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Friday, August 21, 2009

Perspective # 33 –Skunk Works Model


Skunk Works Model : Let us look at Wikipedia explanation of Skunk Works - "an official alias for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. Skunk Works is responsible for a number of famous aircraft designs, including the U-2, the SR-71, the F-117, and the F-22. Its largest current project is the F-35 Lightning II, which will be used in the air forces of several countries around the world. "Skunk works" or "skunkworks" is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects." They also have a cute logo :) see ...

You can checkout skunk works website which lists the Kelly’s 14 Rules. This Lessons Learned PDF also explains from the horse mouth the critical success factors and nitti gritties of running Skunkworks. Indian armed force leaders also once in a while speak about starting Skunkworks type units,but as usual these are all 'seminar proclamations' for hungry media consumption!

Now to explain further – If you think your organization is 'too heavy' to change you can try out Skunkworks model.The Skunkworks was first copied by beaurocratic blue suit IBM to move out its Mainframe thinking to make PCs . Malaysian airlines further popularized this concept who formed ‘ mini laboratories’ to solve specific issues.

The most celebrated example is Motorola’s Razr mobile phone which was set up in downtown Chicago, 50 miles from its main R&D facility in suburban Illinois. With lots of bright colors and no dividing walls, the building and design of the laboratory’s workspace were very different from Motorola’s main office.Motorola ‘once upon a time’ was an Innovation factory with examples like the legendary Appolo Spacecraft communication program. Over the years they lost out .Though they have over 20000+ patents and was among the top 10 recipients of U.S. patents during the 1990s, it slipped to 30th in 2004, according to USPTO. Also like many big firms translating patents to dollars was another big challenge for them.

I had worked for Motorola - great company, an amazing process machine but bit rigid too :) Read this fascinating story from Fortune Magazine which explains how the Skunkworks team worked around and bulldozed the Motorola culture and created a winner. MotoRAZR won more than a dozen innovation awards including 2005 IDEA winner and CES 2005 best of innovations award and was one of the first cell phone (other than iPhone) to cross the 50 Million unit sales.MotoRAZR also is a another great example of ‘competence enhancing innovations’ which we discussed in this blog earlier. The Razr skunkworks team leveraged on their parents deep expertise of ‘clamshell’ technology to produce a extra slim but rugged design.

The only caution with Skunkworks model is that one should be able to replicate or transform the parent – if not the gorilla parent will kill the Skunkbaby! And that is what happened to Razr team….............. Sadly nothing new came after the Razr :( :( ........You never know for sure though! They have some funny innovations patented. One invention is a phone and goggle combo (possibly it will be a Dolce & Gabbana as they tried with Razr!) Another patent idea can alert the user by a small shock (yes shock!) instead of vibrator (which by the way was another motorola innovation during those good ol days!)

So.......here comes another tip! if you are venturing to Skunkworks model -- take time off and watch the movie One Trick Pony starring Paul Simon,learn the lessons and dont become one :)

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Perspective # 32 – Innovation Reuse - Learning from Defense

Innovation Reuse - Learning from Defense : Lots of learning on how innovations are reused in defense industry. Read this article NASA Inventions You Might Use Every Day. It is seems NASA has a role to play in our smiles too - It even says “If you are happy today with the way your teeth look, you just might want to thank NASA” I guess that is bit too much :)

Similar to NASA our own DRDO is making many smile !The food processing industries have commercialized many innovative technologies developed by DRDO. The hill agriculture technologies of DRDO have contributed to the economic development of people living in high altitude areas like Ladakh. The diagnostic kits developed for bio-defence are useful for the early diagnosis of diseases such as typhoid, malaria, plague, dengue and chikunguniya among the civil population living in rural areas. The water desalination technology of DRDO has been able to provide potable water to a large population living in 40 villages of Rajasthan.

Read WSJ article ‘Rocket Scientists Shoot Down Mosquitoes With Lasers’ which delves into a interesting research where the technology of the American rocket scientists proposed "Star Wars" defense system originally planned to knock Soviet missiles from the skies with laser beams is now aimed at another airborne threat: the mosquito.!!

The researchers now face one big challenge: deciding how strong to make the weapon. The laser has to be weak enough to not harm humans and smart enough to avoid hitting useful bugs. "You could kill billions of mosquitoes a night, and you could do so without harming butterflies," says Mr. Myhrvold. Not only can the laser target a mosquito, it can also tell a male from a female based on wing-beat. That’s a crucial distinction, since only females feed on blood and thus transmit disease. Males in the wild eat sugary plant nectar. (In the lab they get raisins.)"If you really were a purist, you could only kill the females, not the males," Mr. Myhrvold says. But since they're mosquitoes, he says, he'll probably "just slay them all." :) :)

The WSJ article also says there's a researcher in Japan who thinks mosquitoes can be a 'force for good'. He is working on transforming them into "flying syringes" that deliver vaccines with every bite. !!

