2016

54th R&D 100 Awards & Technology Conference 2016

54th R&D 100 Awards & Technology Conference LinkedIn

The 54th R&D 100 Awards & Technology Conference is coming right up, November 2-4.  The conference, now in its second year, will open at noon on Wednesday and continue through noon on Friday.  The Awards Dinner, where 275 Finalists are now eagerly waiting to see if they will be one of the 100 Winners this year, will be Thursday evening November 3.

Last year, at the inaugural conference, we enjoyed great learning from top scientists, engineers, managers, and thought leaders from all over the globe – and a bit of fun at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.  Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway, and the other keynote speakers participated in the conference as colleagues from beginning to end. R&D Magazine did a great job inventing a concurrent conference that complimented their renowned R&D 100 Awards. I was pleased to be invited to present at this first annual conference.  My talk was on “R&D Complexity Increases In the Decade Ahead,” the areas that will keep us on our toes from increasing complexity.

This year’s conference will be held just south of Washington, DC.  R&D Magazine guessed the place would be hopping a week before the presidential election and they were right.  It should be great fun again.  I am pleased to be invited back for the second annual conference, this time to talk on two different subjects.


10 Techniques to Achieve Breakthroughs Through Innovation

Earlier this year, GGI researched disruptive, radical, and breakthrough innovation.  2015 marked the 20th anniversary of Christensen’s work on disruptive innovation. It was time to take a snapshot of how the body of knowledge had evolved over two decades.

10 Techniques To Achieve Breakthrough Innovation

 

Our work found ten distinct breakthrough strategies.  They vary greatly, from competing on business-models to specific market or business strategies to technology mastery to commercialization execution.  There is no common root to them, except that your company and industry will know they are experiencing a breakthrough from a new or a changing basis of competition.


12 Trends in the Science of Managing R&D and Product Development

After my presentation last year on Complexity, R&D Magazine asked me to build off it and to make recommendations on how to manage in the decade ahead.  I presented this work for the first time at a conference in Poland in April of this year.  Subsequently, some areas have been refined and shored up.

12 Trends In The Science of Managing R&D and Product Development

 

Directing and overseeing science, materials, technology, software creation-to-commercialization activities is already a good bit more challenging this past decade.  Well, not to disappoint, we have another tumultuous decade to go.  There will be another reset around 2025, once there are 100 billion connected devices and that becomes the new normal.


Pleasant Surprise At The 2015 Conference Last Year

At the 2015 R&D 100 Awards Dinner last year at Caesars Palace some eight or ten different people, that had participated in either GGI’s Innovation or Metrics Summits or had been our clients, walked the red carpet to receive their individual or team member R&D 100 Award.


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Please Don’t Forget

GGI’s 20th Metrics Summit is October 18-20

A quick note to let you know that our 20th R&D-Product Development Metrics Summit is coming up, October 18-20 in Norwood, MA.

Our conference facility is equidistant between the Providence and Boston airports, and a comprehensive renovation has just been completed.

The place is beautiful and the food is great.

20th Metrics Summit Icon LinkedIn

Content is stimulating, and our Summit discussions and Workshop are great fun too.

Please join us.


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Recent Twitter Postings on Innovation & Metrics

GGI has become significantly more active on Twitter in 2016.

No chit chat.

GGI Tweets content from our primary and secondary research and publications; and about GGI events and presentations.

There are a number of substantive Tweets that went out October 7-9 regarding our recent work and near term plans.

A quick look.

@GoldenseGroup

 Please consider Following GGI on Twitter.

Innovation & Impact

Innovation & Impact Logo

“Innovation & Impact” is new scientific and business journal being launched by De Gruyter that focuses on “exciting high profile case studies concerning the process of innovation and its impact on society and markets.”

“The aim of the journal is to inspire researchers and entrepreneurs by exchanging practical examples of innovation. In particular, the journal focuses on case studies presenting routes of scientific ideas to the market. It also contains articles describing frameworks or institutions that are supporting the process of technology transfer.”

Innovation & Impact

My colleague, Dr. Grzegorz Liskiewicz, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Lodz University of Technology in Poland, is the Journal Editor. Dr. Liskiewicz asked me to join the Editorial Advisory & Scientific Board earlier this spring at an R&D conference in Warsaw. I am pleased to participate on the board alongside a number of innovation and technology transfer thought leaders in the European Community and the United States.

Initially the journal will focus on case studies in Poland and the wider European Community, but issues are planned for 2017 that will feature innovation and technology transfer in the United States and North America.

Please take a minute to visit De Gruyter’s home page for Innovation & Impact. I encourage all my colleagues to submit papers and case studies for consideration, whether they be from Europe or the USA – or spanning both geographies.

