Shipulski On Design

Archive for the ‘Innovation’ Category

The Founding Fathers got it right with three branches: legislative to make laws; judicial to interpret laws; and executive to enforce them. Back then it was all about laws, and the system worked.

What the Founding Fathers could not realize was there was a powerful, pre-chrysalis force more powerful than laws, whose metamorphosis would exploit a gap in the three branch system. Technology has become a force more powerful than laws, and needs its own branch of government. We need a Supreme Court of Technology. (Think Ph.D. instead of J.D.)

Technology is the underpinning of a sustainable economy, an economy where citizens are well-educated, healthy, and happy, and where infrastructure is safe and supports the citizens’ needs. For countries that have it, technology generates the wealth to pay for education, healthcare, and bridges. Back then it was laws; today it’s technology.

The Founding Fathers knew interpretation of laws demanded consistency, consistency that transcended the election cycle, and, with its lifetime appointment, the Supreme Court was the mechanism. And it’s the same with technology: technology demands consistency of direction and consistency of purpose, and for that reason I propose a Supreme Court of Technology.

The Chief Justice of Technology and her Associate Justices set the long term technology policy for the country. They can be derided for its long time horizon, but they cannot be ousted for making the right decisions or their consistency of purpose. The Justices decide how to best spend their annual budget, which is substantial and adjusts with inflation and population. Since they are appointed for life, the Justices tell Congress how it goes with technology (and to stop with all this gridlock gamesmanship) and ask the President for her plan to implement the country’s technology policy. (Technology transcends political parties and election cycles.)

With the Supreme Court of Technology appointed and their first technology plan in place (think environment and energy), the country is on track to generate wealth sufficient to build the best educational system in the world (think creativity, art, science, math, and problem solving) to fuel the next generation of technology leadership.

There’s agreement: new thinking is needed for innovation. And for those that have tried, there’s agreement that it’s hard. It’s hard to create new thinking, to let go of what is, to see the same old things as new, to see resources where others see nothing. But there are some tricks to force new thinking, to help squeeze it out of ourselves.

The answer, in a word, is scarcity.

In the developing world there is scarcity of everything: food, shelter, electricity, tools, education; in the developed world we must fabricate it. We must dust off the long-neglected thought experiment, and sit ourselves in self-made scarcity.

Try a thought experiment that creates scarcity in time. Get the band together and ask them this question: If you had only two weeks to develop the next generation product, what would you do? When they say the question is ridiculous, agree with them. Tell them that’s the point. When they try to distract and derail, hold them to it. Don’t let them off the hook. Scarcity in time will force them to look at everything as a resource, even the user and the environment itself (sunlight, air, wind, gravity, time), or even trash or byproduct from something in the vicinity. At first pass, these misused resources may seem limited, but with deeper inspection, they may turn out to be better than the ones used today. The band will surprise themselves with what they come up with.

Next, try a thought experiment that creates scarcity of goodness. Get the band back together, and take away the major performance attribute of your product (the very reason customers buy); decree the new product must perform poorly. If fast is better, the new one must be slow; if stiff is better, the new one must be floppy; if big, think small. This forces the band to see strength as weakness, forces them to identify and release implicit constraints that have never been named. Once the bizarro-world product takes shape, the group will have a wonderful set of new ideas. (The new product won’t perform poorly, it will have novel functionality based on the twisted reality of the thought experiment.)

Innovation requires new thinking, and new thinking is easier when there’s scarcity – no constraints, no benchmarks, no core to preserve and protect. But without real scarcity, it’s difficult to think that way. Use the time-tested thought experiment to marinate yourself in scarcity, and see what comes of it.

Situation A

• The economy has picked up, but your sales have dropped off.
• Competitors’ products work better than yours.
• Competitors’ product launches are more frequent than yours.
• The number of competitors is increasing.
• The sales team is angry – they cannot sell against competitors.
• The product roadmap is more of the same.

The situation is clear – you’re behind your competitors, and they are accelerating. The action plan is clear – leapfrog your competitors.

Declare failure with the more-of-the-same product roadmap, and imagine a new one. The new one must leapfrog your competitors (though they’re accelerating). Imagine a new product roadmap that’s so radical it’s borderline ridiculous, that’s so outrageous you’re afraid to present it. (A sign it’s right on-the-mark.) Imagine one you have little to no idea how to do. Now, take the best of the ridiculous product roadmap and replace the oldest parts of the old one. Create a nice hybrid, and make it happen.

