Посты с тэгом: corporate innovation method

The Power to Innovate: Conference Report

Published date: October 24, 2009 в 2:06 pm

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Congratulations to the team at Invention Machine for hosting this week’s conference, Power to Innovate, at the Seaport Hotel in Boston.  The theme of the conference centered around the Innovation Intelligence EcosystemTM and how companies can boost performance by coordinating information, communities, and innovation activities.  Invention Machine’s premier product, Goldfire, is at the center of this ecosystem.

“Goldfire is a unique innovation software platform that transforms ideas into commercial products—generating and validating concepts and making innovation a sustainable process.  Designed with engineers, scientists and researchers in mind, Goldfire automates every day innovation tasks—from identifying a new market to developing a new product to improving existing product offerings—and empowering users with a repeatable process. Fusing proven innovation methods for generating ideas along with advanced technologies for accessing precise concepts from corporate and worldwide knowledge sources, Goldfire stimulates creative thinking and speeds inventive problem solving—helping product development engineers, scientists and researchers to quickly conceive and validate ideas thus fueling product pipelines.”

The latest release, 5.5, should greatly enhance usability of the product especially by groups outside of R&D such as marketing and M&A.  Jim Belfiore, Certified Innovation Master & Senior Director at Invention Machine, demonstrated how he researched the disease, lymphoma.  I was amazed at the depth and breadth of insights he created using Golfire 5.5.

The entire conference was followed on Twitter compliments of Andrea Meyer.  Check it out at #P2I09.  Here are some other highlights from the conference:

Innovation Sighting: The Division Template in Elevators

Published date: October 4, 2009 в 6:00 pm

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What is the first thing you do when you step into an elevator?  For most people:  push the button of the floor you are going to. Not so with a new breed of elevators manufactured by Schindler North America.  These elevators have the buttons on the outside, not inside.  The buttons for selecting your floor are on each floor. Instead of just pushing a single up or down button to hail an elevator, you push the button for the floor you want as though you were inside.

The Division Template is the culprit here. In this innovation sighting, the elevator floor button panel was divided out and placed back into the system…outside the elevator cab.  Very novel, useful, and surprising.  To use Division, make a list of the components, then divide out a component. Divide functionally or physically and place it back somewhere in the system.  Use Function Follows Form to identify potential benefits, feasibility, challenges, and adaptations.
The benefit is better elevator customer service.  Elevator cars operate more efficiently which means you get to the right floor faster. How?  By selecting your floor sooner (while waiting for the elevator to arrive) the elevator’s computer has more timely input about peoples’ destinations. It can calculate the optimal pattern of pickups and dropoffs, then execute it faster than traditional elevators.  Here is how this new elevator, called the Miconic 10, operates:

The LAB: Innovating the Hockey Stick with Attribute Dependency (September 2009)

Published date: September 28, 2009 в 5:00 am

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Ice hockey is big business.  But it lags behind other professional sports – soccer, football, baseball, and basketball.  As with all industries, the key to growth is innovation.  Equipment manufacturers such as Reebok are taking this seriously with the creation of the Hockey Research and Innovation Center.  In this month’s LAB, we will focus on the equipment side of hockey, specifically on: the hockey stick.

Hockey has been around a long time with evidence of its origins dating to the sixteenth century.  The first organized indoor game was played in 1875. Since then, many innovations have been introduced.  Let’s see how a systematic, corporate innovation method can be applied to drive new sales opportunities.

I used the Attribute Dependency template of Systematic Inventive Thinking.  Attribute Dependency differs from the other templates in that it uses attributes (variables) of the situation rather than components.  Start with an attribute list, then construct a 2 x 2 matrix of these, pairing each against the others.  Each cell represents a potential dependency (or potential break in an existing dependency) that forms a Virtual Product.  Using Function Follows Form, we work backwards and envision a potential benefit or problem that this hypothetical solution solves.

