Blog posts on innovation

Posts selected fromManagement Blog - Engineering Blog - Investing Blog and other blogs

• Patent Review Innovation

  Michael Crichton wrote an essay critical of the current patent law: This Essay Breaks the Law. I believe the US is making significant mistakes in how we are proceeding with the patent system, see: The Patent System Needs to be Significantly Improved.

  That’s the basic concept behind a pilot program sponsored by IBM (Charts) and other companies, which the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office appears poised to green-light. The project would apply an advisory version of the wiki approach to the patent-approval process.

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• Ackoff, Idealized Design and Bell Labs

  “Doesn’t it strike you as odd,” he said, “that the three most important contributions this laboratory has ever made to telephonic communications were made before any of you were born? What have you been doing?” he asked. “I’ll tell you,” he said. “You have been improving the parts of the system taken separately, but you have not significantly improved the system as a whole. The deficiency,” he said, “is not yours but mine. We’ve had the wrong research-and-development strategy. We’ve been focusing on improving parts of the system rather than focusing on the system as a whole. As a result, we have been improving the parts, but not the whole.

  We have got to restart by focusing on designing the whole and then designing parts that fit it rather than vice versa.

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• Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation

  How intellectual property influences innovation and growth in the economy depends on the application of intellectual property law. No intellectual property (IP) rights would hinder innovation. Complicated application of confusing and overreaching IP rights also hinders innovation. Now I see the USA systems as having overreaching claims of IP rights, IP rights granted for obvious ideas which then are used to extort those actually producing value and overall a system much in need of improvement.

  Related: The Patent System Needs to be Significantly Improved - The New Deadly Diseases That Severely Damage our Economy

   

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• Deming in the New Economy

  Innovation rarely comes as the result of an apple falling from a tree and hitting you in the head.
  Innovation is more of a process – sometimes simple and buried deep within the psyche of the individual, and sometimes methodically sewn into the practices of a team – that is put in motion by the desire to improve the status quo.

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• Not Innovation but Still Interesting

  There is an obsession with claiming ideas as innovation in order to sell to those that seek new magic bullets.  Often there is not only no magic bullet but no innovation involved.  But examples of using long neglected management ideas well is valuable as these examples show...

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• Simple Cell Phone

  Complex devices with many points of failure (both technical failure and user inability to figure it out) should not be the only option. Simple, easy to use, reliable devices would have a big market. Creativity is not just about more complex devices.

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• Amazon Innovation

  In my view Amazon is doing some very interesting innovation...

  I continue to believe they have a good shot at doing so going forward (and their core business is doing very well I think). Innovation often involves taking risks. Bezos is willing to do so and willing to pursue his beliefs even if many question those beliefs. That means he has the potential to truly innovate, and also means he has to potential to fail dramatically.

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• Innovation Examples (2007)

   The The North Face Endurus XCR Boa Trail Running Shoe has a new lacing system. The image doesn’t look that remarkable to me, but “This unique closure automatically micro- adjusts with foot movement to eliminate pressure points, kind of like a suspension system. The resulting fit is unique and unattainable with shoelaces. Plus the mechanical system never loosens or changes.” It seems reasonable that is important to their customers and something that required a new lacing system.

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• Knowledge Management – Management is Prediction

  ...There are several reason these ideas have not been adopted but one is that they require some effort to document and then evaluate (and often those are missing). So many see any time spent improving the system as waste (based on their actions not that they would say such a thing) – they are only happy when producing today or fire fighting to enable producing today.

  ... A good deal of thought is needed on how to use the technology tools to implement the ideas, but new technical solutions are providing options. Blogs, Wikis, improved search for stored data, the ease of creating intranet applications…. are some additional tools that can be used to improve.

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• Google Website Optimizer

  I think this tool is a very smart move by Google. As I described before, Google’s potential revenue is related to how profitable advertising with Google is for customers. If Google can improve the return of advertisers, the advertisers have more reason to advertise on Google to draw more potential customers. This service would be a good item to apply Barker’s implications wheel to and see what the downstream implications are – I think they are positive for Google 

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• Six Sigma Outdated? No.

  ...execution of six sigma often focused too much on cost reduction, optimizing short term projects (which resulted in sub-optimizing the entire system), ranking and rating employees… But innovation is not harmed by a good six sigma program – in fact a good six sigma effort a decade ago understood the importance of innovation perfectly well.

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• The Awesome Cat Cam (2007)

  This great project (CatCam) involved taking a digital camera and some additional equipment to create a camera that his cat wore around his neck which took pictures every 3 minutes. The pictures are great. The cat got photos of several other cats and seemed to like cars.

  ...

  This is my favorite home engineering project. The concept is great. The explanation of the technology is great. The adjustment to real life situations is great. The end result (the photos) is great.

  After writing this post, I interviewed the engineering behind the CatCam, Juergen Perthold - The Engineer That Made Your Cat a Photographer.

   

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• The New Age of Robots and What it Means for Jobs

  Industrial robots are the most advanced application of robots in business today but they are still far from plug and play solutions. They require skilled experts to have them work effectively; but the capabilities and usability have greatly increased over the last 20 years. Respect for people (and all that entails about the management system) is an important part of creating a management system to have the most success integrating robots.

  The ability of us to create technological solutions to accomplish tasks that required people has exploded in the last 20 years and will continue to. Lawyers are finding much of what they do can be done by a computer. Much, doesn’t mean all, obviously. Search and rescue in disaster areas is another task that robots are playing an increasing role in; and the use of robots will likely continue to grow quickly. Technology is taking over many aspects of medical care that were not long ago seen as requiring highly trained and experience medical professionals (reading scans, diagnosing illness…).

  
  I think many of these advances are moving so quickly that we are not properly thinking about the long term future of our organizations. The disruption these changes will take will be difficult to predict and plan for.

  ...

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• Small Farm Robots

  Using robots in farming is limited today but the future could see a huge growth in that use. Benefits of introducing more robots to farming include reducing the use of pesticides and chemicals to control weeds.

  Reducing labor costs is also a potential benefit but at current market prices (due to high costs of robotics and available cheap labor) that is more something for the future than today. However that can change fairly quickly – as for example the collapse in solar panel costs have made solar energy economically very attractive...

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• Drone Deliveries to Hospitals in Rwanda

  Partnering with the Government of Rwanda, Zipline serves 21 hospitals nation-wide. They provide instant deliveries of lifesaving blood products for 8 million Rwandans.

  Their drones are tiny airplanes (instead of the more common tiny helicopter model). Supplies are delivered using parachute drops from the drone. Landings are similar to landings on aircraft carriers (they grab a line to help slow down the drone) and, in a difference from aircraft carrier landings, the drone line drops them onto a large air cushion.

  ...

  The drones can deliver up to 50-75 km (which I believe means they must have a range for 150 km because they must return to their home base). The cost is about equivalent to the current (much slower) delivery methods (car or motor bike).

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