Innovation Flow

What would a Bumble Bee do ?

2011-09-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

Look at your Problem through different lenses

The first step to come up with innovative ideas is to look at a problem innovatively i.e look at the problem through different lenses. We tend to look at a problem from only one angle - but how to trigger our mind to look at it from different angles ? Try asking the question what would X do - X could be Steve Jobs or Buddha or Don Quixote or Gandhi or your own Grandfather or Mother-in-law - the idea is to bring a new perspective to the problem. I listed 100+ such people - studied their innovative thinking style - and asked myself "What would X do?" to create a new perspective to the problem that I work on. I conciously limit this exercise only to define the problem - i do not extend this concept to idea generation (for certain reasons that i will elaborate later). When you try to solve a problem innovatively, a trigger that you could use is:

What would a Bumble Bee do?

Bumble Bee:

According to 20th century folklore, the laws of aerodynamics prove that the bumble bee should be incapable of flight, as it does not have the capacity (in terms of wing size or beats per second) to achieve flight with the degree of wing loading necessary. The origin of this claim has been difficult to pin down with any certainty (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumble_bee). So Science said that the bumblebee can not fly. But luckily it the bumble bee did not know that. That is why it flies ! I am reminded here of Arthur Clarke (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_C._Clarke )

Clarke's First Law: When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

Innovation Lesson from Bumble Bee:

Keep the Experts away from your early brainstorming sessions if you dont want your new ideas to get killed. So if you are a bumble bee you would not be biased by conventional wisdom or bogged down by what the expert say. You will just go ahead and make your new idea work.

Applying the funda:

List down a four or five things that conventional wisdom in that domain says and reverse each one of those statements. Brainstorm around these reversed statements and jot down the ideas.

Example:

Conventional wisdom says that to run a good School, we need good teachers. But what do we do if we cant find good teachers? Reversed statement is we can run a good school without good teachers. A bumble bee would not be worried by lack of good teachers - it will just go ahead and run the school. Brainstorm how to run a school without teachers - experiential learning, student teachers, elearning, run videos etc

Image courtesy: wpclipart.com

The Greatest Challenge for Technologists in India - How to evolve good ideas into valuable innovations

2011-07-02T07:43:00.000-07:00

How to evolve good ideas into valuable innovations

I am fully confident that we, the community of Indian Technologists, are ready with the insights to address many of the technology challenges that face us. When we as a community share our insights, pool our resources and further build upon the insights through focused ideation, we will get good ideas. We are all trained to solve such technology problems and we routinely come up with good ideas, hence the journey so far is on well laid roads and smooth terrain. How do we take our ideas beyond this point? The trek beyond this point is on a difficult terrain, dense fog that blinds us, very less oxygen that make us gasp, slippery slopes that slow us down, unpredictable avalanches that threaten our lives, Yetis and whatnot. We need determination, guts, special gear, reserve oxygen, experienced guides, perseverance and most importantly a clear vision of the summit. There are many barriers that prevent us from realizing the true value from our ideas.

We face a real challenge in evolving our ideas into innovations. However, it is very important that we take our ideas successfully to the market “For it doesn’t matter where scientific discoveries and breakthrough technologies originate – for national prosperity, the important thing is who commercializes them”, said Amar Bhide (Where Innovation creates value, The McKinsey Quarterly, 2009). Let us look at the factors that help a technical idea to reach the market. At the outset, we need to incubate our ideas till they grow into healthy inventions. A fresh technical idea is as delicate as a new born baby and it needs care and private space during its early days. Next, we have to harness the inventions with the right strategy to create valuable intellectual property. The intellectual protection of the invention acts like a fence and allows it to grow and blossom into a strong technology solution. We should learn to effectively monetize our intellectual property to create affordable technology solutions. Finally we need to creatively translate the technology solutions into innovations that succeed in the market. We need to evolve a process that will ensure that the ideas we pursue lead to technology solutions that are truly desirable, technically feasible and economically viable.

