“Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.”
- M.C. Escher
Introduction
Innovation rhetoric has become a commodity. You find innovation everywhere you look. Finding innovation is like finding a reality show on television – it’s everywhere. The more pervasive it becomes, the more diluted it becomes. The books about innovation all describe its importance. How companies must innovate or die. It is difficult to spot practiced innovation. We have to move to the point at which innovation is practiced habitually and methodically. We have to create an innovation accounting system. We have to train and foster the application of systematic innovation. We need the scientific component of innovation to be brought alongside of the artistic component. We have to make innovation REAL.
The Current State
“He who rejects change is the architect of decay.”
- Harold Wilson
Innovation has typically been the practice of a few special people in a business. They are seen as the possessors of a rare and special gift. Although there are people with this gift of innovativeness and creativity, they are not the exclusive holders of the right to innovate. With the advent and implementation of world-class methods like Lean and Six Sigma, it is clear that the font of business action needs systematization as well. What good is the application of world-class methods to the commercialization of an idea that is produced in an ad hoc manner and at a non-controllable quality level? It’s a bit like getting an invitation to an IRS marketing event. Nice, but who would go. There is a lot of buzz about innovation in the news. Every magazine has had its share of articles on the subject. Innovation is certainly the hip craze. But it should be more. It demands more than a few requisite demonstrations of its greatness.
You’ve read articles about Proctor & Gamble’s innovative efforts in Harvard Business Review. You’ve probably read about innovation at Intel and IBM. Those companies do not practice REAL innovation. Acquiring a profitable company is not innovation. Hiring smart people is not innovation. Spitting out patents like my daughter spits out sunflower seeds is not innovation. These may be important but they are not innovation. Not REAL innovation, but RHETORICAL innovation. And we don’t need anymore rhetoric. We need reality. We need an actionable set of principles and practices that can reduce innovation to an exact science. We need the fuzzy front end to be brought into focus. We need democratization of the creative process so that its application becomes predictable, repeatable, and reliable.
Connect and Develop or What Passes as Innovation at P&G
Business Week reported that innovation is in full bloom at P&G because its fourth quarter profits were up 44 percent. That is a great statistic but who says that the increase in profitability is due to innovation? G. Gilbert Cloyd, P&G’s CTO, stated that he has encouraged different departments to work together – that’s collaboration not innovation. Cloyd also describes the addition of a focus around the desired consumer experience – that’s meeting consumer needs not innovation. He also presents the integration of industrial design – that’s human factors not innovation. He calls concurrent development 360 degrees innovation. P&G has decided the consumer base is larger than what they thought – they call that cost innovation. Actually, that’s expanding your market and applying ethnography. Cloyd pays homage to Henry Chesbrough’sOpen Innovation but again, to Cloyd, that’s just collaboration. These are all important factors that lie at the feet of innovation – but are not REAL innovation. If Cloyd wanted to really discuss innovation he would be talking about their systematic approaches to ideation and problem solving. He would describe their innovation process associated with metrics like: time to innovate, innovations per capita, cost per innovation, initial market acquisition (as a measure of meeting consumer needs post launch), patents per capita, discontinuations per capita, cycle time per innovative process phase, innovation proficiency or innovative quality. Cloyd would also be able to describe their innovation training program and its impact it has on P&G’s organizational innovative ability. But he only has rhetoric. When you’re P&G that could be all you need.
What We Need Now
“The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.”
- Arthur Koestler
Innovation needs structure. We need to originally explore the regions of creativity so we can bring method to the madness of originality. We need to expand that special resource known as innovativeness so that we are not dealing with a finite resource but with a renewable one. We need to give everyone in an organization the chance to develop innovative competencies. We need to make the systematic application of innovation real.
What does real mean? The Latin root is “realis” which means relating to things in law, or “res” which is relating to a “thing.” Merriam-Webster defines “real” as:
1 : of or relating to fixed, permanent, or immovable things
2 a : not artificial, fraudulent, or illusory :
2 b (1) : occurring or existing in actuality
(2) : of or relating to practical or everyday concerns or activities
(3) : existing as a physical entity
Therefore it is easy to see that “real innovation” is tangible and can be measured, calculated and touched. Something we can devote a systematic analysis to. Something that we can make permanent. Something that we reduce to habitual practice. Something we will make commonplace. Something we will introduce into the everyday stream of activity.
What REAL Innovation is All About
“He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.”
- Francis Bacon
REAL Innovation is about the underlying principles of systematic innovation. It is about the application of systematic innovation to business problems. It is about the formation of processes that increase innovative process repeatability. It is about building a community of innovation professionals (everybody) and providing a forum for the habitualization of innovation.
REAL Innovation is about the evolution of business excellence. It is about the Third Wave1 and all the ripples that it causes. It is about the exploration of the impact that innovation will have on business and how that impact may be maximized and dollarized. REAL Innovation is about the struggle to create the body of knowledge that allows business leaders to learn at an accelerated rate. It is about the speed to innovative proficiency. It is about minimizing the number of trial-and-error attempts required to get it right. Forming a tripartite structure from which success will stem – better, faster and cheaper. It is about competitive excellence and the role innovation plays as the DNA of survivability. Innovation holds strategy and execution together in a business model just as the four bases of DNA (adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine) hold the double helix together. In business the equivalent of the four bases would be Infrastructure, Culture, Method, and Proficiency. Innovation is intertwined with excellence as much as productivity and quality.
Conclusion
The “why” of innovation has been answered thousands of times. Without innovation, an organization is caught in the death spiral of continuous improvement on a single, finite evolutionary path. Businesses must reinvent themselves if they want to survive. This reinvention has to be driven by strategic and disruptive innovation. Systematic innovation must be the core of any program engaged in ideation and problem solving. Innovation must become systematic and its’ outputs made repeatable, predictable and reliable.
________________________________________
[1] The First Wave was the evolution and maturation of Productivity. The Second Wave was the evolution and maturation of Quality. The Third Wave is the evolution and maturation of Innovation. The reader may investigate this concept further by reading Dr. Slocum’s, Mr. Decarlo’s, and Mr. Silverstein’s book, INsourcing Innovation.

