IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, VOL. 40, NO.

3, THIRD QUARTER, SEPTEMBER 2012

The Innovation Dilemma

GERARD H. GAYNOR TMC Vice President Publications

PETER Drucker reminded us, in Managing in a time

of Great Change, that every organizationnot just businessneeds one competence: innovation. While much is said and written about innovation, organizations struggle to do innovation. Part of the difculty arises, because we lack an agreed upon denition of innovation. We confuse invention with innovation. We treat innovation as some Eureka moment. We hear people speak of innovation in science and engineering; such usage of the word innovation leads to confusion. James Bryan Quinn noted the following: One should recognize and manage innovation as it really isa tumultuous, somewhat random, interactive learning process, linking a worldwide network of knowledge sources to the subtle unpredictability of customers and users. Edward Roberts, who established the management of technology program at MIT, described innovation as being composed of two parts: (1) the generation of an idea or invention, and (2) the conversion of that invention into a business or other careful application. To clearly separate invention and innovation, I combine the descriptions of Quinn (the front end) and Roberts (the operations end) into the following denition/description: Innovation = Invention + Commercialization or Implementation

IEEE DOI 10.1109/EMR.2012.2206958

No commercialization or implementation, no innovation! Commercialization involves bringing new products and services to the marketplace; implementation involves executing all those process and administrative inventions that benet the organizations stakeholders. While invention may be the work effort of a single individual, innovation requires a team of dedicated people from many disciplines. Engineers do not bring a new product to the marketplace without the dedicated assistance of marketing and their associated disciplines. Engineers may develop the product, but that effort provides no benet until it reaches the marketplace. Fullling this description of innovation requires a change in mindset. Inventions fortied by patents, certainly are important, but they cannot be considered as innovation. Innovation occurs in organizations from developing an innovation attitude: the attitude that asks, what benets this innovation will provide; what is the added value, personal satisfaction or monetary; what problems does it solve; and can a case be made to pursue it. Innovation involves consideration of the business system, systems thinking, and new ways of thinking. Further, innovation is about change and dealing with its consequences; it disrupts plans; it can decimate careers and organizations that fail to adapt to changing technology and business environments. How can an organization change its mindset regarding innovation? There is no ten easy lessons

IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, VOL. 40, NO. 3, THIRD QUARTER, SEPTEMBER 2012

approach, and I doubt if it can be driven from the top of the organization. There are a few exceptions; 3M with an over 100 year program for providing the technical community with a culture that allows for well-intentioned failure. The same culture existed in Hewlett Packard when Bill Hewett and David Packard led the executive team. In an organization, not blessed with a forward looking founder, chances are that the process will begin in some organizational unit by a forward looking manager.

In todays mega-organizations, innovation really does not begin at the top of the organization; it begins among the many competent discipline specialists who take individual initiative to an extreme. Some executive may suggest an idea, but innovation requires that unknown invention and its eventual commercialization or implementation. But, effective bottom-up innovation requires a culture that allows for exercising disciplined freedom. The fact is that innovation can begin by anyone in the organization who

has the courage to pursue an idea passionately and transcend the obstacles from the naysayers and the status quo. My future articles will cover various issues involved in managing the innovation process and raising issues as to how technical professionals can take the lead. Please send me your comments or recommendations on specic innovation issues at (g.gaynor@ieee.org).