Thank you all for taking the time to give Innovation & Impact a closer look! Please let me know if you have any questions and I will do my best to answer them. Or, I will put you in directly in touch with Grzegorz (Greg) or another member of the editorial staff depending on the nature of your inquiry.

Impact of Breakthrough Innovations on Design for Manufacturing and Assembly

The first systematic breakthrough innovation technique was introduced to the world in the 1970s, but it was not until the 1990s that the body of knowledge began to take off.  Last year, 2015, marked what numerous people have called the twentieth anniversary of disruptive innovation – introduced to the world by Clayton Christensen in 1995. During the past two decades, many companies and makers have targeted the creation of new-to-the-world products. These efforts have resulted in a number of systematic approaches that are all disruptive in their own way.

GGI performed secondary research and identified nine techniques that have emerged in the past twenty years. Our scan covered a number of notable periodicals including: Harvard’s Harvard Business Review, The Economist’s Chief Financial Officer, MIT’s Sloan Management Review, IRI’s Research & Technology Management, IEEE’s Engineering Management Review, IEEE’s Transactions on Engineering Management, ASEM’s Engineering Management Journal, PDMA’s Journal of Product Innovation Management, PWC’s [formerly Booz’s] Strategy+Business, and other publications.

Breakthrough Innovation: Nine Techniques [Machine Design – May 2016] gives a one paragraph description of each technique and provides active links to selected sources and writings for the reader to explore.  Please note that since the May issue was published, we have added “Lead User Analysis” to the list of breakthrough techniques.  Lead User Analysis preceded Clayton Christensen’s writings by fifteen years, but it is nevertheless a breakthrough innovation technique.

In this article, published in the July 2016 issue of Machine Design, GGI researchers went a bit deeper to explore the impact(s) of these breakthrough innovation techniques on the time tested practice of “design for manufacturing and assembly [DFMA].” DFMA has been integral to the effective launch of most industrial and consumer products for the past five decades.

Our goal was to learn which breakthrough techniques might increase the importance of DFMA practices during development versus those with a neutral or lessening effect on this important body of knowledge.

Impact of Breakthrough Innovations on DFMA

This article is probably not a high priority read for most folks.  But if you are involved with the design and development of “new-to-X” products, and/or the transition of these products into manufacturing and then the marketplace, there is likely something of value to be derived from taking a few minutes to consider these thoughts.

Impact of Breakthrough Innovations on Design for Manufacturing and Assembly [Machine Design – July 2016] examines the differing effects that radical, disruptive, and breakthrough product initiatives may have on DFMA over time.

Breakthrough Innovation: 9 Techniques

Last year, 2015, marked the twentieth anniversary of disruptive innovation – introduced to the world by Clayton Christensen in 1995.  Over the past two decades, many companies and makers have targeted the creation of new-to-the-world products.  This has resulted in a number of approaches that are all disruptive in their own way.  At this time, nine different techniques for achieving breakthrough innovation exist.

Breakthrough Innovation:  Nine Techniques

GGI performed secondary research to identify these nine techniques.  Our scan covered a number of notable periodicals including:  Harvard’s Harvard Business Review, The Economist’s Chief Financial Officer, MIT’s  Sloan Management Review, IRI’s Research & Technology Management, IEEE’s Engineering Management Review, IEEE’s Transactions on Engineering Management, ASEM’s Engineering Management Journal, PDMA’s Journal of Product Innovation Management,  PWC’s [formerly Booz’s] Strategy+Business, and other publications.

Breakthrough Innovation: Nine Techniques [Machine Design – May 2016] gives a one paragraph description of each technique and provides active links to selected sources and writings for the reader to explore.

South Korea & China Will Dominate TRIZ Practices

TRIZ is an innovation technique that professionals systematically apply according to a defined set of principles. Originally developed in Russia by Genrich Altshuller in the 1940s, TRIZ took a number of years to cross the ocean and become available in English. By the early 1990s, TRIZ gained a foothold in the U.S. and slowly began spreading globally from its Russia and USA “centers of excellence.” TRIZ is now practiced in at least 50 countries.

TRIZ is likely the most powerful innovation tool on the planet, and has been for the past twenty-five years. Altshuller set out to identify the common inventive principles that run across patents.  After examining a sample population of forty-thousand patents, he identified “76 Standard Inventive Solutions.”  As well, he found there are only “39 Characteristics That Technologists Seek To Optimize” and only “40 Inventive Principles To Optimize Characteristics.” Altshuller reduced many of the acts of innovating to a systematic process.

Rubbish you say?  Over the past twenty-five years others have analyzed larger sample sizes of up to two million patents. The new findings were not significant enough to change Altshuller’s published works.