Read the report now… Innovation Strategies for the Global Recession

Dr. Slocum is excited to be an integral part of this activity. The transition from innovation as art to innovation as both art and science is an exciting field. Characterizing innovation with CAx tools and methods is a key element of this successful transition.

IFIP TC5 Website
CAI Working Group Website

There are eight main patterns of evolution from the TRIZ methodology.

Systems evolve according to specific principles that have been derived by decomposing the historical progression of many products and services. One such principle is the Mono-Bi-Poly pattern of evolution (I also call it the Reduction Principle). The Reduction Principle may be used to identify the next generations of a particular system. This principle states that a system provides a function or a set of functions to a customer. The type and number of functions may be modulated over time to improve the product or service.

Within the TRIZ world, another way of looking at this pattern of evolution (increasing complexity, then simplicity) is in terms of hybridization. As a system gets more functionality and gets more complex, it splinters into more and different parts. But over time, the added functionality collapses or hybridizes back into a simpler design.

You see this happen in manufacturing repeatedly as systems add part counts during the period of increasing functionality, then reduce part counts as designs are simplified to provide the same functionality.

Take a pencil for example. In the beginning it was just a piece of wood with a length of black lead. In the language of a TRIZ practitioner who understands the dynamic progression of hybridization, this simple writing system is a “homogeneous mono-system.” Then when someone added an eraser to the pencil, it transformed from a homogeneous mono-system to a “heterogeneous bi-system.” That is, the pencil performed two different functions, writing and erasing, within the same system.

After more time, mechanical pencils could incorporate different colors of lead so you could write in black, red, green, and blue — using the same instrument. In TRIZ language, you can say that the pencil with the eraser became a heterogeneous poly-system. It performs more than one function by adding more parts and complexity.

But now you have a multi-colored lead pencil that collapses the colors back into one length of lead which, depending on the angle it is held, will write different colors. With this advancement, you now have a new heterogeneous mono-system that writes all the different colors with nearly the simplicity of writing with one color, while providing the eraser, of course.

