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12.09
Want to be
an Innovator? New IEEE-USA E-Book Series Tells
You How
By John R. Platt
You would not be reading this
article, or any other part of Today's
Engineer magazine, if not for the innovative
thinking of IEEE Life Fellow Gerard H. (Gus)
Gaynor.
In addition to being the
founding editor of Today's Engineer,
Gaynor has a long history of working in
innovative environments. He spent the last 25
years of his career at 3M Co., a company that he
says approaches innovation from a unique
perspective. "3M does innovation in a different
sense than most organizations — bottom up, from
the employee level, as opposed to top-down," he
says.
Gaynor has also written books
and articles about innovation, and taught
courses on innovation at the University of
Minnesota and St. Thomas University.
Now he has taken his ideas on
innovation to the next level and produced a new
series of e-books for IEEE-USA. The series,
Doing Innovation: Creating Economic Value,
offers advice on how to be an innovative
thinker, how to inspire innovation within an
organization, understanding the process of
innovation, and more.
The four-book series includes:
-
Book 1: Perspectives on
Innovation
-
Book 2: Developing a
Workable Innovation Process
-
Book 3: Fostering an
Innovative Culture
-
Book 4: What it Takes to
be an Innovator
The
first three
books are now available for $19.95
each ($9.95 each for IEEE members). The fourth
volume will be 15 December.
The e-books allow Gaynor to
address topics he finds to be incredibly
important in today's economy. "We don't have
enough written about the subject of doing
innovation," says Gaynor. "I think companies
need to approach innovation by providing the
freedom to innovate. It takes a lot of courage
to allow people to come up with new ideas, and
to embrace them.
"I look at my own kids and tell
them, 'Go for it! Don't look for guidance!'
Don’t wait until someone tells you what to do,
take the initiative! Make those suggestions but
think through them before you make them! That's
what it takes to be an innovator. It takes the
exceptional person who will fight the battles to
do the one thing he knows that the company needs
that no one else in the company pays attention
to."
Innovation as Economic Value
The overarching title of the
series — Doing Innovation: Creating Economic
Value — illustrates the unique approach
Gaynor takes to the subject. "What I'm trying to
say with these books is that if there isn't an
economic value, there isn't an innovation; there
may be an invention, but that’s not innovation"
he says.
In the first book of the series,
Perspectives on Innovation, Gaynor
introduces us to his equation for innovation
success: Innovation = Invention +
Commercialization or Implementation. This means
that for an innovation to become successful, it
needs to leave the original idea phase and
actually make it to market or to execution. That
involves a huge amount of effort, teamwork, and
management, writes Gaynor.
Innovations can come in many
forms, such as new products, new technologies or
new processes. Even social innovations can have
huge values, says Gaynor. "Yes, you can have
innovation in social systems, but even there
innovations have economic value. Look deeply,
see the issues, and while you may not be able to
create an economic value immediately, if you
solve a social problem, like reducing highway
deaths from auto accidents, you can create a
great deal of economic value."
Not every innovation needs to be
a game-changer. "We're dependent on incremental
innovations," says Gaynor. "We all like
breakthrough innovations, but if you look it
realistically, breakthroughs don't happen very
often. It's the incremental stuff — for example,
in the cell phone industry — which still allows
the major players to change."
The way you manage this "is to
see whether the incremental innovations can be
used across a whole platform of products. At 3M,
we started with sticky sandpaper. Then someone
removed the grit and got sticky tape. Then we
took the sticky tape and modified the adhesive
and added glass beads to create reflective
signs. These were all built upon the same
platform. That's where you really get the
benefit of incremental innovation."
Creating a Process for
Innovation
So how do you take a new idea to
the commercialization or implementation phase?
That's where book two of the series,
Developing a Workable Innovation Process,
comes into play.
"You can't just innovate through
the lifetime of an idea," says Gaynor. "At some
point, that innovation must be guided by sound
project management principles. You finish the
innovation stage, then bring in a team to put
it together and bring it to market or implement
it."
Understanding the processes of
your entire organization, and tapping into the
correct processes, is key. People who might help
your innovative idea come to fruition include
design engineers, your marketing or public
relations teams, and production, to name just a
few.
"Innovation is a systems
approach," says Gaynor. "To be successful, an
innovator needs to have fingers in sales,
marketing and production during the innovation
stage."
How do you get there? First,
prove your concept and demonstrate it. "Then the
real investment is needed," says Gaynor. "That's
when it becomes a project — a project for the
entire corporation. The bugs are worked out, the
stumbling blocks are identified, and the
innovation gets brought to market.
"You need to understand the
process and make sure it works for you," says
Gaynor.
Culture: The Challenges to
Innovation
Book three examines how to
create a culture that supports innovation. This
involves finding the right employees, giving
them just the right amount of freedom, having a
management class that supports innovation, and
focusing on results.
An organization needs to give
its employees the right amount of freedom and
the right amount of structure at the same time.
"At 3M, our technical people had 15 percent of
their time to spend as they wanted, including
looking at new ideas," says Gaynor. "It was a
benefit to the organization, because there was a
lot more passion and enthusiasm in what people
were working on. But it takes a lot of
organizational courage to allow people to have
some free time."
In order to create innovation,
says Gaynor, both companies and individuals need
to have the freedom to fight for new ideas. "It
not only takes somebody who can come up with new
ideas, it takes somebody who can fight the
status quo. You can always find nay-sayers in
the crowd, people who tell you can't do
something new. You may need to get these people
on your side in order to make your ideas a
reality," says Gaynor.
If you are working for a company
that doesn't foster innovation, find at least
one person who will advocate for you.
"Innovation can work if you find someone at the
upper level who likes what you're doing and
supports you, even if that support is done
quietly," says Gaynor.
Can You Be An Innovator?
Book 4 in the series, What it
Takes to be an Innovator, "is where the
action is," says Gaynor. This volume looks at
the characteristics and attitudes of innovative
thinkers, the skills that are required to
innovate, and what innovators bring to their
companies.
Gaynor lists several
characteristics that make for good innovators.
Innovators search for both problems that need to
be solved and opportunities that can be created
by new ideas. They have a strong network, not
just of their peers, but of people up and down
the organization, and know how to work the
entire corporate system. They don't take "no"
for an answer, and they are also good
communicators.
When it comes to communicating
your ideas, you can't get better advice than by
talking to your public relations department.
"Engineers don't tap their PR people enough,"
says Gaynor. "Get some pointers so you can sell
your ideas and projects better. The PR
department knows what your company's board wants
to listen to, or what they don't want to hear."
There are also risks and
challenges to being an innovator. "You can take
a lot of flack," says Gaynor. "You can be seen
at 'the crazy guy down in the corner.'"
Developing ideas into
understandable and implementable concepts is
tough, says Gaynor. But the end result could be
worth it, not just in terms of personal
satisfaction, but also for your career.
Moving Forward
So are you ready to be an
innovator, or to support innovative people in
your organization? "Get into the details," says
Gaynor. "Look at your corporate culture. Look at
the processes and the resources. Ask what people
think. Seize the right time.
"I'd like my readers to keep
thinking deeply about innovation. This is a 24/7
process." Get away from talking about innovation
and "just do it," says Gaynor. "For the
people who
want to do this, there can't be any greater
satisfaction. Absolutely none."
For more information on the
Doing Innovation: Creating Economic Value
series, visit
http://www.ieeeusa.org/communications/ebooks/innovation.asp.
John R.
Platt is a freelance writer from coastal
Maine. He is a frequent contributor to
Today's Engineer, and writes the
Extinction Countdown blog for Scientific
American.
Comments may be submitted to
todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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