howardsmith - Howard Smith

For many global organizations, the value in their industry is shifting from perfecting the old, towards inventing the new - in processes, products and services. Today, companies are less certain that reducing development time, production costs, and product price is a sufficient strategy for corporate sustainability. Companies are wondering where the next generation of business value lies. Some have concluded that what I call their operating system for innovation is insufficiently robust. There is growing interest in methods that can provide more reliable innovation outcomes and the realization of more significant, and valuable, innovations. A subtle blend of process and science is required. Everyone who is anyone in innovation is talking about innovation as a process. It's an idea I helped to introduce to the market through my work with TRIZ and idea management. The concept is not so novel to those familiar with DfSS (design for six sigma). What's new, is that strong enterprise tools are emerging to support it. Leading companies are intelligently deploying these tools, in conjunction with collaboration technologies, to create the operating system for innovation.

The goal of innovation is to create business value by developing ideas from mind to market. It requires spontaneous creativity guided by disciplined business practice. Most companies find it tremendously difficult. A systematic and systemic search to reach solutions beyond the current state-of-the-art, innovation is powered by predictable and scientific methods. Rigor and training are required. My thesis is that the innovator is a problem solver, and that every solution poses a subsequent problem: how best to implement the solution. A paper about this appeared in CSC World:

Innovation isn't difficult because employees don't have good ideas. The world is awash with creativity and technological breakthroughs and many solutions. Rather, myriad obstacles in the idea-to-cash process limit a company's ability to innovate. Seen as the creator of new value, innovation isn't hit-or-miss, trial-and-error lateral thinking, but a repeatable process. What is innovative about innovation today is the emerging realization that it can be achieved systematically. Only by understanding the true nature of innovation can companies take the required steps to strengthen their operating system for innovation. A white paper was published by CSC:

Business and IT leaders own a complex set of interdependent problems with multiple owners, each with their own goals and agendas. The problem portfolio represents the aggregated tensions of an entire organization along with its suppliers, partners and customer relationships. The corporation cannot afford to allow across-the-board, uncoordinated problem solving in isolation, nor should departmental heads allow it. To do so creates inefficiency and, ultimately, unsustainable systems and processes. Enterprise solutions that are more useful than harmful must be created. Solving problems in isolation results in local usefulness that all too often causes harm elsewhere, such as additional costs arising from duplication. Everyone knows a story about departmental tribalism where one perspective on an issue is presented as the answer to the cost of the whole.

An obscure methodology originating in Russia in the 1940s, and which has mainly been applied in engineering, is, nevertheless, being used today by leading companies to strengthen their operating system for innovation. TRIZ and its modern developments - coupled to idea management - can provide techniques for breaking the apparent contradictions faced every day by key decision makers who have the task of balancing the various conflicting requirements that result from complexity and diversity. It is tempting to ignore these apparent contradictions or place them on the 'too hard' list or the back burner. Yet, very often, it is precisely these paradoxical problems that are the symptoms representing the tip of the wider systemic iceberg-sized problems that threaten to fundamentally undermine the organization's ability to perform and adapt. TRIZ analysis dissolves the apparent paradoxes and contradictions, separating them into their component parts. TRIZ and idea management disciplines foster progress in the face of previously recalcitrant difficulties, creating the agreed solutions pathways that reallocate resources, turning harm into use and enabling a sustainable orchestration of change.