Principles of Management DB- 300 Words

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Innovation is a collaborative process through which organizations abandon old paradigms and make sig- nificant advances. Innovative ideas come from several sources, including unreasonable demands, goals, and time pressures. An organization must cultivate innovation and link it to their business improvement strategies to realize benefits from innovation.

There are many blocks to innovation. Innovative ideas must be tested and implemented; otherwise, the innovators will not generate more ideas. Innovative ideas require work to imple- ment. The perfect solution is often there as a vision, a thought, a dream, or just a wish. But it is often far too complex for one person to take it into reality.

Many individuals possess great ideas but do nothing with them. Their organizations do not even know of their concepts. Unfortunately these ideas die because the creator kills them. Why? Perhaps the innovator recognizes that the idea may negatively impact her job or the job of co-workers, or maybe

INNOVatION by michael stanleigh

Guide to

Business strategies must evolve

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the innovator does not know how to explore the idea to take it from a vision to a reality. Furthermore, the innovator may be too quick to discard the idea because he thinks that no one would ever agree on how to structure the concept or pay for it.

Just how many innovative ideas in your organization regu- larly go nowhere? To protect innovative ideas, organizations need to create a forum for the innovation process and link innovative ideas to overall business improvement strategies. However, before they begin to think about using an innova- tion process, they must check their cultures in order to iden- tify innovative readiness.

analysis of innovation As an industrial engineer, how involved are you in identifying the culture for innovation in your organizations? In the analy- sis of various processes within your organizations, have you identified an innovation process?

Industrial engineers provide decision support to their orga- nizations by focusing on efficiency and process improvement through objective and detailed analytics. Industrial engineer- ing fundamentals should be included as part of their orga- nization’s overall strategy execution. Start by understanding what innovation is and then identifying, based on this un- derstanding, the extent to which they are engaged in creating innovations.

Innovation is not the result of a lone genius inventor — just about ideas or about individuality in thinking. Innovation is a collaborative process in which people in many fields con- tribute to implementing new ideas because teams are very important to the process. Products and processes, both pres- ent and future, involve people who will challenge the status quo. The person who moans and groans and complains the most may be the source of the next great innovation.

Change begins with an idea, an outlandish or unreasonable demand, or a goal that a continuous improvement process will not reach. Either situation will often spark innovation. How do you get these ideas? Being under the gun with a deadline adds a sense of consequence to the task and a purpose to spur it. Studies show that positive thinkers rise to a challenge. The more they are likely to face defeat, the more they want to beat it. Abandoning the status quo of rules, policies, and set procedures will free you to create. This is critical to successful innovation.

Before you implement a creative culture, truly understand what creativity entails:

• Creative thinking often springs from frustration. Like Einstein, we have to give the creative process time to work

by giving employees some free time to think. • Creative thinking is original thinking. To be original in your

thinking takes time and you won’t always do original think- ing sitting at your computer keyboard. Creative solutions to our workplace problems come to us at odd moments and as unexpected breakthroughs. A breakthrough may come when you are walking, driving in traffic, waking up, or about to fall asleep.

• Encourage your employees’ creativity. Edward De Bono, a world authority on developing creative thinking skills, believes that anyone can learn to be creative. When you pay attention to your creative flashes, you find fresh new ways of thinking about workplace problems.

• It’s possible to kill good ideas by too much evaluation. Instead of finding everything that is bad about an employee idea, list what is good. Let your evaluation come later.

You are engaged in just-in-time manufacturing, total quality improvement, computer-integrated manufacturing, imple- menting statistical methods, ergonomics analysis, computer system design, and various simulations. When you think about it, you’re already by definition engaged in generating ideas on many different fronts.

The great challenge for the industrial engineer, as it is for anyone at any level within organizations, is moving these ideas and innovations into reality. Roadblocks arise because the culture does not support your efforts in generating innovation, but these innovations will help the organization or department overcome current challenges. There is no clear innovation process that takes our ideas and moves them from innovation into execution.

a supportive culture Organizations with a culture that supports innovation are often customer-focused, value-driven, and strategic. They ensure that their operating strategies are developed through interactions with their employees, customers, partners, ven- dors, suppliers, and consultants. They review market trends and identify, through benchmarking, what is required to outperform their competition.

Innovation creates change. Budding concepts create new knowledge, methods, implementations, and paradigms and help to develop new products serving customers in new markets, competing more effectively and gaining greater revenues. Innovation helps all levels of staff to cope through increased knowledge including technical, economic, competi- tive, environmental, political, and social.

Organizations that focus on short-term thinking centered

40 Industrial Engineer

guide to innovation

on the bottom line create pressures on management and staff that diminish the focus on the long-term innovation process. Rather, it increases the focus on sustaining existing products and services. This constant examination of quarterly results vs. long-term planning creates a culture that is not supportive of innovation. Organizations that are characterized as innova- tive focus on their needs and their customers’ needs and op- portunities. They focus on achieving and maintaining profit- able operations. These organizations are constantly looking for ways to reinvent themselves and constantly introduce new varieties and generations of products and services.

Organizations that have a culture of innovation will mea- sure management’s performance based on their ability to create new value-added products, services, and ideas. The extent to which they do this with staff, rather than indepen- dent of their staff, demonstrates a clearer understanding of the use of an innovation process vs. management directive. This can be demonstrated in their regular department meet- ings. To what extent are these focused on exploring new ideas? How many of their staff are genuinely interested in (and will- ing to pursue) new ideas? Are they trained to understand the innovation process? Is there an aggressive effort in the organi- zation to build new opportunities based on the development of new services and products?