Situation A is tough because there is stress around the company’s future, and it’s easy because there’s a clear reason to innovate – company survival.

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Situation B

• The economy has dropped off, but your sales have picked up.
• Your products work better than your competitors’.
• Your product launches are more frequent than your competitors’.
• There the number of competitors is decreasing.
• The sales team is happy – they can sell against competitors.
• The product roadmap is more of the same.

The situation is clear – you’re ahead of your competitors, and they are accelerating. The action plan is clear – leapfrog yourself.

Declare failure with the more-of-the-same product roadmap, and imagine a new one. The new one must leapfrog yourself (though you’re accelerating). Imagine a new product roadmap that’s so radical it’s borderline ridiculous, that’s so outrageous you’re afraid to present it. (A sign it’s right on-the-mark.) Imagine one you have little to no idea how to do. Now, take the best of the ridiculous product roadmap and replace the oldest parts of the old one.  Create a nice hybrid, and make it happen.

Situation B is easy because there is no stress around the company’s future, and it’s difficult because there is no clear reason to innovate.

There’s no reason to argue which situation you’re in, no need to argue which is more difficult. Either way, leapfrog something.

Creating new products that provide a useful function is hard, and insuring they function day-in and day-out is harder.  Plain and simple, engineering is hard.

Planes must fly, cars must steer, and Velcro must stick. But, at every turn, there are risks, reasons why a new design won’t work, and it’s the engineer’s job to make the design insensitive to these risks. (Called reducing signal to noise ratio in some circles.) At a fundamental level engineering is about safety, and at a higher level it’s about sales – no function, no sales.

That’s why at every opportunity engineers reduce risk . (And thank goodness we do.) It makes sense that we’re the ones that think things through to the smallest detail, that can’t move on until we have the answer, that ask odd questions that seem irrelevant. It all makes sense since we’re the ones responsible if the risks become reality. We’re the ones that bear ultimate responsibility for product function and safety, and, thankfully, it shapes us.

But there’s a dark side to this risk reduction mindset – where we block our thinking, where we don’t try something new because  of problems we think we may have, problems we don’t have yet. The cause of this innovation-limiting behavior: problem broadening, where we apply a thick layer of problem over the entirety of a new concept, and declare it unworkable. Truth is, we don’t understand things well enough to make that declaration, but, in a knee-jerk way, we misapply our natural risk reduction mindset. Clearly, problems exist when doing new, but real problems are not broad, real problems are not like peanut butter and jelly spread evenly across the whole sandwich. Real problems are narrow; real problems are localized, like getting a drip of jelly on your new shirt.

How to get the best of both worlds? How to embrace the risk reduction mindset so products are safe and help engineering folks to try something radically new? To innovate?

We’ve got the risk reduction world covered, so it’s all about enhancing the try-something-new side. To do this we need to combat problem broadening; we need a process for problem narrowing. With problem narrowing, engineers drill down until the problem is defined as the interaction of two elements (the jelly and your shirt), defined in space (the front of your shirt) and time (when the knife drops a dollop on your shirt). Where problem broadening tells us to avoid making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches altogether (those sandwiches will always dirty our shirts), problem narrowing tells use to put something between the knife and the front of your shirt, or to put on your new shirt after you make your sandwich, or to do something creative to keep the jelly away from our shirt.

Problems narrow as knowledge deepens. Work through your fears, try something new, and advance your knowledge. Then define your problems narrowly, and solve them.

Innovate.

Battery life of cell phones is horrific. We’re sold on high functionality, communication speed, and beautiful, bright screens, but with all systems up, the phone cannot deliver; we get about half a day. We pare down functionality, and try to make it through the day; we shut off regular requests for updates; we shut down our network connections; dim our screens to save energy. All the high functionality that defines the phone cannot be realized; the functionality that sets it apart from others, the stuff that others only dream of, cannot be realized. Our special capability cannot be used to do our jobs to the fullest; it cannot be used to do our jobs like we know we can.

Another tactic is the power nap – the quick charge in the middle of the day to get us through the crisis. Commandeer a power outlet in a quiet corner, and settle in for a little charge. (Ahh, it feels good to charge up on someone else’s nickel.) But it’s not right that we must ration our capacity for a narrow slice of the day, to save up for a flurry of high-end activity (especially Angry Birds); we should be able to go all day. But we can’t because expectations are out of line with our capability. In this new era of high power draw, our batteries cannot deliver. We must change our behavior.

