10/14/2019
What could you do with the new innovation program?
NPD, New Product Development always struggles on a slippery slop of securing next stage funding. Innovation methodology may be your next step forward to a more secure and prosperous future.
We need to stop problem solving by brainstorming, mind-mapping, experimenting or wasting months or years waiting for an epiphany. Problems can now be solved in minutes rather than months or years, with the PDS-Generator, Principle Driven Solutions-Generator and carried through the NPD completion process 3X faster with the MVIS, MaxValue Innovation System.
Does it often feel like your efforts to promote innovation fall on deaf ears? Heads nod 'yes', but then management and engineers seem to drag their feet, trying to design and develop the same old way claiming it’s the only way to keep from going over budget and meet customer deadlines. Do they seem stuck on doing it the way they’ve always done it. Do you find the industry norm of only 2 or 3 out of each department of 20-25 people, who actually want to try for continual improvement, of their skills or of the products you’re developing? That is frustrating, even painful when see the results. It’s also painful when you are pressed by the extra time load that puts on you and the extra work-load that falls back on you, as a result. Then, just as you are pushing for more strategic and innovative problem solvers, you find the opinions and suggestions of those 2 or 3 innovative minded are being squashed and repressed by their co-workers, their supervisors, dept. managers, or project managers who have been well trained to ensure we don’t waste time and money trying new things and different ideas. They know that their jobs are secured by making sure we finish this project; 1. On time, 2. Under Budget, and 3. On Scope to the contract. So, they repress even talking about looking for a better way.
That’s right. To a large extent America has repressed innovation and continual improvement for over 40 years as we have pushed for compliance and have implemented project management’s use of the three all sacred metrics; 1. To Scheduled, 2. To Budget and 3. To Scope (contract compliance).
We don’t use the missing 4th metric, the metric that would measure, motivate and manage innovative results. And, since we can’t manage what we don’t measure (innovation and the making of more valuable products). America has thus suffered for 40 years. We now find America in about 14th place among the innovative nations and some of those 14 nations are not our friends. That leaves U.S. Defense in a very risky position.
Oh, some cite the great advancements of at least 5 great technologies over the past 20 years and call that innovation. But, if we don’t adopt and integrate new technologies into our products, into our systems and into our services then we are not innovating. A key part of innovation is that adoption and integration.
The solution is, we must:
Transform most of our employees (50-70%) into innovative improvement and problem-solution seeking thinkers (not just 10-15% of them). This will set up a culture of continual innovation and an employee base able to do it. This can be done by integrating into our processes (at proper points) simple models and paradigms, like; “The Adjacent Possible”, by Stuart Kauffman and “The Principle Driven-Vector” to help product development and systems engineering teams, solve engineering constrains and system conflicts 30-300X faster. Even problems that product development teams describe as “unsolvable" can be solved in less than an hour, using these new tools. problem.”
Introduce the missing 4th metric into project management activity and processes, so that innovation and improved product value is measured and simply reported to motivate continual innovation of positive impact.
Build your own MVIS, MaxValue Innovation System of tools, procedures and methods capable of rapid innovation, rapid from concept generation, to concept verification, to development, build and final validation testing. If not rapid, its wrong. If not rapid, the results will probably never see the ‘light of day’ in the real world. That’s not innovation. If not rapid, it must be replaced by something that is (innovation). Also, with the right tools may come the need for coaching. Tiger Woods reminds us that to be an expert golfer is not so much in who’s clubs you use, rather it is in your swing. What great golfer doesn’t have a coach, to help him work on his swing.
Don’t Fall into the Trap:
I have always had a passion for new technology, innovation and invention, and in improving whatever system or project I was working on. That excites me and motivates me. I love it. I think it was an old Zig Ziggler talk I heard when I was 25 or 26 that motivated me to always try and do such a good job that I could work my way out of a job. That way, there would always be a better opportunity waiting for me. But, when I became an Innovation Coach, I was careful not to fall into the trap. The trap I had become aware of, over the years, that innovation undefined or improperly defined and executed becomes a huge corporate financial trap.