Here is my attribute list:

Innovation Healthclub

Published date: September 20, 2009 в 12:15 pm

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Building a prototype of your innovation is a crucial link between conceiving the idea and commercializing it. A physical prototype helps you get immediate feedback from customers, designers, and financial backers as to the commercial viability of the project. It is a necessary step in the patent process.  It is a pivotal point in the “GO vs. NO GO” decision, and it can save an inventor money and time as even Abraham Lincoln found out when he prototyped his patented invention.

Prototyping can be difficult especially for a small company or independent inventor.  Here is help.  Imagine a 15,000 square-foot workshop with tools, equipment, and instruction to build and prototype your inventions. It is called TechShop, now with three locations in the U.S..  From their website:

“You can think of TechShop as a health club but with tools and equipment
instead of exercise equipment. It is sort of like a Kinko’s for makers,
or a Xerox PARC for the rest of us. TechShop is designed for everyone,
regardless of their skill level. TechShop is perfect for inventors,
“makers”, hackers, tinkerers, artists, roboteers, families,
entrepreneurs, youth groups, FIRST robotic teams, arts and crafts
enthusiasts, and anyone else who wants to be able to make things that
they dream up but don’t have the tools, space or skills.

TechShop has milling machines and lathes, welding stations and a CNC plasma
cutter, sheet metal working equipment, drill presses and band saws,
industrial sewing machines, hand tools, plastic and wood working
equipment including a 4′ x 8′ ShopBot CNC router, electronics design
and fabrication facilities, Epilog laser cutters, tubing and metal
bending machines, a Dimension SST 3-D printer, electrical supplies and
tools and pretty much everything you’d ever need to make just about
anything.”

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There are many resources for getting a prototype, but most of these are the “Do-It-For-You” type.  TechShop is one of the few that lets you, the innovator, come in and use the machines to “Do-It-Yourself.”  They offer a wide range of training courses as well as individual consultations when needed.  It is truly a “healthclub” for innovators.

Perhaps the only thing I would add is a training course on:  how to innovate!

Corporate Innovation Strategy Template

Published date: September 14, 2009 в 10:21 pm

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I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.

Rudyard Kipling (1902)

Here is a simple template to create your company’s innovation strategy:

  • WHAT:
    • Determine what business lines are to be innovated.
    • Determine what products or services within those business lines need innovation.
    • Establish a portfolio model that compares innovation output from one business line to another.
    • Rank order business lines based on the strength of their innovation portfolio pipelines.
  • WHY:
    • Determine how much innovation is needed.  Use a tool like Map-the-Gap.
    • Tie innovation to a strategy framework such as The Big Picture.
    • Focus innovation exercises to link directly to the strategy framework.
    • Use the framework to identify market adjacencies.
  • WHEN:
    • Schedule innovation workshops at the front end of the business cycle to help determine what projects will get funding in the next budget cycle.
    • Schedule innovation workshops after the planning cycle to jump-start new initiatives for the upcoming year.
  • HOW:
    • Choose specific methods of innovation to be used based on efficacy and results.
    • Combine different methods to leverage the strengths of each.
    • Integrate the methods by using the output of one as inputs for the others.
  • WHERE:
    • Set aside space with the specific purpose of conducting innovation workshops.
  • WHO:
    • Form innovation “dream teams” to maximize the success of innovation efforts.
    • Schedule training on how to use innovation methods.
    • Examine the company’s innovation culture to diagnose where it is weak.
    • Establish an innovation competency model.
    • Designate and empower commercial leaders to drive innovation efforts.

Innovation Sighting: Web Site Morphing with Attribute Dependency

Published date: August 14, 2009 в 12:00 pm

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Imagine a Web site that detects a visitor’s “thinking” style and “morphs” its look and feel to suit that visitor’s style.  Professor Glen Urban and his colleagues at M.I.T. describe an approach in the Sloan Management Review article, “Morph the Web To Build Empathy, Trust and Sales.”  They collaborated with BT Group, a UK telecom company, to create a Web site that learns whether a person is more analytical versus holistic, and whether the person is more visual versus verbal in how they process information.  Once the Web site learns this (based on a few preliminary clicks on the site), it adapts itself to present information in an optimal way:

