The Eye For Innovation

Ne plus ultra

That is the attention grabbing title of a fascinating story in the February 2, 2008 Economist. 

In the current tsunami of writing on clean technology, green technology and in particular electricity generated from renewable sources, there is a serious gap:  the problem of storing electricity, or put the other way around providing a continuous flow of electricity as it is needed.  This problem is inherent in the most talked about alternatives such as solar and wind power.  It is one that requires as much innovation as does novel (i.e. non-fossil fuel based) generation.  Electricity storage is likewise the technological key to truly effective electric powered vehicles, in terms of endurance and speed.

The Economist article provides a good look at one innovation in storage:  a well-known technology, capacitors, have the potential to change the nature of the search for a better battery.  A capacitor stores energy as static charges on positive and negative electrodes separated by an insulator, whereas a battery works by having two chemical electrodes separated by an electrolyte (“battery acid”).  Capacitors charge and discharge very rapidly.  Batteries are slower but have more endurance (except sometimes on a brutally cold Minnesota morning).  The innovations at work and being demonstrated have to do with basic capacitor technology, and specifically ways of increasing the effective surface area of the capacitor’s electrodes.  There is also innovation at work in combining capacitors and batteries.   There are likewise new technologies for the insulator in a capacitor.  Beyond that, new nanotechnologies have the potential to dramatically improve the effective surface area and therefore a capacitor’s storage.  Thus arises the idea of the “ultra capacitor” – and the title of the article. 

What’s fun about this is that it is innovation at its best:  finding ways to improve and use old technology in novel ways. 

But read the article.  It is a good reminder that innovation can be found in ordinary places by those who have the curiosity and the motivation to do so.

Leading Innovation - The Third Principle - "Challenge"

In meeting the challenge of encouraging the risk-taking mindset that is at the core of innovation I have noted that one effective way to do that is to work backward.  When you look at an innovative organization what do you see  -  not so much what are the products or services it produces, but what are its essential characteristics.  They are:

                                    Awareness

Intense Motivation

High Skilled People

A Supportive Infrastructure

The first of these four is the most illusive.  Awareness doesn’t mean being conversant with the latest tools, techniques and technologies.  It is a characteristic that can only be built into an organization’s way of life with dedicated attention by management at all levels. 

We think of people with the awareness that allows them to take novel approaches to a business opportunity or meeting a challenge as being intuitive.  In my book The Eye for Innovation I relate two stories as an introduction to this topic these are those stories:

Bob Perkins was a designer in the early days of Control Data Corporation who had the responsibility for devising input-output equipment for its early computers.  One necessary input-output mechanism was the ability to read and produce punched cards.  Not technologically sophisticated, but at the time crucial to overall system performance.  These are Bob’s words, “I went down to Chicago, stuck my head into what was left of an old player piano company, and learned how to do a real cheap pneumatic read.”  Awareness.  Ideas and innovations arise from people’s special connections with the world around them.

Without question the semiconductor ranks among those inventions with the most far-reaching consequences in human history. As an innovator, Seymour Cray did not invent the semi-conductor, but he was aware of the possibilities it offered.  He was able to perceive geometric configurations of them that would result in the highest performance computers.  Seymour is a powerful example of awareness.  He was driven by a feeling for, and a deep-seated caring about, difficult problems that needed to be solved and, in turn, was intensely attentive to technologies he might find useful in designing computers of the highest possible performance.  In people such as Bob Perkins and Seymour Cray, there is an innate curiosity about problem solving that heightens their awareness of the possibilities for problem resolution.

It is a considerable leap, however, from a few innovative individuals to an organization that is similarly attuned. In nearly every organization one may find a creative individual. That does not make the company highly innovative. It is a corporate culture of awareness that is the basic building block of creative energy.  This characteristic of awareness can be learned, and, with practice, it can be honed to rewarding sharpness. Most of us will never design a supercomputer, but each of us can know the satisfaction of innovation, of devising a novel solution to the oft-felt dilemma, “There’s gotta be a better way.” Mostly we learn this skill through experience and practice. That’s not surprising. What is surprising is how few organizations know how to challenge employees and give them the opportunity to learn and practice that skill. Of all managerial inanities none is more regrettable than to deprive people of the opportunity to learn and exercise caring curiosity--the single most important skill to corporate health and renewal.

