Commentary by Katie Barry

A blogger on our sister site, iSixSigma.com, wrote a post Innovation and Six Sigma last week. I think it's a post that applies to our innovation audience as much as it does to their Six Sigma readers.

Enjoy!

I don’t get a lot of forwarded emails from friends and family; I’ve trained them to only send me the "best of the best." Today, one video appeared in my inbox that not only intrigued me, but seemed worthy of sharing with the Real Innovation/TRIZ Journal audience.

The video lasts about a minute and is safe for work. Click here to watch the "Awareness Test."

(Spoiler alert ahead – watch the video before reading!)

How many of you caught on? I admit that I didn’t! I was carefully (and accurately, it turns out) counting passes as instructed. And I was so focused on the issue at hand, that the bear didn’t grab my attention for a second.

This video ties in nicely with this week’s featured Real Innovation article, Local Problems Lead to Ideal System Solutions. As important as problem solving is, and as many innovations local-level problem solving can provide, it can cause even more problems if the full system-scale is ignored. Every so often, remember to check out the big picture so that no moonwalking bears can interrupt the scene!

If you live near Seattle and would like to hobnob with the area's finest business process improvement practitioners in a casual after-work setting, attend the iSixSigma Live! Social and Networking Party at the Rock Bottom Brewery in Bellevue. (iSixSigma.com is a sister website to RealInnovation.com.)

Thursday, May 1, from 6 to 8 PM. Rock Bottom can only hold so many process improvement gurus so hurry and register today. The full details for the event can be found at: http://live.isixsigma.com/seattle.

The American Society for Quality's (ASQ) magazine, Quality Progress, January issue's cover story, "Conflict and Complexity," looks at the use of problem-solving techniques, including TRIZ, and how they could have been used to prevent the Challenger disaster.

You do have to register to have access to the article, but registration is free and it's a nice looks at the concrete usefulness of innovative methods and tools. For more about the use of TRIZ in space, read commentator Michael Slocum's posts:

• The International Space Station Meets TRIZ and
• TRIZ Meets Cassini

It’s official – Real Innovation turns one today. Thank you for your interest/involvement in the site this past year. What’s coming in 2008? More great articles, news, jobs, events, commentaries, discussions and some surprises! I hope that you’ll continue to be connected to the site – whether as a visitor or in a more active role as an author, advertiser, commentator or forum participant.

For now, here are a few milestones we've hit in twelve short months:

• The site appears on the second page of Google search results (page one isn’t far behind!)
• Site traffic and newsletter subscribers are growing by leaps and bounds each week
• The Google PageRank jumped from 0, to 4 and now sits at 6
• We added The TRIZ Journal (www.TRIZ-Journal.com) as a channel under Real Innovation and re-launched the site earlier this year
• Our regular slate of commentators now stands at 10
• Our stable of authors increases each month, as does the breadth and depth of our articles
• Our first annual survey proved that people are interested in learning the tools and methods for systematic innovation and they are finding the answers on Real Innovation

The Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies has announced a call for papers for the 10th anniversary of TRIZCON, its annual conference on the topic of TRIZ (The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). The theme is TRIZ – Your Inspiration for Innovation.

Date: 13-15 April 2007
Location: Kent State University in Kent, Ohio

Keep reading to learn about paper submissions:

The emphasis on papers for this event should be REAL case studies with measured results and how TRIZ was used to develop the solution. We are strongly interested in providing content for corporate and educational users. Attendees are looking for concrete case studies – where TRIZ has been applied to provide REAL solution concepts. Papers on TRIZ in education and other traditional topics are suitable for the conference.