Nothing beats a regular charge – home at a regular time, turn off the phone, plug in for an uninterrupted charge, and wake up in the morning fully refreshed and ready for full output. For the whole day it’s unique, innovative functionality, all communication networks up and running, and full screen brightness. That’s what you’re paid for, and that’s what you deliver – every day. But if you skip your full charge cycle, even one, it’s back into the unhealthy cycle of half-day battery life and dimmed screens. This is not a good for you, and not a good value for your company. You (and they) need you doing the things only you can do; they (and you) need you contributing at full brightness. Maintaining the regular charge cycle takes discipline, but, over the long term it’s the most productive and enjoyable way to go.

In the new lithium-ion world, we’ve forgotten a hard-learned lesson of the lead-acid era – the trickle charge. With the trickle charge, the battery is taken fully off-line, fully disconnected from the world, with no expectation of output of any kind, and hard-connected to a big charger, a special charger. This charger is usually located in a remote location and hard-wired into a dedicated circuit that cannot be compromised for any reason. For the trickle charge, the battery is connected to the all-powerful charger for two weeks, for a slow, soothing , deep-cycle charge that restores and invigorates. Upon return from the trickle charge, long-forgotten capability is restored and screens are at full brightness.

Used together, ritualistic over-night charging and regular, deep-cycle trickle charging work wonders.

Shut your phone off when you get home and take a long vacation. Your brain needs a re-charge.

Out of office reply: On vacation!

We’ve all done Voice of the Customer (VOC) work, where we jump on a plane, visit our largest customers, and ask leading questions. Under the guise of learning it’s mostly a mechanism to justify what we already want to do, to justify the products we know want to launch. (VOC should stand for Validate Our Choices.)

It’s a waste of time to ask customers for the next big thing or get their thoughts on a radical technology. First off, it’s not their job to know the next big thing, it’s ours. The next big thing is bigger than their imagination, never mind what they do today. (That’s why it’s called the next big thing.) And if we wait for customers tell us the next big thing, we’re hosed. (Their time horizon is too short and ours is shorter.) In this case it’s best to declare failure; our competitors figured it out a long time ago (they didn’t wait for the customer) and are weeks from commercialization. We should get busy on the next, next big thing because we’ve already missed this next generation. Next time we’ll silence the voice of the customer (VOC) and listen to the voice of the technology (VOT).

As far as radical technology, if we wait for customers to understand the technology, it’s not radical. Radical means radical, it means game-changing, a change so radical it obsoletes business models and creates unrecognizable, ultra-profitable, new ones. That’s radical. If we don’t start technical work until our customers understand the new technology, it’s no longer radical, and our competitors have already cornered the market. Again, we’ve missed an entire generation. Next time we’ll silence the voice of the customer (VOC) and listen to the voice of the technology (VOT).

Technology has a life force; it has a direction; it knows what it wants to be when it grows up. It has a voice. Independent of customer, it knows where it wants to go and how it will get there. At the highest level it has character traits and preferred paths, a kind of evolutionary inevitability; this is the voice of technology (VOT).

Technology will evolve to complete itself; it will move toward natural periodicity among its elements; it will harmonize itself; it will become more controllable; it will shorten its neural flow paths;  it will do yoga to improve its flexibility; its feet will grow too fast and create adolescent imbalance; it will replicate into multiples selves; it will shrink itself;  it will improve its own DNA. This is VOT.

Technology cannot tell us its lower-level embodiments (we control that), but it does sing hymns of its high-level wants and desires, and we must listen. No need to wait for VOC, it’s time to listen to VOT.

Like a dog whistle, technologists can hear VOT while others cannot. We understand the genetics of technology and we understand its desires (because we understand its physics.) We can look back to its ancestors, see its trajectory of natural evolution, and predict attributes of its offspring. Before everyone else, we see what will be.

Next time, instead of VOC, ask your technologists what the voice of technology is saying, and listen.

Innovation has two parts: ideation and commercialization. Ideation, the first part, is all about ideas, and this the part of innovation that comes to mind when we think of innovation. Commercialization, the second part, is all about products. This is the part we don’t think of, and this is the part we’ve got to do better.

