Innovation : Means and Ends

Clams and Sensors

One of the leading tech company was awarded a million-dollar project to design a sensitive sensor for under-water pollution detection. Given the complexity of work, a multi-disciplinary team, comprising of microchip designers and marine experts, was setup. Less than an hour into their first design discussion, the marine biologist brought along a bag of clams and spread it on the table. He then proceeded to explain to the chip designers that clams could detect pollutants in the water even in 1 part per million concentration. And when they detected pollutants, the clams open their shells. This altered the course of discussions – instead of designing a sophisticated chip, the just needed a system to detect and alert for clams opening their shell.

Apparently they saved $999,000 and ate the clams for dinner.

This is one of the best innovation stories I read in the HBR Article https://hbr.org/2017/06/the-4-types-of-innovation-and-the-problems-they-solve.

Squares, Circles and Squircles

When Apple was designing and prototyping iPhones, the now-famous form factor of the phone had one problem – the light reflection along the rounded edge was not smooth. The traditional rounding of rectangles has an abrupt transition from straight line to circle arc. Apple’s leaders demanded “Continuous Curve” and the designers and engineers came up with a shape called “Squircle”. The difference between the “Rounded Rectangle” and “Squircle” is miniscule – in the picture above, it is the dark thin area. But the results is for all of us to see – most of us find the iPhones gorgeous and their marketing videos are so alluring.

You can read more about it at https://hbr.org/2020/11/how-apple-is-organized-for-innovation /

Spectrum of Innovation

Above two types of innovation are, in a way, on two ends of the spectrum of innovation. One is ‘Flash in the Pan’ and the latter one is ‘Rigour and Perfection’. Where your organisation needs to be, depends on the task at hand, the innovation can be somewhere in between.

There are many frameworks and methodologies for identifying, categorising and organizing for innovation.

https://hbr.org/2019/11/breaking-down-the-barriers-to-innovation talks about BEANs - Behaviour Enablers, Artifacts, and Nudges. “Behaviour Enablers” are tools and processes that encourage people to try things different and ‘out of the box’. “Artifacts” are physical things that support these behaviours. “Nudges” are indirect feedback and reinforcements that keep the things going along certain guard-rails.

https://hbr.org/2019/03/the-innovation-equation gives a framework and equation for leaders that can be used to tweak and turn different levers to gain the right level of innovation.

I have related the most with @GregSatell framework of innovation ( https://hbr.org/2017/06/the-4-types-of-innovation-and-the-problems-they-solve ). For a mature and diverse organization, such as #BlueYonder, different teams and products are at different stage of life-cycle and require different types of innovation.

Sustaining Innovation : For an established product or offering, it is important to maintain and widen the competitive gap or close the gap with the next better company. There are features to be added, quality to be improved, technology stack to be revamped or UX to be re-imagined. The problems to tackle are well defined by way of RoadMap ( generally owned by Product Managers). Also, usually, you have to work with existing skills and employees or can make incremental skill augmentation by way of new hires or upskilling existing employees. This constraint on skill ends up defining the domain of the innovation.

An established method is to discuss and dissect the RoadMap, break it down in smaller chunks. In agile terminology, it would be creation of user stories. If the smaller chunks do not require any serious innovation – it goes for productization, otherwise discussion and brainstorming generally clears the roadblocks and the Product keeps alive and kicking with innovation.

Breakthrough Innovation : Consider this – you have a product and there are some known pain points in the product. Your team has already spent countless number of hours and brain storming but there is no solution in sight. Or, you have a new product to roll out and almost all the pieces are in place, except for some critical gaps that your team cannot get over. You need a ‘Breakthrough Innovation” in these situations. Publish your problems in internal or external hackathons and competitions and someone somewhere will be able to come up with a spark of idea.

One of the best examples I have seen is while working at #BlueYonder. UI testing and automation had been a prickly point for a long time. The generic tools available in the market did not understand the supply chain domain and were ‘too dumb’ for us. @SamimKhan, a Quality Assurance expert at BlueYonder came up with a bright idea of using elements of Machine Learning to identify UI elements and carry out actions on the UI elements! This would not be possible in a regular setup of Sprints and Backlogs.

Basic Research : This is probably the most obvious of all types of innovation. When people talk about innovation, basic research is probably what comes to the mind first – images of the Edisons and the Einsteins. But this kind of innovation is not confined to deeply mathematical or scientific field – it can be UX innovation, Business Process Innovation, or even cashflow Prediction. The basic ingredient is to go to the 1st principle - question everything, break-down the elements of the big picture, try to find solutions for smaller problems and then try to combine them for the big bang innovation. Encourage your employees to attend the Industry and Academic events and conferences, encourage open discussions so they are not afraid of failures. Give the teams enough support and some idea will eventually work out.

When we needed to speed up our Supply Chain Optimization solvers at BlueYonder – we put all the above to work. We hired scientists who helped the existing team upgrade and refresh the academic knowledge. We discussed the problems in team open meetings and invited ideas from all parts of the team – engineers, mathematicians, domain experts and customer facing people. Almost 2 years of research and coding yielded solving some of the most difficult problems in the world of #LinearProgramming and resulted in our products becoming 3 to 60 times faster.

Disruptive Innovation : Sometimes, even when you get better and better at solving the same problem, it is not enough. Your customers have newer problems to solve. May be their business model has changed, may be their operating environment has changed. It is not always easy to upskill/augment your employee base to address such situations. Very strategic level of thinking is needed here and strategic partnerships, mergers or acquisitions give a quantum jump needed.

Consulting organizations to this all the time – they respond to the changing business environment for customers by acquiring consultants with appropriate knowledge. Product Development organizations find it harder to do it on their own. In-house startups do this trick many a times – but be ready to accept 80% of the failures on an average. If you have cultivated the right culture, your teams can come up with new product ideas to respond to changing customer world. When COVID stuck, all the brick-and-mortar companies had to be very creative with their supply chains – resorting to dark stores, accelerating curb-side pickups and many more such changes in operating model. #BlueYonder responded by rolling out several “Covid Packages” of their products that solved covid specific problems for customers quickly. When there is no-time to hunt for acquisitions, your investment in innovation culture can sail you through the most difficult storms!

Concluding Remarks

Innovation is the life-blood of today’s business. It comes in many shapes and sizes and there is no one-size-fits-all. Leaders should invest heavily and build a deep culture of innovation – there is nothing more valuable than a bunch of self-driven innovative employees. But from time-to-time, leaders should take a step back, re-evaluate their innovation needs and fitness of their innovation methods. Based on where they are in the locus of innovation, they can follow an innovation framework or innovate one of their own.