Innovative cultures permit all levels of staff to try new things. A barrier to realizing this can be found in cultures that insist on a requirement for compliance in every dimension. Individuals who do experiment are often punished, especially if they fail.

Where there is an absence of celebrating creativity and ideas, innovations rarely thrive. In contrast, organizations where the most talked about stories revolve around creativity inspire others to follow suit and build a culture of innovation.

According to Seth Waugh, CEO of Deutsche Bank Ameri- cas, culture is a critical factor in promoting innovation. Busi- ness leaders stimulate innovation by offering incentives to workers, creating an environment, and setting expectations. Waugh noted: “You must have people with that hunger to always learn, who are always open and who think about things in a different way. You always have to reinvent yourself tomorrow.”

Peter Linneman, finance professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and founding chairman of Wharton’s real estate department, had a more real-world perspective. He said there is no magic “Aha!” moment in most innovation. According to Linneman, “It’s just all hard work — showing up every day in the morning, studying plans, walk- ing around seeing what other people are doing. If you wait for

innovation myths vs. reality Myth: Innovation means developing new products and services. Reality: Innovation matters in every part of your organization. It is about creating new opportuni- ties, new businesses, new processes, new mar- kets, new environments, new methods of work- ing, and new methods of operating.

Myth: Innovation is too critical and proprietary to involve outsiders such as customers, suppliers, vendors, and consultants. Reality: External collaboration with every stakeholder is indispensable. This is how we learn, understand, and create new opportunities through their feedback and consultations.

Myth: Responsibility for innovation should be delegated to staff that is responsible for doing the day-to-day work. Reality: Innovation must be led and managed from the top. All levels of employees must be engaged in innovation. It is neither a manage- ment nor staff responsibility. It is everyone’s job. Great ideas are often lost because of one’s position.

Myth: Thomas Edison’s great inventions were entirely his own. Reality: Yes, he possessed the 1 percent of inspi- ration. But the 99 percent of perspiration was from his Menlo Park Laboratory team. Through them, he applied the innovation process, which helped his brilliant ideas materialize.

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eureka, you are never going to have innovation.” Intuit, a software company, ensures that the new hires

understand the company’s Holy Grail: Happy customers. Customer focus, wherein Intuit makes a difference in the cus- tomer’s lives, is the everyday mantra practiced by everyone at Intuit. It is demonstrated in their practices such as interview- ing and hiring the right employees who believe in customers first, postage-paid customer suggestion cards included with every copy of software (and follow-through on the sugges- tions), answering service and technical support calls for at least four hours each month, and researching how marketing and engineering staff literally follow a customer home and watch him install and use the software. They also have a database to track continuous customer feedback; a customer advisory panel of loyal customers providing feedback on new products, features, and quality; and focus groups to conduct market research on how customers buy and use software (to manage money and finances).

generating innovations Management must listen to employees and ask them ques- tions more often. Staff must listen to management for their visions and ideas and ask them to elaborate so that they can better understand the visions and goals of their organization. By taking the time to ask questions, the staff will create its readiness to start the innovation process.

Google’s engineering staff is encouraged to spend 20 percent of its time working on projects it feels passionate about. That philosophy is credited with generating services such as Google News, Google Suggest, adSense for Content (online ads triggered by the content on the page), and Orkut, a powerful social-networking site. Give your employees more time to think, and you’ll get better ideas. Creativity is useless without execution. Ideally, the organization’s culture of inno- vation will motivate employees to create new ideas and ensure that they get the support they need to use the innovation pro- cess and implement their visions.

Consider the following ideas about how to build the culture for innovation:

• Open communication within and between departments and across all management levels.

• Hire people with diverse backgrounds and experiences and avoid “cloning.”

• Encourage employees to find new ways to do work and empower them to make decisions.

• Create an organization that extends out to customers, suppliers, partners, and the environment.

• Stimulate research activities and provide employees free time to experiment.

• Allow employees to take measured risks (with small costs) and seize opportunities.

• Create processes to evaluate any idea on merit, regardless of where it is generated.

• Identify and separate the creative from operational func- tions in the organization.

• Use group creativity techniques frequently to promote team building and generate new ideas.

Every organization undergoes innovation or else it is not successful. The essence of innovation for you, as an industrial engineer, is discovering what your organization is uniquely good at, what special capabilities it possesses, and how you can help it take advantage of these capabilities to build products or deliver services that are better than anyone else’s. Every organization has unique strengths. Success comes from leveraging these strengths in its own service or product marketplace.

Today, many organizations operate globally. They find that innovation can occur anywhere, in any country or culture. Tra- ditionally, innovation has been a local issue, not transferred to other corporate locations. Innovation teams, similar to im- provement teams, work on innovation surrounding a product or service and then develop a centrally planned rollout. For process innovations, the local organization implements them, and then, because of enhanced communication, the innova- tion moves from location to location. This is accomplished by using the technology available today, including the Internet, teleconferencing, and videoconferencing.

Innovation is a process. To encourage yourself to take action, let me leave you with famous words of hope from George Bernard Shaw: “You see things and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things and I say, ‘Why not?’” d

As president and CEO of Business Improvement Architects, Michael Stanleigh works with executives and senior managers around the world to help them improve operational effectiveness through strategic planning, leadership development, project management, and quality management. He has been instrumental in helping his clients reduce waste and increase efficiencies and profits with his clear processes and quality approach.