New opportunities for the application of innovative problem solving are constantly being posed by contradictions in all aspects of technology. Equally important is a growing awareness that we need to tap the unrecognized resource within systems as we improve design. As more practitioners, companies, and industries incorporate TRIZ into their design methodologies, the methodology itself will become more expansive and more refined. The Annual Conference on TRIZ Studies is an excellent forum to facilitate this growth and refinement. Presentations of either insight or case studies from technical and non-technical fields are welcome. Completed projects and applications, as well as those in progress, are candidates for presentation. Presentations that interest attendees include:

• New applications of TRIZ
• Advanced applications of TRIZ
• New developments in the TRIZ tool bag
• Approaches and techniques that can be used by teachers in the
  classroom
• TRIZ applications that can be taught to children and the elderly

Submission requirements: Interested parties are invited to submit an abstract (150 to 200 words) of their proposed paper with title, along with a brief, current biography of the author/s. Send submissions, including author’s name(s), presenter’s name, company, address, phone, fax and email address to:

The Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies, Inc.
100 Barber Avenue
Worcester, MA 01606 USA
Phone: 508-799-6700
Fax: 508-799-9944
Email: ai@triz.org

Completing requirements of the conference on time is critical for all
presenters, conference planners and attendees, so the following deadlines are
mandatory for your participation:

• Abstract submission deadline: November 15, 2007
• Acceptance notification with paper guidelines: If your Abstract is posted to the AI website, you are accepted
• All registration forms, copyright releases and fees ($250): January 15, 2008
• Final papers and electronic files due: March 1, 2008 – Late submissions may not make the agenda.

Real Innovation's sister site, iSixSigma.com, features a regular cartoon strip - the Cox-Box. Although his comics mainly focus on the trials and tribulations of Six Sigma, his newest strip tackles the question for how Six Sigma drives Innovation.

Click this link to read and enjoy! http://blogs.isixsigma.com/archive/six_sigma_drives_innovation.html

This year’s Lean Six Sigma Forum takes place November 27-28 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

This forum will focus on how Lean and Six Sigma interact and reinforce one another to help better manage business processes. Fourteen world-class businesses will be in attendance, including Reuters, Motorola and Delphi.

Plan to attend to:

• Recognise opportunities and eliminate defects
• Improve delivery of high quality services
• Focus on maximising process velocity
• Get the tools for analysing and preventing process flows and delay times

*** We have arranged for Real Innovation readers to receive 15 percent off the registration fee for the Lean Six Sigma Forum – simply quote "RealInnovation.com" when registering.

Over at the iSixSigma Blogosphere, blogger Robin Barnwell recently wrote about innovation.

Robin states that "innovation is a very personal endeavour rather than a group endeavour. What I have seen a number of times is innovation happening like a spark, suddenly someone gets it, they have a startling flash of insight and the innovation occurs. The innovation may well happen in a group setting (e.g., brainstorm) but its still up to the individual."

"Real" innovation is all about removing innovation – and inspiration – from being the responsibility of that one company genius. Get every employee’s creative juices flowing – in a structured, systematic way and the potential for unstoppable innovation is unleashed.

Taking place August 21-22 in Chicago, the Process for Innovation conference will include global innovation leaders and practitioners. Companies including Unilever, Motorola, DaimlerChrysler and Procter & Gamble will be represented with sessions including "What Is Innovation? Develop A Clear Understanding Of What Innovation Is And What It Means To Your Business," "Enhance Your Creative Thinking And Output With 10 Strategies To Support Innovation" and "Integrating Voice Of The Customer (VOC) Into Your Innovation Process To Ensure You Provide Exactly What Your Customer Wants."

The conference should be a good one, with a focus on how to apply tools to harness creativity, how to effectively measure innovation and extending innovation processes throughout organizations. TRIZ will be featured in a post-conference workshop

The TRIZ Journal's Ellen Domb will be attending and promises to share her insights in commentaries from the conference for those of us unable to be there in person.

*** We have arranged for Real Innovation readers to receive 10 percent off the registration fee for the Process for Innovation conference in Chicago, August 21-22 – simply quote "RealInnovation.com" when registering.

Thanks to all Real Innovation readers who took our survey last week! The survey has closed and the results are being tabulated. After a quick (and far from complete) look at your responses, you've provided some good suggestions and directions for future articles and other site content.

Stay tuned for some changes and continued broadening of systematic innovation content. If you are an innovation practitioner, consider writing an article for the site about your company's approach – how did it get started, what tools do you use, how many people are involved, what is the culture, share a case study, etc. Inquiring readers (and editors!) want to know.