So with the pencil, you see a very simple illustration of how systems evolve toward increasing complexity and added functionality, and then toward increasing simplicity with no erosion of function. The evolutionary principle of hybridization is universal — meaning it has been validated over and over again. Naturally, in the drive to be better, you try to take the best of one system or technology and mix it with the best of another to get the best of both. This is the perennial drive of the fittest, and it won’t be denied.

Another example of hybridization is the work of biologists who engineer the best properties of one system into the best properties of another, while simultaneously canceling the drawbacks of each as they relate to the objective at hand. An old but good example is the cross-breeding of two different plant seeds, one that survives in dry climates, the other that survives in cold places. Although neither could live in a cold, dry place, the hybrid can.

So because of intentional hybridization, the plant is more robust to temperature and moisture, and you can use this principle to explain what happened next in the progression of quality and TQM. After the practice of SQC became solidified as a viable means for improving and controlling manufacturing processes, why couldn’t it be applied to other processes as well — in procurement, administrative departments, distribution, and marketing?

What can’t the seed grow in more than one climate? Why can’t the pencil write in blue and green and not just black? Why can’t the principles and practices of quality control be applied outside of manufacturing?

By the force of evolution, SQC expanded and diversified into all departments and functions of an organization, and the Japanese drove it there until Armand Feigenbaum coined the term Total Quality Control, or TQC. The homogenous mono-system (SQC) became a homogeneous poly–system (TQC) as it expanded the function of quality improvement and control to everything an organization does.

Not incidentally, around this same time when the industrial economy was growing rapidly across the globe, others were working to develop so many other aspects of what you now take for granted as the underpinnings of business success.

In Japan in the 1950s, the forefathers of Lean Manufacturing were pioneering the methods of flow, waste reduction, inventory control, and operational speed. In Russia, a team of engineers were developing the empirical basis for product, process, and organizational innovation. Also in Japan, others were developing Hoshin Kanri methods, which quantitatively connect the functions and processes of an organization around strategic priorities.

Fast forward to the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, when certain families of management tools collapsed into themselves, forming simpler and more integrated versions of formerly fragmented systems. By tracing the development of TQM, you arrive at a point in the United States when all the tools of SQC became packaged together for ease of deployment and application into a set of standards known as the Baldridge criteria, and this was really the defining time when the system known as TQM became a big tool itself, a homogeneous poly-system that reduced defects and variation and improved the quality of products and services focused on customer needs.

Still later, the components of TQM were dovetailed with other key systems and practices, such as David Norton and Robert Kaplan’s Balanced Scorecard. After all, what good is quality improvement if you can’t trace its impact? It was around this time that Motorola began driving hard with a methodology called Six Sigma, which had its beginnings as a big hammer for pounding the nails of product quality to the point of no more than 3.4 million defects per million opportunities for defects at the quality characteristic level.

After some evolutionary momentum, Six Sigma extended its data-driven reach to focus on creating significant financial return, first in the form of cost reductions born of process improvements, and later in the form of growth by its application in sales and marketing. In addition, Six Sigma injected the agenda of quality into the top executive level of corporations, materializing TQM’s former lip service to top management involvement.

With a connected system of performance metrics, hard accountability at the executive level, top- and bottom-line impact and large-scale deployment, Six Sigma achieved the dream of TQM and became the world-class mono system for performance capability.

But for all this, Six Sigma is still just an extension of the quality movement, with new functionality first made more complex but now made simpler and more commoditized through programmed deployment designs, e-learning, and other software aides and technologies. The evolutionary trend of “complex to simple” was augmented with the evolutionary trend of “decreased human involvement,” another TRIZ tenet, and you arrive today at a place where Six Sigma can be implemented in an organization with less effort and greater return on investment than ever before[1].

——————————————————————————–

[1] David Silverstein, Neil DeCarlo, Michael S. Slocum, Insourcing Innovation, Taylor & Francis, to be published November 2007.

