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11.09
 IEEE-USA E-Book Spotlight: Doing Innovation: Creating Economic Value – Book 2:
Developing a Workable Innovation Process
By Sharon C. Richardson
Developing a
Workable Innovation Process is the second in
a series of e-books by Gerard “Gus” Gaynor, a
retired 3M Director of Engineering, on Doing
Innovation: Creating Economic Value.
Gaynor writes that
“Book 2:Developing a Workable Innovation
Process teaches the fundamentals related to
the innovation process; presents various models
with their limitations; describes the innovation
design process; considers the issues in
developing a process model; suggests a generic
model and describes organizing for innovation.”
Topics in Doing
Innovation: Creating Economic Value include:
Status of Innovation, where Gaynor quotes
a McKinsey Quarterly report that he
writes “is very disheartening... Executives and
managers have been talking about innovation for
at least the past two decades. Now, in the midst
of the current economic downturn, a chorus from
academia, government and industry is beating the
drums for more innovation. The question, Gaynor
writes, “is do these people understand what
innovation involves and what it takes to come
through with a breakthrough?”
In Innovation
Process Models, Gaynor reaches back into
Book 1: Perspectives on Innovation
and writes about the four basic categories,
incremental innovations, new-to-market
innovations, system innovations, and
breakthrough innovations. Gaynor writes that
“Academic researchers like Roberts and Frohman,
Van de Ven, and Cooper and Quinn have provided
us with models for innovation.” In this chapter,
Gaynor summarizes each model by researcher.
According to
Gaynor, Working toward an Innovation has
proven to be a struggle over the years. In this
chapter, he gives a couple of historical
examples, using the Kodak Corporation, Xerox and
other companies whose management was reluctant
to give consideration to what has been
previously attempted. He quotes a former 3M CEO
as saying: “As befits a company that was founded
on a mistake, we have continued to accept
mistakes as a normal part of running a business.
Every single one of my colleagues in senior
management has backed a few losers along the
way. It’s important to add, however, we expect
our mistakes to have originality. We can afford
almost any mistake once.”
Gaynor writes that
“Innovation = Invention + Commercialization or
Implementation, and the output of R&D is not
necessarily innovation.” In the
chapter,Innovation by Design, Gaynor lists
several questions that should be asked in the
early stages of the innovation process. Design
Innovation, he writes “attempts to speed the
process by asking some of the tough questions
early in the process, and continues to ask them
throughout the birth of the idea to
implementation.”
The Generic
Innovation Process Model chapter includes
seven stages: the idea, concept, invention,
innovation, pre-project, project and market
launch. Gaynor writes that “each stage involves
a series of primary and secondary feedback loops
that take raw information and try to make sense
of the implementation of the available
information.” In this chapter, Gaynor takes an
in-depth look into each of these stages through
the market launch, the last stage in the
process.
You can download
Doing Innovation: Creating Economic Value – Book
2: Developing a Workable Innovation Process
at
www.ieeeusa.org/communications/ebooks for
the IEEE Member Price: $9.95. Non-member Price
is $19.95.
To purchase IEEE
Members-only products and to receive the Member
discount on eligible products, Members must log
in with their IEEE Web Account.
Ideas for new
E-Books
If you’ve got an
idea for an e-book that will educate other IEEE
members on a particular career topic of
expertise, e-mail your e-book queries and ideas
to IEEE-USA Publishing Manager Georgia C.
Stelluto at
g.stelluto@ieee.org.
IEEE members can purchase IEEE-USA e-books at
deeply discounted member prices – and download
free e-books by going to
www.ieeeusa.org/communications/ebooks.
Sharon Richardson is
IEEE-USA’s Communications Assistant and
Editorial Assistant for IEEE-USA Today’s
Engineer Digest.
Comments may
be submitted to todaysengineer@ieee.org.
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