Trap No-1: The trap set up by Thomas Edison who told his engineers (sloggers), on many occasions, “Experiment on everything.” And, you will remember he is also the guy who said, “I haven’t failed 9,999 times, I’ve just found 9,999 ways that it won’t work.” Well, that became the model for American R&D. By the 1960-70’s every big company had to have their R&D Center (where they would experiment on everything). AT&T Research Labs would have been a really fun place to work, but less than 15% of the devices they developed had anything to with telecommunications. ‘ Not good for AT&T. When the Conglomerate was broken up, the remaining AT&T had to get competitive. Their first move was to sell off AT&T Research, because is was their largest money drain, putting their bottom line into the red. Over the next 5-10 years, every large company in America cut off or greatly slowed their R&D arm.
Trap No-2: During the next two decades, the 1980-90’s, when large companies saw the rise of computer technology coming from garage start-ups, like DEC, ALTAR, Microsoft and Apple, big business response was, “Let’s hire the smartest PhD’s and put them in “Think-Tanks” to solve our biggest problems and to look forward to the future. They will not have to build things, nor waste time and money experimenting on everything. We’ll just think our way to the future. Well, as think-tanks grew, the financial drain grew while effective results shrank. They were not taking business away from the garage start-ups, but they were bleeding red ink again. So, before the turn of the century, 1999 most CEO’s had shut down their think-tank.
Trap No-3: But, when the new millennium began showing promise, CEO’s began jumping in for the new solution to the future. “Let’s all build a corporate Innovation Center.” We will put our smartest guys in there. This time they will use ‘Open Innovation’ to reach out and buy the best technologies (already developed) and apply them for our corporate success. Primarily, we will accelerate digital innovations and transformation. From 2005 – 2015 just over a hundred innovation centers opened up and in the year 2018, one hundred more innovation centers were opened. Even though in 2017 the Capgemini DTI Digital Culture Report showed that all ready 85% of innovation centers had failed:
“In 2014, around US$1.6 trillion was spent on NPD, New Product Development, globally. Despite this significant investment, the results are falling short. In consumer goods, for example, research shows that more than 85% of new products fail.”
“A recent survey of large corporations found that 65% of senior executives face increased pressure to innovate.” So, let’s set up our innovation center.
“About 80 to 90 percent of innovation centers fail, and end up being a massive waste of resources.” - Senior Executive at a leading global bank
It is important you see the 80/20 Rule of failure (more accurately the 85/15 Rule) applying here to every categories and industry involved in product development. From garage start-ups, to venture capital funded projects, to professional NPD companies (see ‘A.’ above), to corporate innovation centers. And, we should include the Defense Industry here too. During the same decade (2005 – 2015) the Defense Industry saw fewer than 15% of government contracts, for development of new weapon systems, ended up with full rate production contracts. (Again the 85/15 Rule of failure.) Are we no smarter than the garage start-ups?
What we need is to start turning that rule around from 85% failures to 85% successes. Innovation needs to be rapid. But, it also needs to be effective (produce more valuable products). The problem is we have spent 40 years under Program Management, which had no metric for measuring innovation and incentivized us to forget “making it better,” or “trying different things (experimenting). Just come in under budget and on time… One big problem with innovation centers is stated in the Title of the Dec 14, 2017 Capgemini online article:
“Despite mass Investment, Innovation Centers are Not Making Organizations More Innovative”
The Innovation Center movement was like saying to 14 year old Tiger Woods, “You seem to like golf. Therefore, here is the most expensive set of clubs in the State. Go enjoy them and play, but we’re not going to give you an experienced coach to develop your swing and share key golf strategies with you, as you may need. Now, go get’em Tiger.”
So, What is to be done, so we don’t fall into these traps?
Well, there is much to be done. But, I suggest you start by getting that Coach and that he train a team of coaches and train key individuals throughout the organization and coach them on the use of these new tools to a target success rate of 85%, with fewer than 15% failures. This can only be done by training and setting up a culture of rapid and effective-innovation. This can be done by adopting the seven most effective innovation strategies, processes and tools that have been discovered and vetted since the 1960’s. Use these to build a your MVIS, MaxValue Innovation System. Just as the automobile is a system to carry you 25X faster toward your destination, your MVIS should carry you 25X faster toward a future of innovative, more valuable products and 4X as many effective products, receiving full rate production contracts. But, if you don’t have an “automobile”, then you are still walking.
My Proposal to You
If the above is of interest, or you think it may help, simply request, by texting, "Send me both the MVIS description pdf and the Training and Innovation Certificaitons pdf." to my cellphone at 801-859-2073. You can then read over those two documents to get a better idea of what you might need, going forward.