What is the challenge? the poor conversion of good ideas into truly valuable innovation. The fundamental issues behind this challenge are - How to create the vision for technology innovation? How to engage the experts and focus their efforts? How to organize the resources? How to deliver the innovations in time?

How is it a challenge? when ideas don’t evolve into innovations, the inventors get discouraged, technology managers are frustrated, stakeholders are disappointed, technology development stagnates, the business loses confidence in R&D, new product development falls into a coma and ultimately the market suffers.

Who faces the challenge? technologists and scientists everywhere face this challenge whether they are in university research groups, government laboratories, industrial R&D teams in large companies, small technology start-ups etc. Though the innovation environment is significantly different across these organizations, the challenge remains the same.

When and where is it a challenge? the challenge arises typically when the market need is ahead of the technology or when the technology is ahead of the market. The challenge exists in most emerging / developing / fast-growing economies. The challenge is intense, for a late entrant, in technology domains where the IP space is crowded. The absence of government regulation or enforcement favoring the new technology could further make things difficult.

Why is it a challenge?

Management of IP – Inventors create valuable IP when they patent their ideas and inventions, but most of them don’t realize the importance of monetizing their IP. Even large technology-based businesses and R&D organizations do not effectively monetize their intellectual capital. Sustaining the innovation efforts becomes a challenge when the IP fails to generate value.
New Product Development – Effective use of technology to differentiate the product in the market is the most reliable way to create a competitive advantage. The creation of a winning product needs a good knowledge of the unmet needs and a focused effort to meet those needs through technology innovations. Typical examples of a desired, but currently unmet, need in technology products could be lower cost, longer life, more user friendly, environment friendly etc. Sustaining the innovation efforts becomes a challenge when the revenue generated by new products is non-existent or delayed.

Path forward - Open innovation models have demonstrated, in the recent past, their power to accelerate the evolution of ideas into innovations and significantly reduce the cost involved in this process. Encouraged by this demonstration, many big multinational companies have thrown open their technology challenges to the public and they are able to access innovation talent beyond their walls. Innovators across nations and walks of life – school kids, college students, house wives, retired professors, end users – participate in the ideation process. Long unsolved technology problems get solved, as if by magic, in this giant collective effort. We could follow up the creation of the grand technology challenges with an open innovation based approach to generate innovative solutions. As the first step, we should aim to create and tap an innovation network across the country to meet this grand challenge.

TRIZ Innovation Flow Workshop

2010-02-02T01:57:00.000-08:00

I conducted a one-day workshop on TRIZ-based innovative problem solving at Cognizant Technology Solutions (CTS, Chennai). It was attended by their innovation leaders, managers and facilitators. The level of enthusiasm for learning TRIZ was very high at CTS.

I kept the workshop very interactive and helped them to use various TRIZ tools like ideal final results (IFR), Function Map, Technical contradiction, Inventive Principles, Technology evolution trends etc.

Ram (Dr Ramaseshan Ramachandran), my host at CTS, is a member of TRIZ India and is very passionate about TRIZ. He is keen to adopt a systematic innovation framework based on TRIZ.

Prakash made the workshop very lively by sharing some great examples on applying TRIZ in the software domain. The fact that all these folks spent their whole weekend discussing TRIZ shows the level of enthusiasm & their earnestness towards learning TRIZ

You can download the presentation charts from:
http://trizindia.org/forum/topics/triz-innovation-flow-workshop

"Yes and" & "Yes if" - Disney Creative Thinking Tools

2009-11-20T10:55:00.000-08:00

I did a second Ideation session at Barcamp06 on popular demand from the Techies. They found the "Reverse your Assumptions" session very cool and they wanted to learn more. I chose two demonstrate the power of two very simple tools - "Yes and" & "Yes if". I had learnt it from two Disney Imagineers in a Disney Creativity Workshop. These are great tools for triggering creative thinking in a group. I used it recently at Xchanging (Bangalore) with Tansen's Six Sigma team and it was great fun.