This caring curiosity  -  awareness  -  can be engendered in many ways, some seemingly somewhat mundane, some of major strategic importance to the company.  In the more routine category, consider TQM.  A vast amount of information has been produced on the Total Quality Management (TQM) movement, which, under the prodding and leadership of W. Edwards Deming, found its way into management practice globally. The thrust toward total quality resulted in such nationally accepted programs as the Baldrige National Quality Program.  TQM, however, is notably absent in the literature on innovation. This is unfortunate and reflects a mistakenly limited view of TQM, as well as the general mysticism that surrounds innovation. TQM tends to suffer from the incremental perspective that “continuous improvement” imposes. It suffers even more from the idea of minimizing variations from the norm, or from the product specification. The result is that TQM is associated with operational effectiveness only and has little to do with the creation of new things--new products, new services. Actually TQM can be a training ground for innovative thinking.

At Control Data TQM was approached within a cohesive innovative culture. In introducing the practice of TQM into Control Data, I stated this as the guiding principle:

       "Control Data wants each employee to believe two things:

       What I think and do matters to Control Data’s success.

       Always think and act on the statement, ‘There’s gotta be a better way!'”

At the level of strategic importance there is the matter of technological collaboration.  Executives who are capable of good strategic management have a clear cut idea of the distinction between those technologies, that is know how, that they must have just to be in the competitive game and that technology, that know how, that will give them a distinct competitive advantage.  The former can be thought of as “necessary,” the latter as “sufficient” to win the competitive battle.  One of the ways necessary technologies can be obtained is through collaboration with another company (or companies). 

Being aware of how others are attempting to use any given technology to meet their product or service goals is inherently eye-opening.  To empathize with another person, to see the world as that individual does, requires a much deeper understanding than what simply knowing about their circumstances can offer.  It requires solving a different set of problems with, more than likely, a different set of resources.  In short, it stimulates innovation by stimulating an awareness that there are new and different ways to look at and solve problems.

An example of collaboration at work in wind generation: before utilities can integrate wind generation on a large scale its effects on the grid must be accurately modeled.  Wind generator manufacturers historically spent significant resources to create proprietary models.  They looked upon this technology, i.e. the models, as offering competitive advantage in marketing their generators; the models were a “sufficient” technology.  For the utilities however they were merely something they had to have as part of building a total electricity generating system; the models were a “necessary” technology.

Abraham Ellis is an engineer at PNM Resources, a mid-size utility holding company in New Mexico and Texas, and a member of the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC).  Abraham became a member of WECC’s modeling and validation work group.  His view was that the lack of accessible models was hurting all parties, suppliers, utilities and ultimately, of course, the customers.  He naturally encountered skepticism from wind generator manufacturers.  There had been previous attempts at collaboration that had failed.  But Abraham persisted, marshaled support from the American Wind Energy Association, National Laboratories, and the Dept. Of Energy and transmission providers.  Finally he won commitment from the wind generator manufacturers.

A collaboration modeling group was established.  The result is models that are becoming industry standards.  Everyone benefits including the manufacturers.  Abraham says, “Manufacturers will no longer need to pay a consultant to revise a model every time they change a resistor.  Interestingly, we [the utilities] don’t need that level of detail, yet the manufacturers’ former insistence on [that kind of] specifically why what makes their models proprietary.”

One more example then of how technologically collaboration can provide both innovation and increased awareness of technological possibility.

There are still other ways to provide people with the opportunity to learn and exercise caring curiosity and to increase their awareness of problem solving opportunities.  One example of this is the problem of increasing the healthcare costs that companies face.  This is not a new problem.  Poor health and physical sluggishness have long been recognized as major factors in poor employee productivity, as well as increased medical costs to employers and employees.  By the 1970s some companies were offering exercise and fitness facilities to their employees.  My company, Control Data, conceived a much more holistic wellness program that encompassed diet, lifestyle, stress reduction, safe practices at home and while traveling and smoking cessation in addition to exercise and physical fitness.  It was called Staywell.

At its core this program involved improved information technology, especially wellness training and education. That was Control Data’s kind of business.  Internal necessity was turned into external business opportunity. The result was a new business that grew and prospered and ultimately was spun off as a separate company.  Those who participated in this process not only became aware of new problems and developed greater problem-solving, that is innovative expertise, many of them developed entrepreneurial expertise as well.