 Continuous innovation is the logical progression of what is. It may be the addition of features or functions based on an existing platform. Typically the development and manufacture of these derivative devices is only slightly more complex than the previous generation. These types of innovations are great for preserving or extending the profitability period of a portfolio. As the portfolio matures, the need for a discontinuity increases. The organization must innovate in new areas that are unrelated to previous work. The type of creativity that generates great derivative products is not suited for the generation of a discontinuity. Strategic Systematic Innovation (SSI) is required. SSI is the set of capabilities that will empower an organization to produce a concept that is discontinuous from all others. While leveraging core competencies, a novel portfolio can be created. This discontinuous portfolio creates a new profitability curve and minimizes the risk associated with a limited and mature portfolio. The discontinuity is the way to evolve your organization. 

 Without a systematic approach for the intentional creation of discontinuities (or disruptive innovations), the organization is left to the mercy of fiat and chance. This is not an envious position to be in. You want your innovation to be a regular and habitual product of the systematic application of principles, methods, and discipline (just like your quality and production capabilities). You don’t want innovation at your organization to be classified as an OOPART by the business archeologists of tomorrow, do you?

Some have made the observation that all that can be invented has been invented. This is not my position although you could argue that the number of high level inventions has diminished over time with the overwhelming majority of patents issued being on a significantly lower innovative level. Johann von Goethe has stated that innovation has changed such that the solution to you r problem may already exist and therefore your task as the problem solver is to find those pre-existing solutions and ADAPT them to suit your purpose(s). This makes for a different approach to the search for an innovative solution. It isn’t novelty that is pursued but analogy. That is why the discussions about non-linear problem solving are so important. The non-linear approach takes the problem solver from the specific to the generic and this generalization is the key to adaptive innovation. Adaptive innovation is the key to the ability of an organization’s ability to respond quickly to the needs of society and the customer. I am called this approach to innovation that leverages any ability to adapt and existing solution to suit for purpose Adaptivation. Adaptivation should be pursued as par t of any problem solving activity. This is due to the work that has been achieved in the field where patents and invention disclosure have been analyzed in order to catalogue the efforts of previous problem solvers. These efforts are made available to the problem solver primarily through the field of TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving). TRIZ is much more than an Adaptivation methodology however this aspect of TRIZ will be the focus of this discussion.

TRIZ as Adaptive

A fundamental aspect of the TRIZ methodology is the analysis of previous problem solving records. These records are invention disclosure, patent records, and historical observations classified as heuristics. Observations were made concerning the specific problem and the specific solution. The observations were coupled with analysis that affinitized specific problems and specific solutions into abstract groups. These abstract groups are useable when your specific problem is converted to an abstract problem that is analogous to one of the abstract problems from the researched group. A matrix then provides the appropriate solution concepts from the solution group. This empirical approach allows the problem solver to practice systematic adaptation. This reduces innovation process cycle-time and prevents the generation of previously discovered solutions thereby eliminating the waste of duplication from innovation. This increases the efficiency and the effectiveness of the process. This provides improvements in ideation that make the organization’s ability to respond on the same scale the rate of evolution for the societal and customer needs. This process doesn’t preclude the search for the novel but is used in conjunction with it. This non-linear approach is both convergent and divergent and therefore appeals to the different problem solving styles present in the organization. Adaptivation will allow the organization to increase performance across several problem solving metrics and integrate the brilliant work of past problem solvers into your organization. The process is relatively easy to learn and competency can be established in a few months.
Adaptivation needs to become a key competency in the Preservation strategy of an organization. It should also be the first step in the Evolution strategy as well. This allows for an ambidextrous application of adaptivation across the organization. Also, streamlining the demands placed on limited resources is a step in the right direction as part of the Third Wave (the systematization of the field of innovation). Doing more with the resources you have is an ideal solution and leveraging the pre-existing work of others expands the corporate intellect. This is a robust method of expanding the search space during problem solving. The expansion of the search space integrates another key component necessary in today’s evolving competitive environment: Open Innovation.

Adaptivation as an Open Approach

Adaptivation provides insight into solutions to analogous problems from industries, technologies, and even scientific fields that may not traditionally overlap with yours. This is an open approach to solution generation and it provides additional benefits to the problem solver. Not only are pre-existing approaches considered but the search space for these solutions is considerably larger than the organization’s typical search space. Typically the organization would look inwards at existing patents, competitive intelligence, or for team members to create the solution to the problem based on previous experience. Collectively this describes the closed approach to innovation whose narrow-minded focus is no longer an acceptable ideation approach given the evolving natures of competition and innovation.