"Yes and" - A problem is posed - the first person shares his Idea - a second person says yes and .... - i.e he accepts the first idea and adds a little more to it - it is a small increment that strengthens the idea further. The second person's idea is not too different but it builds up on the first Idea. By the time idea goes through one round it becomes real strong. This tool encourages you to build up on the previous idea, In the absence of this tool, each person tends to give a new idea in a different direction. Stengthening of ideas does not happen naturally.

Lets us go for a movie - yes and we will eat out - yes and desserts at baskin Robbins - yes and we will invite Shreya too - yes and we will pick her up from work - yes and ...

"Yes if" - How do you respond to an Idea that sounds impractical - do you reject the Idea ?
you could tell that

Shankar's Idea is good ... yes if we are given 1 yr time to market and $1M budget - yes if the lab is ready by Jan - yes if the equipment can be run round the clock - yes if we can hire atleast two technicians....

This tool makes you think about the conditions under which an idea makes sense. It moves you away from a judgemental thinking mode and forces you to think about implementation aspects.

Use "Yes and" and "Yes if" when you want to trigger creative thinking in a group.

Reverse your Assumptions - My Ideation session at Barcamp06

2009-11-20T10:36:00.000-08:00

I conducted two ideation sessions at the Barcamp organized by PuneTech. The crowd was very enthusiastic and creative - it was not only my first Barcamp but also the first time that I did Ideation sessions with such a big crowd. I chose to demonstrate two powerful creative thinking tools.

The first session: I demonstrated the application of the tool "Reverse your Assumptions" - the Techies found this tool very cool. I had learnt this tool from the book "The Medici Effect" and got good ideas every time i used it.

First we did some generic examples like Restaurant, School etc. Then we took up the problem of improving the traffic situation in Pune - came up with a big bunch of reasonably out of the box ideas in just 30 minutes.

How - The tool works like this. Take the concept of School. List down the most basic assumptions about a school - like a school needs taechers, students, classroom, books, exams etc. Then reverse each of these assumptions - a school without a teacher, no exams, no books, no students etc. Brainstorm around these reversed assumptions and list teh ideas, Finally relate the ideas to a convention school - we end up with innovative ideas to run a school.

Why - The tool readily gives out of the box ideas because when you reverse the assumption, you are able to break free from your present paradigms. You are able to escape your psychologial inertia and think fresh.

Reverse your assumptions to break the psychological inertia.

BarCamp06 - by Pune Tech - an innovative & democratic hi- tech mela

2009-11-20T10:23:00.000-08:00

This was my first Barcamp.

A Barcamp is a “democratic” conference. It is not a normal / traditional conference. A normal / traditional conference is usually put together by a committee of professors, or industry veterans, and the speakers are selected by the committee and invited to speak. Many of the speakers are “forced” upon the conference by the sponsors, and they end up droning about how cool their product is. The other talks tend to be boring “lectures” or “speeches” that you fall asleep in. Who can attend is also constrained by money (conferences fees are high), or by other means (only members may attend). Anybody who’s been to a traditional conference will tell you that the tea-breaks and the corridor-conversations are the most interesting and important part of a conference.

Think of a barcamp as an entire conference that consists only of tea-breaks and corridor-conversations. Well, it’s a little more structured than that – but not much … A barcamp is not a conference – it is an unconference. Anybody can attend a barcamp. Anybody can speak on any topic that they are passionate about. A whiteboard is put up in the morning with the available rooms and timeslots. People can write down their name and the title of their talk in any available slot. Based on this, the others can decide which talks they want to attend. That’s it. Repeat all day.

Democracy.You’ll wonder, if anybody can speak, how do we ensure quality of speakers and presentations? By the “law of two feet“. The audience in a Barcamp are encouraged to use their two feet and walk away from a talk if it turns out to be boring. People are encouraged to find and create subgroups interested in specific topics, find a room or a corridor, and start discussing – and they often do.This ensures that everybody finds something interesting, and often something unexpected at a Barcamp.