Why hasn’t TRIZ become more prevalent at this time?  There are several possible reasons, and the answer is likely a combination of them.  With origins in Russia, and most of the world’s original experts coming from Russia, TRIZ didn’t hit western civilization with a running start.  The methodology is also complex.  Few westerners look at a rule-driven 39×40 matrix and want to dive in.  There is also a significant amount of time to learn the process to reasonable proficiency, about the same time it takes to become a six-sigma black belt.  And, until the past ten years, the priority across industries was supply chain optimization and operational excellence.  Innovation, in the big picture of time, is only recently at the top of the list – except for a blip in the late 1990s.

TRIZ is still not catching fire with western companies, but it is catching fire with eastern companies.  Very quietly, over the past decade, South Korean companies are rapidly adopting TRIZ.  Chinese companies are not far behind, and both groups are growing rapidly.

TRIZ Moves To South Korea and China

There are a handful of companies in the USA that each have hundreds of people practicing TRIZ.  That is a huge number.  Why haven’t we heard anything about it?  Because TRIZ is giving them a tremendous competitive advantage. Employees are discouraged to discuss the subject outside of the company, never mind to present their work at conferences.  TRIZ does not have a Jack Welsh that is going to get his company ahead first, then bring his best practices to the world.  Absent a Jack Welsh, TRIZ risks being just another tool in a long list of tools – except in Asia where its value is quickly being understood.

There are TRIZ-inspired designs all around us, but no one talks about it for competitive reasons.  If you have held one of those new water bottles that has a waistline and a much smaller cap, and uses half the plastic, you are holding a TRIZ-based design.  It seems a bit flimsy because we have become used to sturdy water bottles, but it stands the drop test like the cylindrical bottle with twice the plastic.  Imagine the cost reduction if you are a bottle manufacturer.  And, less water bottles slip out of one’s hand.  This thought process is now making its way into laboratories where dropping bottles can be a real problem.  The old fashioned cylindrical beaker, with the single lip at the very top, may eventually go the way of the dinosaur.

GGI has been following TRIZ, and its several manifestations in processes and logic engines for software, since the early 1990s. By the early 2000s, enough of Altshuller’s work had been translated and TRIZ became generally available to western companies.  In 2008, GGI researched the penetration of 67 innovation tools and included TRIZ.  Next to the usage of the USPTO web site and the use of internal wikis, TRIZ was the third most used technique of the 67 techniques we researched. The CTO of Invention Machine, one of the software companies with TRIZ underpinnings, had been speaking at GGI’s Summits since 2005 which continued until IHS in England purchased IM.

The Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies (Worcester, MA) found out about our research and our long-time interest in TRIZ about a year ago.  They invited us to keynote the annual USA TRIZCON2016 conference which was just held March 3-5, 2016 in New Orleans.  To prepare for TRIZCON2016, we performed original research on the global adoption of TRIZ since its translation into English twenty-five years ago.  We were told at the conference that our research was new-to-the-world, and was previously only anecdotally understood by a handful of people.

TRIZ Is Now Practiced In 50 Countries [Machine Design – April 2016] focuses on the rapid global adoption of TRIZ, which grew at a compounded annual growth rate of 40%, during the past decade.

Innovation For VUCA Times: 14th Summit

While the VUCA global economy still presents challenges on a regular basis, North America and Europe are becoming more predictable and hence stable.  This past year, companies have regained some moxie to attempt higher levels of innovation.  If you have not yet been able to participate in our Innovation Summit, 2016 is likely a good year to consider doing so.

Incremental For A Decade

Robert Cooper’s research showed that spending on “New To-The-World/Market” was down 43.7% and spending on “New Product Lines” was down 30.1%, while spending on improvements and modifications was up 80.1% this past decade.  Bottom feeding will not go on forever.  Soon, your company will be increasing the risk of its new product portfolio spending.  Year-over-year cost reductions and productivity gains are no longer putting up enough numbers on Wall Street.  And, some of the new product directions will be surprising.  It is the internet age.

Last year was a banner year for the development of new metrics aimed at measuring overall levels of innovation.  New measures in this area are an indicator of the demand for innovation.  R&D Productivity and R&D Efficiency were introduced, and Research Quotient gained some momentum.  RQ is focused on measuring the right level of investment, versus measuring the results of investments.  Another good sign.

Disruptive Forces Grow

Since our first Summit in 2005, GGI has constantly refreshed our curriculum.  As we wrote you last year, only a few pages of our original course book remain today.   We were pleased that several of our long term colleagues, who attended our original Summits, registered again for our Summit last spring.  All went well.

Let’s pick one example of keeping current.  2015 marked the 20th anniversary of Clayton Christiansen’s first publication on Disruptive Innovation.  Back in 1995, we looked at cascading s-curves to describe the science of disruption.  We were left to figure out our own mechanics on how to get there.  Last year, GGI researched the evolving “how to disrupt” methods that are starting to take shape.  We don’t think every one of these techniques makes for winning products, but they all have backers and most have the potential to do so.  If an executive asked you to define a product that innovates from the bottom of the pyramid, are you ready to take the lead on that project?  How about one that produces a big bang, or a digical outcome?