The Romans wanted to throw off the Etruscan mantle and did so by copying the Etruscan weapons and combat tactics. The Romans also copied many of the Carthaginian weapons and naval vessels. This ultimately helped them to defeat their Carthaginian enemies on land and at sea. Again, solutions to Rome’s problems were developed by utilizing resources from the super-system.

The formation of the Republic and the Senate were developed using a different approach. The Romans built on data collected from the first census and established categories of citizens that would participate in the governance of Rome. The Republic was formed and this was an internal innovation (although assisted by the Etruscans, who had ordered the first census). SPQR was born. Rome continued to utilize both open and closed innovation during their dynastic reign. A historical overview of the Pax Romana indicates various amazing examples of each. I suggest a review would be helpful for those interested in history and the connections you will find there with the field of innovation.

Santayana wrote in Reason in Common Sense, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it”. I think we can learn much about innovation by studying history thereby accelerating our own understanding of open and closed innovation and their respective roles in the modern organization.

Enthalpy: Endothermic and Exothermic

Let me use concepts from chemistry and physics to elaborate on the concepts of open and closed innovation models. Enthalpy is the thermodynamic potential of a system. Some systems absorb energy during reaction and those are endothermic. Others produce energy during reaction and they are exothermic. The endothermic reaction is descriptive of a system where Gibbs Free Energy is greater than zero. In our innovation model, the endothermic system is equivalent to the Closed Innovation Model. In the Closed Innovation Model the company is aligning its’ innovation resources to search internally to find an innovative solution to a problem. At this point the challenge becomes one of adaptation. This method is very effective for preservation work. Using the existing body of knowledge and expanding the points of application is energy conservative.
This is the main method of problem solving in the innovation cycle.

The exothermic reaction is descriptive of a system where Gibbs Free Energy is less than zero. In our innovation model, the exothermic system is equivalent to the Open Innovation Model. In the Open Innovation Model the company is utilizing its’ resources to leverage the best idea possible disregarding the origin of that idea. This model requires a divergent foray into a much larger potential solution space. Finding a solution here may create a significant burst of smaller innovations that are also very important. This type of innovation also creates many opportunities for preservation innovation using the closed model. In this situation, the closed and open models are being used to drive growth and leverage existing intellectual property. Using these two systems cyclically is similar to a closed thermodynamics system. This maximizes efficiency and minimizes waste. It also drives the preservation and evolution of the business. This creates an ambidextrous response to the innovation problem and prepares a company for long-term survivability.

The Cycle

Innovation causes a rebirth in the organization across many levels. New product/service innovations create new needs for DfLSS and DMAIC. These opportunities create new scenarios for structured innovation to be applied at the tactical level. And the cycle continues. Also, new portfolio items can create the need for revisions to the strategic plan. This develops a ripple of energy throughout the system and can energize the company to an excited state where mediocrity can be avoided and change can be sought after in a focused and organized manner. A system in equilibrium is leveraging innovation to optimize the existing and create the new. This presents the opportunity to leverage Six Sigma to the fullest extent. It also insures a place for those mavericks in the company who need the entrepreneurial environment to truly thrive and be of maximum benefit to the organization. The renewal experienced with the Innovation Uroboros is a key driving factor in the dynamic prosperity of a company. Especially in today’s environment where customer needs are evolving faster than ever, societal needs are more difficult to target, and competitive response is quicker than ever.

The fact that innovation must be practiced continuously again puts it on par with quality. As improvement (quality) must be continuous so must innovation. The systematization of innovation will reduce its’ practice to a set of algorithms that can be learned and practiced repeatably. This will promote the ability of an organization to practice innovation cyclically and perennially- thus achieving the ambidextrous balance of preservation and evolution innovation.

We solve problems every day using analogies based on associations we have formed over time. This set of association standards is the source of our psychological bias. These association standards give us our ability to problem solve quickly but also limits the search space were we typically solution hunt. Therefore, our standard associations are helpful and harmful. In times where we are faced with flight-or-flight situations, quick decisions are demanded. In these cases, association standards based on our automatic intellectual function are appropriate and can create the ideal rapid response for our preservation. In situations where we don’t need rapid decision making it is imperative that we do don’t base our problem solving on these association standards. We need to utilize an expanded set of associations in order to bypass our standard bias. There are many techniques that can be used in order to change our association set. Let’s look at the focal analogy method.

