More Interesting Innovations

Interesting Innovations

  • Street Heat:
    Ever burn your foot walking on hot asphalt in the summer? That’s because black absorbs heat—while white reflects it. Well, in case you haven’t noticed, modern cities are covered in the black stuff. Dutch construction firm Ooms is now heading its headquarters by running water pipes under the street. Some of them collect heat in the summer and run deep into the ground where they heat water via a heat exchanger. That heated water is stored for winter—a sort of battery, if you will. In fact to take it a step further, the water is returned to the ground after heating the building, by passing under the street again. The residual heat in the water, now only a few degrees above freezing, melts any snow or ice on the road surface. The water is then stored—used cold to cool the building—before being run under the asphalt again to prepare for winter. Brilliant!

Recent Posts

Six Sigma

January 24, 2008

Are You An Idea Killer?

My new Inc. column, entitled Beware of the Idea Killers is out and focuses on how new ideas are what will help your business remain competitive. However, be sure you aren't killing them before you consider bringing them to fruition.

As Innovation remains a hot topic in 2008 and as executive teams continue struggling to build effective, sustainable, and measurable innovation programs. The battleground becomes how to structure innovation departments, drive company-wide innovation initiatives, and sustain efforts over the long haul.

To help executives with these challenges my company, Breakthrough Management Group (BMG) is hosting a 2-day Executive Seminar February 25-26 in Denver, CO, entitled Chief Innovation Officer: Lead Your Company’s Growth and Innovation Efforts.

This is the third CIO course for BMG.  We hosted two similar events in 2007, each time heralding attendees from industries as diverse as healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and financial services into one room to discuss and learn about what they all have in common – the need to better drive growth and innovation in order to compete in the future. Past attendees include, Levi Strauss, AVNET, Circuit City, NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation and GE Energy to name a few.

If you are interested in Innovation and what it really takes to lead your company to the forefront, I highly recommend this course. More information can be found here.

January 09, 2008

Creative Destruction

Creative Destruction – words most often associated with today’s world of newly intensified innovation. A term first coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1940s, it’s only in much more recent years that business leaders have come to understand its wisdom.

Nowhere is this understanding more clear than in the recent appointment of Robert Nardelli to the helm of Chrysler. Amid a great deal of criticism over his tenure at Home Depot, Nardelli appears to be a perfect choice for Chrysler.

Most experts agree that Chrysler will need to excel on many fronts: a razor-sharp discipline, a take-no-prisoner’s attitude toward cost cutting and a genuine willingness to destroy before recreating will be at the forefront. While many people have accused Nardelli of destroying the culture at Home Depot – much as they’ve accused James McNerney of destroying the innovation culture at 3M – I would argue that perhaps neither destroyed too much of anything in their first forays outside of GE. In fact, they may not have destroyed enough, or done their destroying creatively enough, and they were replaced before they could meet their boards’ high expectations. Then again, neither of them had a predecessor like Jack Welch, who’s own predecessor left him behind instructions to “blow it up.”

Continue reading "Creative Destruction" »

August 21, 2007

Innovation and Improvement: A Distinction Without a Difference

My newest column is up on Inc.com. It talks about how the processes of innovation and improvement are much more intertwined then we generally like to believe.

I would be interested in your comments and thoughts on the subject.

My company is now offering a new and "innovative training course", the first of its kind...Innovation Tools for Black Belts.  Held in Denver, CO Oct. 8-12, this course is specifically designed for Six Sigma and Lean practitioners, the class teaches a number of powerful Innovation tools in the context of BMG's Structured Innovation methodology, D4.

A five-day course, attendees have the opportunity to work on a real business issue with guidance from BMG’s innovation experts; teaching participants a solid, repeatable and predictable process for innovating new products, processes and business models. The first course will be taught by Dr. Phil Samuel, my co-faculty for BMG's upcoming Chief Innovation Officer seminar to be held in Denver, CO  Oct. 1-2, 2007.

I highly recommend it so check both courses out!

July 31, 2007

Building A Better Wall

In Sunday's New York Times article titled, “China Moves to Change Damaged Global Image,” Times reporter David Barboza wrote at length about the challenges facing China and the steps the behemoth nation is taking to remedy the situation. New “controls” enacted by Beijing, a PR effort spearheaded by global experts at Ogilvy, greater openness and the willingness to work with everyone from the FBI to the World Health Organization are cited as just some of the steps being taken to fix the problem.

What struck me about this article, however, is that there’s no mention of actually FIXING the problems. It’s all about containment of the problem through regulation and inspection. It’s about beefing up the laws and their enforcement. However, none of that really addresses the root cause of the problem (you knew I’d have to work in, “root cause,” right?). While it’s true that there are and will always be parts of the economy, even big parts, that have no desire to play by the rules, we can’t assume enforcement is the ultimate solution. Doing so turns a blind eye to perhaps the bigger—and longer-term problem – poor quality.

Continue reading "Building A Better Wall" »

July 19, 2007

My New Article in Inc. - Either-Or Thinking Doesn't Work and Other Things..

My new article Either-Or Thinking Doesn't Work is now posted on Inc.com. It's about how Operational efficiency and creativity both play a part in business success. Let me know what you think.

I will also be facilitating a second Chief Innovation Officer Executive Education Course on October 1-2, 2007 in Denver, CO.  Chief Innovation Officer – Leading Your Company’s Growth and Innovation Initiatives. This program is specifically designed for business leaders who are leading the charge for growth and innovation inside their organizations. This is very dynamic and engaging course, I encourage you to check it out at CIO Course.

