installing email (a while ago!) to changing inventory management methods to replacing conventional advertising with product placement to outsourcing software development, and the methods ranged from the expected (calculated return on investment, benchmarking) to the somewhat surprising (asked customers! took board members to visit customers! used social/peer pressure).

I then repeated the question in the negative: "When have you had a colossal failure to persuade your organization to change something? What was it and what did you do?" Not surprising, on reflection, was that the 2 lists were almost the same, but the efforts were directed at different people. The key element that all our comment-contributing readers emphasized was the need for a good match between the "target" and the technique.

There was very positive response to the two worksheets that I gave the group to organize their thinking. The first was a table with simple columns: People (in your group, in other groups, in the hierarchy), the history with that person (successes and failures, on what issues, using what methods). The participants then picked 2 people and filled out the second worksheet, which was a simple set of questions:

1. What is important to this person?
2. What do you need to have this person DO?
3. Will doing the action(s) in step 2 help this person achieve the goals in step 1?
4 A. If YES, how will you explain it to him/her?
4 B. If NO, what should you change? (The target person – find one with different goals? The action that you are asking for?)
5. If YES, put your action plan here.

There were 2 predominant reactions around the room as the participants filled out the worksheet for their own particular situations.

1. Even though it took about 6 minutes to finish one worksheet, they learned something from the process, and they were astonished (retrospectively) that in the past they had just started talking to people without stopping to think through how to structure the "campaign."
2. The most frequent source of failure was question 3; that is, the requested action would benefit the requestor, but NOT the person being asked to do the action. On reflection, this was considered a primary cause of failure.
3. A significant minority said that they had never considered option 4B; that is, they always kept looking for new arguments for their target, and never looked for new targets/supporters in the organization.

This was a great example of the TRIZ concept of the use of resources that are already in the problem to solve the problem. We used the knowledge in our community (thanks to everybody who made comments!) and the knowledge in the workshop, and their knowledge of their own organizations, to learn new ways to solve the problem of persuasion. Thanks to all of you for the experiment.

If Europe has a dedicated year of creativity and innovation, do other countries/regions need their own? -------------

There's been a lot of talk – particularly since the global recession became a reality – about whether or not government should be involved in innovation.

The European Parliament proclaimed the European Year of Creativity and Innovation 2009 (EYCI) to focus "on the importance of creativity in private and public life." As nice as that sounds – and as well-intentioned as it likely is – what impact will this "year" have?

They do have a set of defined goals, but they are broad enough that quantifying success will be a challenge. Their ambassadors list is impressive - I hope to find out more about their role (the role of leadership is innovation is critical) and report back here at a later date.

Updated 2/11: BusinessWeek has a new article, "Obama Needs a Secretary of Innovation," – that explores the benefit of having someone in charge of 2 tasks: "The first is to lead a systematic national innovation process, bringing this powerful strategy to bear on the government's role in unclenching the lockjaw of this economic crisis. The second is to create a national innovation mindset, reinvigorating innovation in the private sector." Any discussion of innovation and process makes me happy, but is this a good beginning to making America "innovative"?

Reader Questions: If Europe has a dedicated year of creativity and innovation, do other countries/regions need their own? Are there lessons from the EYCI's initial planning that could be improved upon already? How will you judge their success?

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