Maybe you might find the 15-year-old kid who knows more about Search-Engine-Optimization than all the “industry veterans” you’ve met. Maybe you’ll go there to learn new technology and instead find some really interesting NGOor other social work organization and join that. Maybe you’ll just land up there, not knowing what to expect, and end up finding not just your first job, but a great career. Maybe you have an idea for a company, but don’t know how to implement it, and you’ll find someone at Barcamp who’s willing to handle the technology for you.I’m not just making all of that up. Each one of the sentences in the previous paragraph that started with “Maybe” is actually a real-life story that I saw that happen during the Barcamp06.

Innovation Flow at NCL

2009-08-30T07:05:00.000-07:00

I delivered an Innovation talk to scientists at the National Chemicals Laboratory, Pune on 27 August '09. NCL is a premier lab run by Council for Scientific and Industrial research, Government of India. I spoke on Innovation flow - the science of flowing Ideas and Inventions into Technology Innovations.

You will find the Presentation Material "Innovation Flow" at SlideShare:

I have posted the presentation in two parts http://www.slideshare.net/shankarmv/innovation-flow-shankar-framework
http://www.slideshare.net/shankarmv/innovation-flow-shankar-triz

Alternatively, you can find this and a few more of my presentations at my LinkedIn page:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/shankarmv

Innovator's advice for Innovators - what is the smart thing to do when the going gets tough?

2009-08-06T03:32:00.000-07:00

Art & Innovation seems to go together. Art Fry (3M) of PostIt fame has become a legend in Innovation circles. Here is some news about Art Fong, an innovator from HP. Art Fong has a piece of advice for Innovators - I am sure you would like it.

http://www.thenextbench.com/t5/Blog/Heritage-of-Innovation-Preview-Excerpts-from-an-Interview-with/ba-p/43699#A801

Phil (McKinney of Killer Innovation) recently interviewed Art Fong, who was personally recruited by Bill Hewlett to Hewlett-Packard in 1946.
http://www.killerinnovations.com/

About Art Fong:
Prior to joining the HP team, Art had many groundbreaking achievements in his career. He was a part of the development of the first AM/FM radio and radar technology, which became an integral part of the World War II efforts against the Axis. During his time at HP, Art made major engineering contributions to the company, with innovations such as impedance-measuring instruments, a line of signal generators, and the first calibrated microwave spectrum analyzer. At one point, his innovations generated a staggering 30 percent of HP’s revenue.

Art Fong's advice for fellow innovators and engineers:

.. when the going gets tough, go backpacking, fishing, skiing, so forth. Relax. It gives you a break when your problems are all mixed up in your cranium. I found sudden answers while looking at the clouds, a falling star, or a fawn. Thinking of problems while in a new environment often leads to a new path to the solution.

I believe in his advice. Many great Inventors and Innovators have expressed simillar views.

How to flow Ideas and Inventions into Innovation

2009-08-05T03:16:00.000-07:00

Most of us make our daily living by generating creative ideas, solving tough technical problems and translating our ideas into inventions. Now what would give us greater satisfaction? – Innovation, i.e taking our insightful ideas and breakthrough inventions successfully to the market. How good are we at Innovation? – the present statistics are quite discouraging - typically, for every hundred good ideas, ten may lead to breakthrough inventions and one to an innovative product that meets a critical need of the customer. To accelerate the Innovation process and to maximize the Return on Innovation, we need a systematic Innovation process that will (a) focus and structure our ideation efforts (b) align our ideas to solve a critical need and ensure that the Customer sees added value and most importantly (c) give us the satisfaction of seeing our idea through the end of the Innovation Funnel.

As an inventor, I have often wondered how to bridge the gap between invention and innovation. When I got into managing technology programs, I struggled to defend and nurture those promising out-of-the box ideas that tend to get killed in conventional stage-gate processes. To create an effective Innovation strategy, I wondered how I can balance the capabilities of emerging technologies and the needs of emerging markets. I studied many Innovation processes, creativity tools, consulted with Innovation experts, researched many Innovative organizations (Google, 3M, Apple, Toyota, P & G etc) and also learnt from facilitating Innovation in R&D organizations (GE, Tata and Dow). I found that the secret to successful innovation lies in systematically growing the innovation potential of ideas.