Forced Analogy Method

The focal analogy method is a technique that drives ideation by helping the problem solver to formulate a non-standard association set. This takes place in a very simple fashion using three phrases that will stimulate ideation:

How is my problem like a ___________ (insert random object)?

The problem solver uses this phraseology in order to create novel associations. The random object should be generated in a manner that insures independence from any particular aspect of the specific problem (e.g., select a word at random from a dictionary or use special analogy cards). As the problem solving team answers the question with the random object inserted, a list of associations is created. Each association possesses traits specific to it and can be listed. The next step is for the problem solving team to use the association traits to brainstorm specific solutions to the problem in question. The brainwriting technique could also be used if a non-verbal ideation process if preferred.

We look to the realm of medical devices to demonstrate an example of the forced analogy model using the first phrase. The system in question is a device for cutting and clamping a vein/artery during surgery. The device resembles a pair of ergonomically designed scissors with a power source coupled to the mechanism to provide energy during use. A problem in this system is associated with the angle of approach to the vein/artery to be cut. If the angle is not 90 degrees then there is a quality loss. How is my angle of approach problem like a crocodile (selected at random)? If we list properties or traits of the crocodile we can make a new list of potential analogic vectors for association forming (idea generation). A crocodile:
(1) Has sharp teeth
(2) Has a powerful jaw
(3) Has a tough outer skin
(4) Has water resistant cover for eyelids (could list more but this is sufficient for illustrative purposes)
(5) Has a head that can turn to attack

We can then use each trait and create ideas using brainstorming which in this case is constrained by our new association vectors (the crocodile traits):

Ideas:

(1) We can serrate the blade so that cutting effectiveness is enhanced regardless of angle of approach
(2) We can design an alignment mechanism that orients the cutting blades as they are closed around the vein/artery
(3) Could create a blade pivot that would allow the angle of approach to be other than 90 degrees but then allow the cut to be 90 degrees

We could go on creating ideas but this demonstrates the principle.

The second phrase that could be used is:

How may I solve my problem with a ______________ (insert random object)?

This phraseology also allows the team to create additional novel associations. The method of random object generation should be consistent with the method used previously. Again, this technique will cause the problem solvers to form new associations which will be leveraged for ideation.

If we continue with our previous example we could create the phrase “How may I solve this problem with an elephant?”. We need to list traits specific to an elephant:
(1) Long trunk
(2) Big Ears
(3) Very strong
(4) Very heavy
(5) Tusks

We now use these traits to create associations and solutions to our angle of approach problem:

(1) Make the handles longer and articulated like an elephant’s trunk to make achieving required angle easier
(2) Increase the blade thickness to reduce impact of approach angle
(3) Create a guild mechanism that engages the vein exterior and may then be adjusted to modify angle of approach prior to cut

The final phrase used to force analogic thought is:

How would ___________________ (insert famous figure’s name) solve this problem?

Associations are then formed between the selected person (fictional, living, or historic) and the problem in question. The characteristics of the person are also listed. These associations and characteristics are used to ideate in a similar fashion using the previous two phrases.

Again using our previous system, “How would Oprah Winfrey solve this problem?”.

Listing well-known traits of Oprah is useful:

(1) Industrious
(2) Hard working
(3) Compassionate
(4) Would use experts
(5) Apply money to the problem
(6) Smart

We can now use these traits to create ideas:

(1) Use experts to redesign the device
(2) Find an alternate technology for cutting and clamping
(3) Find a way to achieve objective that may not require cut and clamp

These techniques, under the forced analogy methodology umbrella, allow us to create solution concepts based on non-typical associations. This is critical as otherwise the problem solvers will create solutions similar to those they typically create. This does not expand the search space or increase the likelihood of finding the ideal solution. Psychological bias is not defeated naturally. Methods like forced analogy are important as they give problem solvers constructs that may be used to defeat psychological inertial predictably.