Ideation happens readily, and it happens at the whiteboard, that mystical device that can focus the universe’s creativity onto a 3 foot buy 4 foot sheet. In front of the whiteboard it’s exciting, fast, frenzied; ideas jump directly from ether to whiteboard, and we are only the unconscious conduits. With a dry erase marker in each hand and several other colors at the ready, markers fly about as if guided by a spiritual force; flow charts magically appear with all the blocks and all the right arrows; shirt sleeves are used as erasers to keep up with the flow of ideas. This is what comes to mind when we think about innovation. But this is the easy part. Fact is, we already have enough good ideas, and what we need is better execution, better commercialization.

Commercialization is a different game altogether. Once ideas are created and documented in and understandable way, the real work, the difficult work, begins.  The biggest fundamental challenge is how to choose between a recently invented whiteboard idea (with no revenue stream) and a modification of something that sells today (with an existing revenue stream). Traditional net present value techniques aren’t the right answer because they always favor improvements of the existing stuff, and any ranking process must guess at future sales for the whiteboard idea, and guesses are not sufficient to carry the day. It’s a tough road, and a detour may be in order.

As advocate for the whiteboard ideas, choose the path less traveled, take the detour. Figure out where the company wants to go, understand the destination. Then, review all the non-whiteboard ideas, the improvements to existing stuff, and see if those ideas, on their own, can get the company to its new destination. It’s my bet they cannot, that there will be gaps. (But if they can, the whiteboard ideas are dead in the water.) With gaps defined, there is now a rationale, now a reason, to believe in the whiteboard ideas. Finally, some leverage.

Staring with the gap analysis, sprinkle in the best whiteboard ideas, and see what it looks like, see where the ideas could take the company. My bet is the picture looks better with the whiteboard ideas in the mix; my bet is there will now be plausible scenarios where the company can achieve its desired future state. (Plausible scenarios may not sound like much, but they’re a whole lot better than knowing you won’t make it). And once company leaders see how the whiteboard ideas improve the situation, some may get sufficiently jazzed to swap out a few more of the improve-the-old-stuff ideas for more whiteboard ideas.

It’s extremely difficult to challenge the status quo, to go head-to-head with existing revenue streams, but that’s exactly what whiteboard ideas must do. To carry the day, company leaders must say yes to whiteboard ideas at the expense of improve-the-old-stuff ideas. That’s a particularly difficult hurdle since business unit leaders are judged on hitting their numbers (thankfully). The upside of moving the company closer to its desired future state must outweigh the downside of saying no to investments in predictable revenue streams. Let’s be clear, this can only be an emotional decision.

With allocation of resources, the whiteboard idea is off and running, though not home free. It will be continually challenged by the established business units, who, at every turn, will ask to judge the whiteboard idea using improve-the-old-stuff criteria.  Talk about the gap analysis where possible.

I’ve found ideation far more fun than commercialization, and commercialization far more difficult than ideation. But like peanut butter and jelly or Oreos and milk, neither has meaning without the other. We’ve got the ideation stuff down, but our execution/commercialization stuff needs serious work.

Though not glamorous, we’ve got to improve the commercialization element of innovation if we are to realize more of its benefits.

It’s high tide for innovation – innovate, innovate, innovate. Do it now; bring together the experts; hold an off-site brainstorm session; generate 10⁶ ideas. Fast and easy; anyone can do that. Now the hard part: choose the projects to work on. Say no to most and yes to a few. Choose and execute.

To choose we use processes to rank and prioritize; we assign scores 1-5 on multiple dimensions and multiply. Highest is best, pull the trigger, and go. Right? (Only if it was that easy.) Not how it goes.

After the first round of scoring we hold a never-ending series of debates over the rankings; we replace 5s with 3s and re-run the numbers; we replace 1s with 5s and re-re-run. We crank on Excel like the numbers are real, like 5 is really 5. Face it – the scores are arbitrary, dimensionless numbers, quasi-variables data based on judgment. Face it – we manipulate the numbers until the prioritization fits our judgment.

Clearly this is a game of judgment. There’s no data for new products, new technologies, and new markets (because they don’t exist), and the data you have doesn’t fit. (That’s why they call it new.) No market – the objective is to create it; no technology – same objective, yet we cloak our judgment in self-invented, quasi-variables data, and the masquerade doesn’t feel good. It would be a whole lot better if we openly acknowledged it’s judgment-based – smoother, faster, and more fun.

