Huthwaite Innovation Institute - Publications

Lean Innovation Part One

This video is part one of an eight part series that the Huthwaite Innovation Institute created for Pearson Publishing title Lean, Green Retooling, Lean Innovation Part One: What, Why, & When. The Huthwaite Innovation Institute can provide your organization with customized training courses like this one to be used for employee training programs.

Podcast Business Model Innovation

This video on Business Model Innovation, Playing Your Cards Right was heard on a Podcast featuring the Huthwaite Innovation Institute's Bart Huthwaite. The Huthwaite Innovation Institute can provide a Podcast customized for your organization's innovation needs. The Institute also provides services like onsite workshops.

Measurable Leading Indicators in Design for Achieving Navy Ship Cost Objectives

The following is in a request for comments on two trigger questions at the SNAME-ASNE Joint Ship Design Committee.

A- Identifying Measurable Leading Indicators in Design for Achieving Cost Objectives. “What are the critical leading indicators that can be measured during the ship design process to ensure that the design is meeting its cost requirements?”

B- Changing the Ship Design Culture to Focus on Ship Costs in the Ship Design Process. “What are the critical actions required for changing the ship design culture to focus on ship costs in the ship design process?”

Application of the Lean Innovation CUBE at Raytheon Missile Manufacturing System

Manufacturing innovation and readiness is as important to the successful development of a system as are the capabilities of the technologies intended for the system. However, manufacturing systems have typically lagged in the level of innovation needed to produce low cost, high quality and fast cycle times.

Design for DoD Affordability US Army and Raytheon Missile Apply Lean Innovation

Defense policy now requires more affordable solutions delivered faster. Raytheon Missile and the Army are teaming to use Lean Innovation to cut costs.

Advantages of Using the Innovation CUBE Model Director of Quality Management

When I first heard of the Innovation CUBE on an Industry Week telecast, I found the model to be quite intriguing. After reading through The Rules of Innovation text by Bart Huthwaite, I found that the model helps the user examine the problem at hand from various different perspectives. These varying perspectives will offer unique ways to develop solutions while using the tried and true brainstorming techniques.

Confronting Waste Drivers in Project Management for the Navy

Mike Ferraris
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt / Continuous Process Improvement POC

We are locked in a constant struggle against the forces of waste in managing our programs here at NUWC. The wastes take many forms – schedule slips, requirement creep, test failures, defects, rework, incomplete or insufficient documentation, technical complications – and the list could go on and on. How much of our time is spent trying to identify these wastes – where they are and how to eliminate them? We define metrics up front, track them, document them, use them to monitor ourselves and our contractors, report them to our sponsors, yet we still struggle to accomplish our goals on time and on budget. What if there were ways to be proactive instead of reactive about these things? What if, instead of constantly engaging in the endless “firefighting” we could put “fire prevention” measures in place?

Lean Innovation and Systems Engineering

Larri Ann Rosser
Raytheon Corporation Learning Institutes

At first glance, it might seem that Lean Innovation and Systems Engineering don’t go together. Systems engineering is known for its standards and repeatable processes, and innovation is about doing what hasn’t been done before. When we discuss systems engineering, we use words like “discipline”, “rigor” and “best practices”, while innovation conjures up terms like “creativity”, “disruption” and “out of the box thinking”.

Measurable Leading Indicators in Design for Army Smart Munitions Cost Objectives

David W. Panhorst

There is a great deal of design trade space in the development of an Army Smart Munition program. There is a continuous balancing act between Critical Performance Parameters (Customer), delivery schedule (Supply), overall development cost of the munition (Design), and unit cost of the final product (Operations). Changing one factor can adversely impact other factors, and a method to understand the interdependencies will minimize waste and reduce the overall cost. This paper will outline the trade study techniques that will maximize attributes and minimize waste for fielding an Army Smart Munition, specifically as they are applied to the development of the Mid-Range Munition (MRM).

Making Affordability Work

Dan Klingberg • David W. Panhorst The evolving defense acquisition policy requires more affordable solutions delivered faster and on cost and schedule. To achieve an affordable product, acquisition professionals must clearly understand their desired end-state and develop innovative solutions to close the gap between where they are today and where they want to be in the future. The Department of Defense’s current mindset is to avoid new ideas and settle for a solution it is comfortable with, thereby driving the department toward designs similar to those created in the past.

Why Innovation Leadership Is Growing So Rapidly

Innovation Leadership is knowing how to create new, breakaway value with
minimum waste. It is rapidly becoming a business "best practice. " The following explains this new phenomenon, its roots in past practices, and the
business principles, management practices, and an implementation protocol that is driving its success.

A new "best practice" is emerging on the corporate horizon. Continuous improvement champions now know that while initiatives such as "lean" (lower cost) and "six sigma" (higher quality) still dominate the landscape, Innovation Leadership is capturing the attention of a growing number of corporations
including, General Electric, Microsoft, Raytheon and others worldwide.

How to Recognize Ripening Bananas

Invention is not the mother of necessity. You do not create growth opportunities. You must discover and exploit them. The Rule of “Recognize Ripening Bananas”, the first task in your Systematic Corporate Innovation process, will help you spot new opportunities while they are still “green bananas,” ready for the picking.