June 20, 2007

Don't Waste Your Innovative Efforts

Just the other day I read a press release titled, “Consulting Firm Warns Companies Not to Overuse Lean and Six Sigma.”  I laughed—for about five minutes.  And then I had an image of this consultant’s next announcement:  “Consulting Firm Warns People Not to Overeat.”   In fact what I really wanted to do was throw the bullshit flag (if you don't know what it is, go to www.bsflag.com).

As I laughed, I supposed that if you want to make your mark by warning others not to overuse something, you can pitch yourself as an expert at just about anything.  Because you don’t have to be an expert—at anything—to know that over use or under use means anything but proper use.

Let’s be serious though.  Anyone reading this has at least a fleeting understanding of the principles of Lean and Six Sigma.  Many of you could be considered experts in your own right.  So you’re probably laughing, too.

But beyond a good laugh, we all have a responsibility to ourselves and our companies to push for proper use.  In fact one of the words that underlies Six Sigma is “optimization” which is just a fancy word for “proper use” when it comes to a business process.  In Six Sigma we look to optimize everything—even the use of Six Sigma. So a good implementation of Six Sigma would focus on just the right amount of effort going into six sigma—not too little and not too much.

Continue reading "Don't Waste Your Innovative Efforts" »

June 13, 2007

My Ink in Inc.

Inc. has added me to their roster of thought leaders and I will contributing on a monthly basis. My first column is titled It's All About Convergence -- The convergence of many approaches to business process improvement is the key to remaining successful in today's environment. Check it out and let me know what you think.

December 21, 2006

Talking About Ambidextrous Organizations

Earlier this month, Dan Keldsen of The Delphi Group and I set aside some time to talk about INsourcing Innovation, and the performance excellence tools a company can use to become a really outstanding organization.

Feel free to listen in here.

August 04, 2006

The Evolution of Business

If you want to understand the evolution of business, you need only look as far as the evolution of engineering. That’s just the way it is – and for good reason. If certain systems and practices can make a jet with three million parts fly, then surely those systems and practices can help make a corporation fly too.  Your typical Fortune 500 company has more than a few working parts!

Let’s test this assumption a little, and see if world-class engineering principles do evolve into world-class management practices over time.

Once the engineering-based concepts and tools of quality were applied only to improve products in isolated areas and circumstances. But then the use of these tools expanded into non-manufacturing departments and functions. Then they expanded more to encompass the improvement of processes, transactions and services. Eventually, quality engineering know-how became organized into a total package for total business transformation – not just the transformation of products, processes and operations.

Enter TQM and the Toyota Production System, and later Six Sigma, then Lean Six Sigma. What started in the laboratory and engineering disciplines migrated up through the organization into the management mind.  And then into the realm of the Corporate Initiative.

As we look at other aspects of engineering, we see similar phenomena.  For example, systems engineering was once considered  a specialized discipline for engineers, but evolved into systems thinking for business success – understanding the complex dynamics of society and organizations, and how different parts of a business all must play together to be effective.  Now the systems discipline is taught in business schools, not just engineering schools.

Take a look at another tool—FMEA (Failure Mode Effect analysis).  Initially a tool of risk analysis developed in the 1960s for the Apollo Space Program, today FMEA is used to evaluate everything from business risk to customer satisfaction to new legislation.

Even within the evolving field of innovation, what was once considered something for scientists and engineers—invention—is now considered just as important for business people.  Business model and business process innovation is at the forefront of considerations for every CEO today.

This technical to managerial trend became remarkably apparent not long ago when Bill Swanson, Chairman and CEO of Raytheon, was called to account for himself by an HP Blogger.  The blogger found that Swanson’s book—Bill Swanson’s Unwritten Rules of Management—bore a remarkable similarity to a work dating back to 1944 titled, “The Unwritten Rules of Engineering.”  Needless to say, a good-sized scandal erupted over the purported plagiarism. Raytheon discontinued distribution of the book, and Bill Swanson was fined by Raytheon’s board of directors.

The point is that these so-called rules of engineering, simply restated, nearly put Bill Swanson in the league of a mere few management gurus. In creating his book, he highlights the axiom that scientific discovery and practice at the micro level ends up defining best practice at the macro level.  Maybe we should simply remember that all natural principles apply universally, even though they’re discovered and developed locally.

The line between engineering and business is becoming increasingly blurred, because designing, building and evolving a business is really nothing more than designing, building and evolving a highly complex product or service. And so we should constantly be looking to engineering principles to better understand how to conduct business.

April 27, 2006

Intuition + Process = More (and better) Innovation

Just finished reading Seth Godin’s blog entry on embracing process to improve performance, and boy, has he hit the nail on the head:

If process makes you nervous, it's probably because it threatens your reliance on intuition. Get over it. The best processes leverage your intuition and give it room to thrive.

Process often gets a bad rap by “creative” and “service” professionals who see intuition and unstructured thinking (out of the box) as their stock and trade.  But the truth is many companies best known for innovation employ a very structured process to get there.  TRIZ, often described as the “Six Sigma of innovation,” has been quietly used by companies like Avon, DuPont, Pfizer and Toyota to find their next “big idea.”  Samsung has recognized their TRIZ team for saving Samsung “approximately 120 billion won (roughly US$ 91,200,000).”  Ontech’s self-heating container was developed using TRIZ.  The structured innovation process is quietly thriving in the most innovative companies—and should certainly be considered by all those leaders who claim that innovation is their first priority.

Seth is right… process will leverage both our individual and collective intuition. Structured innovation processes allow us to make the breakthrough moment more commonplace, and, by training others in our organization in the skills, create a culture of continuous innovation within our organization.

Somehow the concept of using process as a creative tool becomes quite powerful when communicated by someone renown for creativity, like Seth Godin.

Thanks Seth.