Awareness is cultivated in many ways.  Providing these opportunities is a matter of executive mindset and leadership.  Whether TQM is viewed as just a necessary part of everyday operation or in addition to that as a way to increase awareness, whether dealing with rising healthcare costs is viewed as a burden or an opportunity to increase awareness and creativity, is up to the leaders.  Those leaders who understand that awareness results from practice, practice, practice, will seize such opportunities for their people.  That’s the way they walk the talk. 

In some employees it will blossom into new products or new businesses, but it is a fact of life that all of us are surrounded by problems that can benefit from attention . . . if only we’d give it.  It is a matter of training minds to think in new ways and to recognize possibilities amid everyday experiences and observations.

Almost inseparable from an organization that exhibits awareness  -  this characteristic of a seemingly extraordinary intuitive ability to find novel ways to do things  -  is a characteristic of truly motivated, intensely motivated people.  I’ll come back to that point in a future posting.

Leadership - the Importance of Values and Beliefs

This discussion has been more disjointed than I intended when I started it last August.  The exciting events before, during and after the October 12^th Celebration of Control Data’s Legacy of Innovation were so numerous that they just seemed to crowd out everything else, including this discussion about “Leading Innovation” and the values and beliefs that help guide managers and executives in a world characterized by ever increasing pressure for ‘innovation’!

Interestingly, October 12 also marked the publication of a special Economist report on innovation and I will also refer to it in a few instances.

First let me go back and repeat five basic believes or management principles that experience has taught are essential to effective leadership.  They are:

·         Believing in and appreciating the true reward that goes with successful management leadership

·         Understanding that individual style is essential to successful management leadership

·         Having a clear view as to the nature of the challenge of successful management leadership

·         Being able to sort the wheat from the chaff regarding the responsibility of successful management leadership

With regard to the first of these let me just sum up what I said in that first (August 15) note:  Once you have experienced the thrill of achieving a complex and difficult goal because you were able to assemble the resources and guide others to their success in helping to do that, no other reward, not monetary, not recognition, will ever give you the same thrill.  That’s it.  That’s the real thing.

The second of these principles is much more profound than it seems.  The word ‘style’ has a somewhat superficial or cosmetic ring to it.  But one’s leadership style is not that at all.  It starts with that old Greek adage:  Know Thyself.  Knowing who you are is more than simple awareness  -  I am tall, I like the outdoors, I speak poorly but write well and so on and so on.  It is a matter of careful assessment of one’s characteristics  -  and character  -  in the context of the leadership task at hand.  That context doesn’t just comprise physical resources and financial resources, but most important, people.  Your task at its very essence is to help those people achieve their full potential and thus accomplish the goal that will make everyone successful.  One of the most common failings in business management training is imitation.  That’s why the business hero of the day is such a lucrative source of books on management.

I would say however that you are more likely to learn from failures, from weak leaders than successful ones.  I had a boss once whose sole aim was to be CEO of the company.  He taught me in a very vivid way that those whose focus is on themselves rather than the success of those they lead will soon have everybody in difficulty.  Perhaps not difficulties as dramatically fatal as General Custer at Little Big Horn, but difficulties that will leave scars.

Learn from everyone, imitate none.  Easy words to remember, very hard advice to execute. 

The third principle is challenge.  A leader’s greatest challenge is to encourage risk-taking change agents while demanding accountability of all.  This is particularly difficult in large organizations.  Innovation is not in the normal DNA of large organizations but it can be consciously induced  -  ‘bio-engineered’ so to speak and separately nurtured.

More often than not, the people who are most innovative have traits that make them unappealing to the organization at large.  Since they frequently work, or at least seem to be, at cross purposes with the objectives of the organization. The leadership task requires an excellent sense of balance.  It helps to remember that while most innovators are mavericks, most mavericks are not innovators.  So the innovation task, in organizations, especially large ones, is a very great challenge.  All too often in the rush to “do something” executives revert to exhortation:  “We will be known as an ‘innovative’ company.”  Or worse they hire consultants to help make “our culture one of innovation.”  But innovating is not slogans on a wall.  It is hard , frustrating work that involves a lot of false starts and failure. 

So this challenge like many others in management and leadership can be greatly helped if we carefully consider what the end result should look like.  What are we trying to achieve?  When we look at an innovative organization what do we see?  There are four essential characteristics of an innovative organization:

·         Awareness

·         Skills

·         Motivation

·         A Supportive Infrastructure

In my next posting I will explain each of those and provide some clues for inducing them in the corporate DNA.