Opportunities seldom appear in the directions of the past. In the next section of this book I will show you how to exploit the Three Sharks of Perpetual Change, those forces that always assure you new opportunities. They are Three Sharks are the (1) Changing marketplace, (2) New technology, and (3) Your relentless competition. At the end of this Chapter you will find a tool, as at the end of each of these Chapters, for harnessing these Three Sharks in your quest for recognizing ripening opportunity.

Measure Wants to Find Gaps

Because all ideas start with the recognition of gaps, all processes for identifying great ideas must be aimed at creating perspectives that make the gaps and holes visible. The reason why so many leaders do not use innovation measurement is that they simply do not know where to start. They measure what is easy and well known, not what is meaningful. Measures must be linked to the factors needed for success, the key business drivers. Fewer are better. Concentrate on the vital few rather than the trivial many. Align your project metrics with what you want to deliver to your customer and yourself. Identify your stakeholders then consider measuring what they need to meet their needs.

Can We Reduce Something?

Automotive designers struggled for years to improve the performance & quality of tires, while constantly struggling with steadily increasing material costs. Your automobile's five tires are a major supply chain expense item. Designers used conventional thinking to strengthen tire walls and treads and well as find new material combinations. Then one unconventional tire team applied innovative thinking. Why not go in the opposite direction? They focused on the "fifth" or spare tire, seldom used today. They used the technique of repurposing. They first looked at the spare tire's function.

Crack Things Open

We typically never borrow "Things" from other domains in their entirety. We borrow pieces. You then assemble these pieces with other parts to form new "Things" to meet the real "Wants" people seek. The new is built from the pieces of the present and the past. When you are able to break apart the familiar things of life to examine them in a new way, you can find new ideas.

Think End-To-End

It was Thomas Edison who said, “All parts of the system must be constructed with reference to all other parts, since, in one sense, all the parts form one machine.” Keep in mind that your total project solution depends more on how each sub-solution interacts with other solutions, rather than on how these solutions act independently. When one project solution is improved independent of another, the total project solution can suffer. That’s why problems and solutions (Wants & Things) must co-evolve in the innovation process. You must develop them in parallel, sometimes leading to a creative redefinition of the problem or to a solution that lies outside the boundaries of what was previously assumed to be possible.

Hear Unspoken Wants

Be cautious when you listen to the Voice of the Customer. Customers do not tell you the entire truth. They don’t intend to hold their Wants back. It’s just that they don’t realize they have them, or are unable to express them in words.

An Ounce of Prevention Is Worth a Pound of Cure

Corporate America has spent billions of dollars on curing manufacturing and customer service problems that could have been avoided in the early innovation stage. Lean manufacturing is focused on eliminating non-value tasks on the factory floor. This includes identifying and reducing such “hidden” process steps as part moving, storing, inspecting, and many more. Manufacturing complexity reduction is the primary target. Six Sigma tools, and the cadres of Black Belts who administer them, are aimed identifying the root cause drivers of quality failures both on the factory floor and beyond. Product and process variability is the chief enemy.

Think Backwards

History shows that anyone who has accomplished anything did not know exactly how they were going to do it. They only knew they were going to do it. You must do the same. Innovation leadership requires that you see the end before the beginning. You then must be able to communicate your vision to the people who must work with you to make it a reality. Your vision of your mountain top might be somewhat fuzzy at first and will certainly change. But don’t be too concerned about that. The records show that no company ever ended up at the same destination first aimed for.

The Rule of Things

Thing. A solution to a Want. Things can include products, processes, services, policies and more.

Please keep in mind that Things are more than just physical objects. We don’t want a 3/8” drill bit. We want a 3/8” hole. Physical objects can only meet part of a Want. Also needed are a wide range of tasks throughout a product’s life cycle. These include designing, manufacturing, marketing, servicing, learning…the number of tasks—or what I call –ings—is endless.

Prepare Yourself for Insights

Researchers tell us that we have at least 60,000 thoughts per day. Most of these are along the grooves of our daily life. An Insight happens when you experience a sudden shift in your pattern of thinking, taking you out of these grooves. A new pattern of thought erupts that enables you to see something from a totally different perspective. Insights need not be accidental or mysterious. You can create a mental framework for attracting them. Nothing can come into your experience unless you summon it with persistent thoughts.

Use of Parallel Thinking

How do America’s best companies get their employees to think “outside the box”? How do you ensure that solutions are not discarded simply because the idea contradicts an established business plan? At this year’s Innovation Leadership Summit you will learn how leading companies like Daimler and SKF are using “Parallel Thinking” to create and enhance new products and services. The following is a short excerpt from Bart Huthwaite’s new book, The Rules of Innovation.

Insight In Action

Insight is a must-have innovation skill. How are America’s best companies applying Insight when creating new product or service offerings? What tools exist to ensure that you have tapped every possible idea source? At this year’s Innovation Leadership Summit you will learn how leading companies like General Dynamics and Raytheon are using Insight to create visionary products. The following is a short excerpt from Bart Huthwaite’s new book, The Rules of Innovation.