Real Innovation began its first reader survey today. Those of you who subscribe to our weekly newsletter have already been sent a notice, but I'd like to encourage ALL Real Innovation visitors to take a few minutes and answer the 12 (short!) questions. It should take you around 7 minutes - the information you provide is confidential and anonymous.

The feedback is important so that we can continue to develop content that suits your wants and needs.

Thank you for your help!

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal discusses the importance of queueing theory in innovation – in this case keeping product pipelines flowing in order to not be bogged down by ideas. The George Group (consultants) helped Avery Dennison Corp. build slack time into its planning processes and create a few products faster. The article mentions four tips from the George Group:

1. Run a leaner pipeline.
2. Build slack into schedules.
3. Cross-train employees for vital functions.
4. Look for ways to build on existing knowledge.

All good ideas and important when developing innovative products, but they avoid the crux of the matter – decision-making. How does a company decide whether an idea is worthy enough of developing into a product? What are the metrics that a company should use?

Building slack time into any schedule is important, because life happens. Things go wrong. Unexpected complications arise. One direction can lead to twelve unexpected directions. Too much slack time or, rather, undirected slack time, can lead to more problems than an innovation can solve.

Adjusting a system to accommodate slack time and a timeframe that accommodates failure is necessary for any innovative process.

Or should it be innovation OR Six Sigma? Innovation with a hint of Six Sigma? Innovation and Six Sigma separate but equal? It’s a topic covered on this site (see below) and, this week, in Business Week’s quarterly "Inside Innovation" issue.

Their main article focuses on the balancing act between innovation and Six Sigma at 3M, with further issue highlights looking at the negative view of Six Sigma at some companies, ambidextrous organizations and a case study of Philips’ Norelco.

Process improvements are important but there have to be larger-scale changes (innovation) in order to necessitate those processes (Six Sigma). And although the two seem mutually exclusive, they can complement each other. It is important that they work together for companies and industries to grow.

It should come to no surprise to our audience that this is a topic also being covered on our sister site, the iSixSigma.com Blogosphere.
——————————————————————————————————
Real Innovation has covered this issue in a number of articles:

• Real Innovation
• Ambidextrous Innovation
• The Case for Structured Innovation
• Case Study: Integrating TRIZ Into Six Sigma

Be sure to check out "Ten People Who Could Change the World" in Forbes. This article talks about world-changing breakthroughs and includes a section discussing TRIZ (The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) by Genrich Altshuller and his colleagues – and its present-day renaissance.

(For those of you who are new to RealInnovation.com, TRIZ is one of the methods for systematic innovation featured on this site. Additionally, The TRIZ Journal is a channel under Real Innovation and its 10 years of archives are available as new issues are published the first Monday of each month.)

It was another jam-packed day of innovation ideas today and now that I’m back in my hotel room, I’m ready to share what I listened to today.

The morning keynote speaker was Dustan E. McCoy, Chairman & CEO of the Brunswick Corporation. He spoke about sustaining "genuine ingenuity - (their) commitment to developing and delivering meaningful and innovative products to our customers and to the industries we serve." They created the High Performance Product Development (HPPD) group to faciltate genuine ingenuity and change their company’s silo approach to a full company deployment. McCoy was honest about the fact that this change was painful as they worked to develop a common structure - based on a common language. Today, their systems are integrated and never assume they know the answers to whatever challenge they face.

Following McCoy’s presentation, Jessie Scanlon from Business Week Online moderated the panel: Carol Pletcher (formerly of Cargill), Stephanie Barry (WD-40), Marissa Mayer (Google) and Cheryl Perkins (formerly of Kimberly Clark Corporation). They talked about the importance of being flexible when structuring innovation within their companies - and that innovation is not one-size fits all. Different companies may have different innovation needs and it’s important that each company understands what its own definition of innovation is and its own innovation goals.

Then today’s four breakout tracks began. Our choices today were leadership and culture; partnering for innovation; innovation rebels: learning from non-Fortune 500s; and tools, trends and advancements.

I started out with the leadership and culture track and Ken Lauer and Russ Ward from International Masters Publishers discussing enacting executive innovation mandates. A main takeaway? It requires continuous executive management!