•  Reverse Innovation
•  Bottom of Pyramid Innovation
•  Trickle-Up Innovation
•  Disruptive Innovation
•  Emerging Technology Innovation
•  Big Bang Innovation
•  Digical Innovation
•  Sustainable Innovation
•  Design Thinking
•  Ambidextrous Innovation

Managers Migrate Practices

Our Summit always maintains its focus on management’s ability to fund, deploy, train, implement, measure, and to get a financial result from the subjects that comprise each of the eight modules.  While we do discuss tools and tactics and the like, it is always from the perspective of a manager being able to direct and/or lead innovation initiatives.  If you manage budgets, departments, functions, people, or projects our Summits are quite useful.

Dick Power and I continue to lead the Summit.  Adam and Bill address a large module on intellectual property, focused on the ability to create the best offensive and defensive positions and on how to assess their value in dollars.  Richard takes us through the possibilities of TRIZ, perhaps the most powerful single innovation tool available.

Please join us, or suggest that a colleague join us, for an unbiased articulation of the innovation and intellectual property capabilities that are available to corporations today. Some have said, “GGI’s Summit is an executive MBA on Innovation in three days.”

Companies That Have Participated *** Comments From Summit Alumni

We hope you will join us, Tuesday to Thursday, March 29-31!  There is a Reception on Wednesday evening.  Thank you for considering our Summit!

Early Bird Rates for the 14th Innovation Summit end Friday January 29, 2016 at 8:00 PM EDT.

14th-rd-product-development-innovation-summit

TRIZCON2016: An Opportunity To Further Innovation

TRIZ is an innovation tool and methodology that is based on an analysis of the inventive attributes of patents.  It is unique when compared to the some 350 innovation tools and enablers that are available to corporations.

GGI has been following the growth and evolution of TRIZ since the 1990s when its body of knowledge was first translated into English.  Originally the work of a single person, Genrich Altshuller, a low level officer in the Navy of the former Soviet Union in the 1950s, there are now some 18,000 people around the globe that have become certified in the application of TRIZ.  And, many more are practicing TRIZ without yet formally applying for certification.

As we know, for a myriad of reasons, it takes years and some times decades for techniques developed in the East to become accepted and adopted in the West.  Such is the case for TRIZ, translated from its Russian name as “the theory of inventive problem solving.”

Since 2008, the adoption for TRIZ has been growing steadily.  This growth has been driven by a combination of the power of the tool, the efforts of several non-profit and for-profit organizations that espouse its usage, the incorporation of TRIZ’s logic into several increasingly popular innovation software packages, and some large influential corporations that have made commitments to TRIZ within their company.  The companies that have allowed their interest to become public knowledge include Intel, General Electric, Boeing, DRS, Samsung, and Hyundai.

GGI’s most recent research on TRIZ was conducted late in 2015.  This “secondary research” effort involved the analysis of a number of public web-based sources and privately disclosed information to GGI.  This research built on our several previous “primary research” efforts on TRIZ during the past fifteen years.

To our surprise, after observing fairly uniform and even growth across countries in prior research efforts, our recent findings indicate that growth in Eastern Europe and especially in Asia now dwarfs the growth in most Western countries.  In fact, South Korea’s adoption is now approximately 15x that of the next nearest country on an absolute basis.  The skewing is so severe that it is necessary to remove South Korea from the data set in order to analyze the rest of the countries that use TRIZ.  Some 50 countries now have certified TRIZ practitioners, but, as you can see from the diagram below, South Korea’s overwhelming presence obscures their slivers of the pie at a global level.

 The Global Penetration of Certified TRIZ Practitioners

As a result of GGI’s unbiased research, Brad Goldense has been invited to deliver the keynote address at the largest TRIZ Conference in North America this year. TRIZCON2016 will be held in New Orleans on March 3-5, 2016 at Tulane University. Greater than half of TRIZ’s global rock stars will be presenting at this conference making it a worthwhile venue in which to learn more about this powerful innovation tool and method.

TRIZCON2016 - An Opportunity To Further Innovation

If you are interested, The Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies who produces TRIZCON has extended a 10% discount to anyone from GGI’s network that might like to register.  If you decide to attend, please use the code “TRIZGOLD” when registering to receive your discount.  Just so you know, GGI receives no financial remuneration for anyone registering from our network.

If TRIZCON2016 sounds too immersive to you, but you would like to learn more about TRIZ, GGI’s Innovation Summits have contained a “TRIZ Module” since 2005.  Along with some 65 other generally available innovation tools, we’ll be sure to up your awareness of what TRIZ may offer to you and to your company.  GGI will be holding our 14th R&D-Product Development Innovation Summit on March 29-31, 2016 in Norwood, Massachusetts.