Rule of Zeitgeist

World changes ignite bursts of innovation. Today global warming is releasing a torrent of ideas, some old but many new. The states of California and New Jersey are planning to ban the sale of incandescent light bulbs by 2010. Incandescent light bulbs waste 90% of the energy they use. Now the move is in the direction of compact fluorescent lights or CFLs. This solution has been around for more than twenty years, but only now is it coming to the forefront.

Steven Schnaars, in his book “Megamistakes” (1989), uses the German word “Zeitgeist” to describe the phenomenon of when something simultaneously begins to happen everywhere at the same time. The idea of the Zeitgeist holds that there is a characteristic spirit of the times marked by social, technical, intellectual and political trends of that era. These are ideas whose time has come. It means that the conditions for germinating new ideas are ripening.

Measure to Learn

The primary purpose of measurement is to learn. If you truly believe that innovation is the ultimate business weapon, you must make sure you are applying it correctly. The purpose of innovation measurement must be real time feedback. Feedback tells you how to make course corrections to assure your innovation strategy is on the right course. You don’t want to learn after the battle where you should have gone. You want feedback in real time. This is the basic principle of all modern weaponry, whether they are men, missiles or munitions.

Unfortunately, most corporate innovation metrics don’t do this. They are what I call “post process” measurements. They are like the World War II reconnaissance plane taking photos after a bombing raid. Modern weaponry gives feedback for course correction. The missile heads in the general direction of the target. It then gets more feedback along the way to enable it to precisely enter a target’s doorway.

Finding Opportunity in Sharks

The future is under our very noses. You don’t have to be a palm reader to see it. Nor do you have to have a crystal ball. What you do need is a way for seeing what will attack your current products. Whether we want to believe it or not, all products and services begin to competitively degrade the very day they are created. By understanding these forces of destruction, we can anticipate them, plan for them and, best yet, shape them to your advantage. The good news is that while these forces are attacking you, they are also attacking your competition. By recognizing and reacting to them sooner, you can achieve advantages, as well as gain footholds in promising new markets. My purpose here is to show you, as a front line innovation leader, how to do this.

Why Corporate Innovation Systems Fail

Innovation is now emerging as the “third wave” of corporate improvement. The two waves of six sigma quality and lean enterprise are underway. Now the goal is stronger top-line growth.

The Institute for Innovation Leadership is partnering with the University of Michigan to make innovation a day-to-day business process. Our partnership delivers teaching and systems for overcoming the following “fatal flaws.”

When Wall Street Calls

Corporate innovation is now high on the list for determining a company’s market value. Growth through cost-cutting and acquisitions are being called yesterday’s strategies. Innovation is seen as the driving force needed in our global economy.

Now Wall Street analysts are now being asked to probe deeper to find a company’s true innovation strength. Analysts realize that while innovation is at the top of every company’s agenda, there is a huge gap between corporate pronouncements and the practice of it down on the front lines.

CEOs are now being asked “show us your systematic innovation process--and metrics--for assuring your project teams understand the path to innovation and know how to deliver it profitably.” The operative term is “Systematic Corporate Innovation.”

The New Business Excellence Wave

Corporate innovation is now emerging as something more than media hype, creativity tools, and business theory. Companies such as General Electric, Microsoft, General Dynamics, SKF and other leaders are weaving innovation into their daily work.

The operative term is “Systematic Corporate Innovation” or what some managers are simply calling SCI. More than 20 years ago, business philosopher Peter F. Drucker aptly captured the challenge of corporate innovation. In his book “Innovation and Entrepreneurship” he described it as “neither a science nor an art, but a practice” capable of being organized as systematic work. “

Corporate leaders are now beginning to see innovation as a process that can be systematically learned, applied to any product, service or system, and—very importantly—measured in “real time.” As one CEO says, “Systematic Corporate Innovation is where Six Sigma and Lean were in their infancy. Many companies are now only understanding that innovation can be a systematic, step-by-step process.”

How Corporate Innovation Can Really Work

A successful corporate innovation effort demands that innovation be what Peter Drucker said long ago, ‘a discipline, capable of being learned, capable of being practiced.’ Yet ask most managers about the “how to” of making innovation a systematic process and most will not be able to give you a clear answer.
What is needed is the “how to” for making innovation a systematic management process that can be applied on the “front line” of any corporation.

What is an innovation? An innovation occurs when a solution meets a valued want. Inventions are not innovations. There are more than 2,400 mouse trap patents in the U.S. patent office with more than a dozen applied for each year. These may be a solution but no one seems to wants them.

Value Stream Mapping & Innovation Leadership

Are we Innovative?
Value stream mapping (VSM) can play an important role in an organization’s Innovation Leadership effort. An organization that practices VSM, however, may not be innovative. In many cases VSM can even hinder an organizations ability to become innovative.

What CEOs Want

The following is a “snapshot summary” of an ongoing survey conducted
by the Institute for Innovation Leadership and presented by Bart Huthwaite