Next up was John Lynch from the Millipore Corporation talking about their Project B.I.G. (breakthrough innovative growth). Their process takes about 12 weeks going through the stages: charter plan/prepare, gather VOC, process VOC data, confirm customer requirements and deliver the plan.

After lunch, I switched tracks to tools, trends and advancements. Doug Curcicki from Yazaki North America talked about his company’s stage gate idea pipeline and that they gather information from the market at large, assuming that the market knows more than any one individual.

The final breakout session of the day in this track was Gary DeGregorio from Motorola talking about ESDM (enterprise strategic decision management). With a collaborative decision network, they can prioritize decisions based on impat, opportunity and size of knowledge gap.

The final general session was arguably the conference’s best, with the final keynote presentation by Henry Chesbrough talking about business model innovation. Business model gaps to be on the lookout for include who is responsible, who has the budget and authority to lead, and what process exist to experiment with alternatives.

The last item on the conference’s agenda was Stephen Socolof (New Venture Partners) moderating a panel discussion of open innovation with Chesbrough, Todd Abraham (Kraft), Nicholas Bowen (IBM) and Nabil Sakkab (P&G). Creating an open innovation culture wasn’t easy, but their companies successes are apparent.

I wish I could have added more detailed comments about each of the speakers that I listened to, but that would take me at least the next three days and I’ve got to pack and fly home. But if it wasn’t already clear, this was a great conference and more people should attend next year.

Dale McIntyre with PDMA welcomed everyone (500-600 of us) to day one of the main Front End of Innovation conference.

Conference chairman Peter Koen followed and presented some best practices in the front end and led us through the difference between exploitation (low uncertainty; e.g., Innocentive) and exploration (high uncertainty; e.g., iPod).

The morning’s keynote presentation was Gary Loveman, CEO of Harrah’s Entertainment. He was brought in as COO having never been in a U.S. casino. Describing himself as a "recovering academic," he described his work in building Harrah’s into the first gaming brand.

By focusing on all of the data they had - and could get - from their customers, Harrah’s has worked to shift its paradigm from "we think" to "we know" and has helped the organization innovate its offerings across all of the Harrah’s destinations.

(If you ever have the opportunity to see him in person, go - he’s an extremely entertaining and effective speaker!)

Following Gary, Bruce Nussbaum from Business Week moderated a panel about what is top of mind, with Lara Lee (Harley-Davidson), Amy Radin (Citigroup), Dondeena G. Bradley (McNeil Nutritionals) and Sam Lucente (Hewlett-Packard). Each mentioned how hard innovation is - don’t ever expect it won’t be a challenge!

Late morning and early afternoon had four breakout tracks. We had the choice of innovation strategy, design thinking, service innovation in the front end or managing the discovery portfolio. I chose innovation strategy (ending up in possibly the coldest room in the hotel) and listened to:

• Rob Shelton, author of Making Innovation Work, discussing how to manage, measure and profit from front end investment: innovation is not hard to start, but it is hard to sustain and that’s where focus needs to be
• Charles Stunson talking about accelerating innovation at Sprint Nextel: they talk about defending castles and creating ships - keep an eye on what you’re already doing well, but look for the next ’killer app’
• Michael Giersch, IBM, and Gina Colarelli O’Connor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, co-presented developing a breakthrough innovation capacity: IBM started focusing on emerging business opportunities (EBOs) in 2000 and, since then, IBM has developed billions of dollars in revenue from its newly developed opportunities

Then we all reconvened again to listen to the afternoon’s keynote by Whirlpool’s David Swift (President, North America) and Charles Jones (VP, Global Product Consumer Design). At Whirlpool, they do not distinguish between design and innovation - the two are intertwined and not examined separately. They have a ’Double Diamond’ process of discovery and synthesis that lead to realization.

Day One ended with presentations by two academics. First up was Vijay Govindarajan, Tuck’s Center for Global Leadership at Dartmouth, who managed to clear the room in only half an hour - helped along considerably by a fire alarm that forced us outside for about five minutes. When we regrouped, he finished talking about three boxes:

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

Number one is easy (relatively speaking), but not long-lasting. It is imperative for companies to be able to do numbers two and three in order to make it through market and paradigm shifts that have the potential to make your company obsolete.