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Perspective # 31 – Competence shifting innovations :

Competence shifting innovations : Let us checkout ‘Competence shifting’ innovations … Competence shifting innovations change (shift) the Industry rules so that the Innovator can dominate.There are very few agile chameleon firms who have mastered this fine art – they continuously shift their paradigms and leave the competition gasping – as soon as competition catches with them, they change the gear again!

Many Chinese firms practice this along with govt. support (as it is not easy to change gears so often on their own). Auto-parts maker Wanxiang Group who bought 10 overseas companies in the last few years,Umax Group, the global No.2 optical-scanner producer who is pretty close to No. 1 Hewlett-Packard, Huawei who slowly killing global leaders AT&T Lucent and Nortel , Gree Electric Appliances, the world's biggest maker of air conditioners etc. are examples. (By the way 'product innovation' is not the only innovation..we discussed this in an earlier post.The fact is, you can innovate anywhere – in business models, in customer service, in processes, in strategy, in execution and the list goes on. Chinese factories innovate bigtime - For example Huawei files 10 patents everyday! )

These are vicious focused companies who demonstrated Competence shifting innovations and took the competiton (who are believers of Tylorism, and Fordism) for a spin jolly ride!Innovators who believe in competence shifting ,continuously ‘surprise’ competiton – when we all thought ‘brand’ is the differentiator they just buy them – ThinkPad is an example. Firms with funny brands like Top Lion China (TCL) acquired France’s Thomson for the RCA brand.

Flextronics the world leader in EMS industry, who made HP and Cisco Routers is cutting jobs again.. Flextronics was the poster boy and was the popular business school case study for so called ‘global supply chains’.Flextronics offers the broadest worldwide EMS capabilities, from design resources to end-to-end vertically integrated global supply chain services. They had loads of cash in hand and also acquired Hughes Software System. The big was getting bigger but..

Enter the dragon ! A small Taiwanese firm called Hon Hai was growing fast, growing by few billions every quarter!! .. They were masters in ‘competence shifting innovations’ and beat Flextronics. Flextronics divested all acquisitions including HSS and tried focusing on the core but was too late – whenever Flextronics changed gear, Hon Hai changed faster!

Last year - Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft - have all launched new gaming devices, and all were bleeding fighting the $10 billion pie.. but Hon Hai was smiling :) :) They design and manufactures the gaming consoles for the big 3. They also make iPod and iPhone. Their turnover now cross 20 Billion dollars ..it is a matter of time before they buy Flextronics -- maybe only for the 'brand' !

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Perspective # 30 – Ideas from the Cloud

Ideas from the Cloud: As the craze now is ‘Wisdom of the Crowds’ and ‘Open Innovation’ many firms have started scouting ideas over Internet. This concept has not caught up in India yet. Looks like many firms have now given up on their own employees to come with ideas :) Though many corporate websites seek ideas, two good examples are Procter and Gamble and Campbell Soup.

They all start with a nice pep welcome address “Dear Friend of Campbell, Campbell Soup Company has a passion for innovation. We continually seek to improve the quality, convenience, and value of our products. We are always interested in ideas for new products, packaging, marketing, and production technologies that will help us meet the needs of our consumers and customers better, faster and more completely…. etc.”

Though Campbell soup idea website is very creative they have put too many clauses to protect them from accidently picking ideas with IP implications.. Unlike the simple Obama website, Campbell site have lots of mistake proofing over its 5 step elaborate idea submission process built in so that only qualified ideas show up -- which is a good practice, if not tons of junk ideas will land up and sifting through them will be a pain! Looks like their legal eagles are very cautious - It says "The evaluation of submitted ideas can take up to 3-6 months" -which is bit too long...Also the money is not exciting enough :)) “If the idea is adopted by Campbell, in its sole discretion, may award you an honorarium. The amount of the honorarium, if any, will be determined solely by Campbell, based on the Company’s reasonable judgment, but will in no event exceed $5,000.”

Comparing with this Procter and Gamble is a world leader.. They pioneered open innovation branded as connect+develop™ under their iconic CEO A.G. Lafley. The idea website has a section on ‘current P&G needs’ (so that an idea to build a flying car does not land here!) – For example now they are looking for ideas in ‘Odor Control’- The Problem Statement says "We are looking for technical means to reduce odiferous compounds (eg, aldehydes, butanoic acid, indole) of an extruded food product. Solutions could include, but are not limited to:

1. Nutritionally active compounds that are embedded in the product to control odor.
2. Nutritionally active compounds that are applied to the outside of the product to control odor.
3. Modifications to the process to reduce the amount of odors produced.”

The website also provides at your disposal the ‘execution tools’ -- for example it gives details about the Absorbent Fibrous Material’ technology developed and commercialized for use in sanitary napkins, which is supported by 13 patents.
Only the sky is the limit for a serious innovator as the tools are available.. A brilliant site .. At P&G ‘innovation’ is not lip service but a true business enabler. No wonder they have an annual report on innovation!

Also checkout the beta ‘Ideas for All’ website – A Chennai based science teacher has given a interesting idea to save the water which is flushed/wasted in trains. Ideas from clouds are amazing!