Instead of the 1-3-5 shuffle, try a story-based approach. Place the idea in the context of past, present, and future; tell a tale of evolution: the market used to be like this with a fundamental of that; it moved this way because of the other, I think. By natural extension (or better yet, unnatural), my judgment is the new market could be like this… (If you say will, that’s closeted 1-3-5 behavior.) While it’s the most probable market in my judgment, there is range of possible markets…

Tell a story through analogy: a similar technology started this way, which was based on a fundamental of that, and evolved to something like the other. By natural evolution (use TRIZ) my technical judgment is the technology could follow a similar line of evolution like this…. However, there are a range of possible evolutionary directions that it could follow, kind of like this or that.

And what’s the market size? As you know, we don’t sell any now. (No kidding we don’t sell any, we haven’t created the technology and the market does not exist. That’s what the project is about.) Some better questions: what could the market be? Judgment required. What could the technology be? Judgment. If the technology works, is the market sitting there under the dirt just waiting to be discovered? Judgment.

Like the archeologist, we must translate the hieroglyphs, analyze the old maps, and interpret the dead scrolls. We must use our instinct, experience, and judgment to choose where to dig.

Like it or not, it’s a judgment game, so make your best judgment, and dig like hell.

Technology has strong character traits; it has wants and desires; it plans for the future. It’s alive.

Technology continually tries to reinvent itself. And like rust, it never sleeps – it continually thinks, schemes, and plans how to do more with less (or less with far less).  That’s Technology’s life dream, its prime directive – more with less. All day, every day it strives, reaches, and writhes toward more with less.

Technology needs our help along its journey. To do this we must understand its life experiences, understand its emotional state, and listen when it talks of the future. Like with a good friend, listening is important.

Technology has several important character traits which govern how it goes about its life’s work. Habitually, it likes to focus its energy on one a single subsystem and reinvents it, where the reinvented subsystem then puts strain on the others.  It is this mismatch in capability among the subsystems that Technology uses to fuel innovation on the next subsystem. Its work day goes like this: innovate on a subsystem, create strife among the others, and repeat.

Technology likes to continually increase its flexibility.  It feels better when it can stretch, bend, twist, and contort. It likes to develop pivot points, hinges, and rubbery algorithms that adjust to unexpected inputs and create novel outputs.  Ultimately Technology wants to self-design and self-configure, but that’s down the road.

Technology likes to get into the details – the deeper the better.  To do this it gets small.  Here’s its rationale: small changes at the molecular or atomic levels roll up to big changes at the system level. A small change multiplied by Avogadro’s number makes for a big lever. Technology understands this.

Technology is frugal, not wasteful in any way, especially when it comes to energy. Its best party trick is to shorten energy flow paths. The logic: shorter energy paths result in less loss and a simpler product. You’ll see this in its next round of work in energy efficiency where it will move subsystems closer to each other to radically improve efficiency and radically reduce product complexity.

Technology knows where it wants to go, and has its favorite ways to get there. Our innovation engines will be more productive if they’re informed by its character.

(Special thanks to Victor Fey for teaching me about Technology’s character traits, which he calls lines of evolution.)

Everyone is dissatisfied with the pace of innovation – solutions that change the game don’t come fast enough. We look to the environment, and assign blame. We blame the tools, the process, the organization structure, and the technology itself. But the blame is misplaced.  It is the innovators that govern the pace of innovation.

It certainly isn’t the technology – the solutions already exist; they’re patiently waiting for us, waiting for us to find them. We just have to look.  The technology knows what it will be when it grows up: the path is clear.  Put simply, we must break through our unwillingness to look. We must look harder, deeper, and more often.  We must redefine our self-set limits, and look under the rocks of our successes and beyond our best work.

To increase the pace and quality of innovation, we must look inside.

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p.s. I’m holding a half-day workshop on how to implement systematic cost savings through product design on June 13 in Providence RI as part of the International Forum on DFMA — here’s the link. I hope to see you there.

If you know your shit, you have an obligation to behave that way:

Do – don’t ask.

Say, “I don’t know.”

Wear the clothes you want.

Tread water with Fear until she drowns.

Walk softly – leave your big stick at home.

Ask people what they think – let them teach you.

Kick Consensus in the balls – he certainly deserves it.

Be kind to those who should know – teach, don’t preach.

Hug the bullies – they cannot hurt you, you know too much.

Work with talented new folks – piss and ginger is a winning combination.

In short, use your powers for good – you have an obligation to yourself, your family, and society.