And today’s final speaker was Michael Tushman from Harvard Business School, whose presentation on innovation streams and ambidextrous organizations went along nicely with Vijay’s and Michael Giersch’s from earlier. We need to avoid getting locked into box 1 (manage the present) and be ready for punctuated change (EBOs), because continuous improvement never takes a company to the future.

Day one ended well - albeit slightly late due to the fire alarm fun - and day two looks to be as jam-packed with a similar structure to the day. Check back tomorrow night for a final report from the Front End of Innovation!

I'm in Boston this week, attending the Front End of Innovation conference. This afternoon the full conference began with a kickoff keynote by Peter Diamandis, M.D., best known as the founder of the X Prize and who wears a variety of hats including: chairman and CEO of the X Prize Foundation, CEO of Zero Gravity Corporation, Chairman & Co-Founder of the Rocket Racing League and co-founder and Director of Space Adventures.

He spoke about his experiences in generating innovation by changing the way people think – shifing paradigms that aren't being challenged. For example, why should astronauts be the only few who get to experience what weightlessness feels like? Now they aren't – zero gravity flights are now available to the public. (If this strikes a chord, it may be because recently Stephen Hawking was able to leave his wheelchair and experience life without gravity for an all-too-short period of time on one of the zero g flights.)

But you can't change the way people think without one other item on your side - passion! Passion is required to see you (the inventor, the innovator) through to the end (to those TRIZ fans among you - the ideal final result).

And passion is now helping him with the Rocket Racing League - look for it to debut later this year.

And look for more postings from me about the conference the next two days. (Sadly, the conference rooms don't have wireless access (!!!) so I won't be posting "live" commentaries at this conference.)

TRIZ Grows TRIZ

We’re in the last stretch of the conference now and it’s time for some self-promotion - founding TRIZ Journal editor Ellen Domb is presenting on behalf of The TRIZ Journal (co-editors Michael Slocum and I are in the audience - ready to participate when called upon!), discussing how The TRIZ Journal began and evolved through the use of the TRIZ methodology.

After looking at the contradictions and thinking about the costs, benefits and harms, the founders were able to establish an online journal in 1996 - before being online (each day - or each minute for some) was a typical experience for most people. From publishing two articles the first month by fellow founding editor Jim Kowalick, the jounal is now in its tenth year; a monthly publication read by tens of thousand of innovation-interested and TRIZ-interested people worldwide.

Here’s to the next ten years!

Product Development Knowledge in R&D

Hyman Duan (IWINT, Inc.) is the final speaker in the track I’m following this afternoon and product development knowledge following the SECI (socialization, externalization, combination and internalization) model of knowledge creation and analyzing tacit vs. explicit knowledge. But SECI is more of an idea of knowledge management than a usable tool.

What to do instead? First, use TRIZ in R&D. Use the route of specific problem ››› prior art analysis/system analysis/problem reformulation ››› standard problem ››› heurisitc solutions selection ››› standard solutions ››› analysis/synthesis/simulation/testing/experience/intuition ››› specific solution.

Then, add an ontology-powered search (keyword) in the above system that enhances the knowledge management and TRIZ solutions used in R&D.

And that’s all she wrote! The conference is over and it’s time to get back home to my normal work and my dog (who I’m sure has missed me terribly this week).

Keynote Speaker

This morning’s keynote featured Alla Nesterenko (Russian TRIZ specialist) doing a presentation on "OTSM-TRIZ as an Efficient Tool for Implementation of Problem Based Learning." (Nikolai Khomenko kindly translated for the majority of the presentation.) She (and her colleagues) use TRIZ to teach children how to solve problems.

Their theory is to use axioms, models and technologies – educational use tools for organizing data aimed at revealing and evaluating problems. Their structure for teaching involves going from an empirical description (wonderland) to a system description (fictional world) to a problem description (real world).

They’ve seen success with this program:

• higher level of creativity by the students (compared to the standard)
• higher level of learning motivation (compared to control groups)
• difference in the creative texts the students are required to write (compared to students who must write the texts outside of this program)

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