Urban-s3

This is an excellent example of the Attribute Dependency Template, one of five templates in the Systematic Inventive Thinking method of innovation.  Attribute Dependency takes internal and external attributes of a product or service and combines them to create new dependencies (or break existing dependencies).  With Web site morphing, for example, the two attributes that have been linked are:

  • Web site appearance (an internal attribute)
  • Visitor’s Cognitive Style (an external attribute)

Dependencies can be passive, active, or adaptive.  Passive dependencies are static – they don’t change once they have been established.  Active dependencies are dynamic – an attribute changes only when another one changes.  Adaptive dependencies change the way they change.  In other words, they learn as they go.  Attribute Dependency is a great tool for creating “smart” products – those that know and adapt to user preferences or environmental conditions.

Does Web site morphing work?  The MIT researchers report that Web-originated purchase intentions for BT’s broadband service could increase 20% after morphing the site to match individual cognitive styles.

Automated Innovation

Published date: August 4, 2009 в 7:40 am

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“To avoid the fate of alchemists, it is time we asked where we stand.  Now, before we invest more time and money on the information-processing level, we should ask whether the protocols of human subjects and the programs so far produced suggest that computer language is appropriate for analyzing human behavior:  Is an exhaustive analysis of human reason into rule-governed operations on discrete, determinate, context-free elements possible?  Is an approximation to this goal of artificial reason even probable?  The answer to both these questions appears to be, No.”

Hubert L. Dreyfus
“What Computers Can’t Do:  The Limits of Artificial Intelligence”

This chilling conclusion about the fate of artificial intelligence seems to put an end to the idea that we can automate innovation.  Since this book was first published in 1972, not much has changed, and the  field of artificial intelligence seems to be in decline.

For a machine to innovate, it would need to:

Innovate to Collaborate

Published date: July 26, 2009 в 5:59 pm

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People collaborate to innovate. But what about the other way around?  Could a structured innovation approach be used to bring people closer together?  In other words, collaboration becomes the endpoint and innovation becomes the means to that end?

Collaboration is where two or more people or organizations work together in an intersection of common goals. Collaboration is seen as an essential element of change and group effectiveness.  People collaborate for a variety of reasons, including:

Innovation Sighting: Multiplication at Taylor Guitars

Published date: July 19, 2009 в 8:30 am

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Here is an example of the Multiplication Template, one of five in the corporate innovation method called S.I.T..  It is from the Taylor Guitars, one of the leading companies in the category and one of the most innovative.  The Multiplication Template makes copies of components but changes the copies in some way from the original.  Taylor has multiplied the pickguard of their electric guitar series, but changed the configuration with different styles of magnetic pickups (the part that translates the sound from the strings).  It is a clever idea because guitar owners can re-configure their guitar for different playing situations.  It helps Taylor Guitar extend their product reach into the aftermarket for guitar parts and maintain a more loyal following of customers.

 

The LAB: Innovating Shredded Wheat with S.I.T. (July 2009)

Published date: July 5, 2009 в 8:53 pm

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“We put the ‘NO’ in innovation!”  The good people at Post Cereal have a new twist on innovation…NOT innovating as a statement of the product’s ubiquity and staying power.  “Some things just weren’t meant to be innovated.”

How could I resist?  It was just too tempting to use systematic innovation on this simple product, especially in light of the perception that it should not be innovated.  Though the ad campaign is a spoof, I wonder just how much the people at Post really believe this.  What if shredded wheat could be innovated to create new growth potential for this 116 year old product?

Here is a brief history from Wikipedia:

Henry Perky invented shredded wheat cereal in 1893. The wheat is first cooked in water until its moisture content reaches about 50%. It is then tempered, allowing moisture to diffuse evenly into the grain. The grain then passes through a set of rollers with grooves in one side, yielding a web of shredded wheat strands. Many webs are stacked together, and this moist stack of strands is crimped at regular intervals to produce individual pieces of cereal with the strands attached at each end. These then go into an oven, where they are baked until their moisture content is reduced to 5%.

I’ll use all five templates of the Systematic Inventive Thinking method to see what new opportunities we can uncover.

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