I evolved my Innovation approach based on TRIZ – Theory of Inventive Problem Solving - to address primary concerns like:
• How do we make sure that we are solving the right Problem?
• How to balance Imagination Vs Knowledge and come up with creative, yet technically feasible, solutions?
• How to learn from creative ideas and smart solutions that have solved similar problems in other domains? How to integrate this knowledge into our solution?
• If our technical expertise / domain knowledge alone is not sufficient for Innovative Problem Solving – then what other new skills do we need to learn?
• Is there a systematic approach to sail the Idea through various barriers and translate it in to an innovative product?

We will talk about each one of these themes in the days ahead.

Innovation Workshop at ARAI, Pune

2009-07-30T00:19:00.000-07:00

I conducted a one-day workshop for engineers and scientists at the Automotive Research association of India, Pune last week.

You will find the Presentation Material "Innovation Flow" at my LinkedIn page:
http://www.linkedin.com/in/shankarmv

Morning:

My friend Prashant (PhD Mech Eng from IIT Bombay, > 10 Yrs Industrial excperience and expert on Automotive technology) facilitated this session. I used the first half of the day teaching tools to define and analyze the Problem. We used Five-Whys for root-cause analysis, Nine windows to capture the breadth of the problem and TRIZ Function Mapping to identify the key interactions between various elements. We listed about 15 precisely defined technical problem statements at the end of this exercise.

We had a grand lunch at the ARAI Caffetaria and had a lively discussion with the participants over lunch. The ARAI folks were very enthusiastic about learning Innovation tools and they were all deep domain experts.

Noon:

In the noon session, we formulated TRIZ technical contradiction, used the Contradiction Matrix and discussed the Inventive Principles. The session started at 9.30am and went on till 5.30 pm. The session was kept very interactive and the ARAI team participated enthusiastically in the various problem solving exercises. Despite the grand lunch, nobody looked sleepy during the post-lunch session :).

Next:

We agreed to have a follow up session next on focused brainstorming of Ideas using TRIZ Triggers and Evaluation of Ideas using Six Hats method.

Ideality directs Innovation Flow

2009-07-26T11:32:00.000-07:00

The Idea of using Ideality concept to direct the Innovation Flow was popularized by TRIZ. IFR - Ideal Final Result - is a central concept of TRIZ. This is about visualizing what is the ideal situation to be in - what does it look like - what happens when this Ideal situation is realized. This visualization is practised without being constrained by what is possible (today) & what is not. IFR is about escaping from current constraints and thinking about an ideal situation. IFR is a powerful concept that can be used well beyond technical problem solving.

My Mantra for Innovative Problem Solving is Focus - Escape - Move. Focus on all the zones and dimensions of the problem - i use tool slike 9 Windows and 5 Whys. The next stage is to escape from the present Paradigms - i use TRIZ tools Function Maps and Ideal Final Result here. The third stage is Move where i use the TRIZ Contradiction matrix and Inventive Principles. We will have more than one innovative solution after these three steps. Further i use the TRIZ evolution potential analysis to figure out what next.

The technology evolution S-curves are driven by improving Ideality. Ideality is defined as the ratio of the functional benefits to the sum of cost and harms for a given technology. One can evolve the technology by developing solutions that offer more benefits, less cost or less disadvantages. All these are in the positive direction of technology evolution. TRIZ tools help us with triggers to move from one S-curve to another. We will look at some interesting examples this week.

When does Innovation flow ?

2009-07-21T02:16:00.000-07:00

I believe there will be a day when Innovation flows. I visualise ideas flowing over many barriers and finally merging into the ocean of Innovation. The shape of the idea gets continously modified as it flows.

I used to talk about bridging the gap between Idea and Innovation. On deeper meditation, i realised it is not two distinct concepts that we need to bridge. It is one continuous concept.

Our Mind is structured to flow ideas into innovation in a continuous way. If we differentiate between the two & try to transform idea into innovation through a structured effort, then we are going against the flow of our Mind.

Do we know when the logical left or the creative right takes control of our thinking process - it happens in a very subtle way - we will be better off if we train these two guys to work synergestically.