The Innovation Competencies - What are they and how can they be developed

In the past, mastery of technology and invention were characteristics of successful corporations and nations.  In the future, the mastery of innovation and complexity will be necessary for companies and organizations to survive and thrive. The ability to partner, connect, and rapidly develop new solutions and processes will be necessary to create value, develop new industries, create sustainable companies, and result in prosperity and a higher quality of life.

Recognizing this imperative, a recent Boston Consulting Group survey (1) of 1500 executives indicates that innovation is a top-three priority for 76 percent of companies surveyed and that 74 percent of industrial companies plan to increase innovation investment.

With innovation established as a top corporate and organizational priority, the fundamental questions arise of what are the critical innovation competencies and how do we develop them in students or employees.  

Three competencies have been identified as essential for innovation in a technical environment – expertise in a discipline or domain, the discovery competencies, and understanding of a system (2).

The Innovator’s DNA (3) characterizes the necessary creative and team based problem solving skills as the ‘discovery skills’.  While the discovery skills are important, two additional competencies are necessary for innovation in a technical context.  First, expertise in a discipline is clearly a necessary competency.  For example, I may want to develop the next generation of innovative hybrid vehicle, but if I don’t have the technical foundation in the related disciplines, it is unlikely that I will make much progress.

Perhaps not as apparent, expertise in systems competencies is also a necessary competency for innovation.  The system engineering competencies are technical in nature but not aligned with a particular discipline such as mechanical or electrical engineering.  The systems competencies include considering the stakeholder view, viewing a complex system as a network of subsystems with inputs and outputs, and viewing a system in its functional and physical structure.  This ability to disassemble and reassemble the basic functions and elements of a system is a critical competency for innovation.   It is interesting to note that the quality visionary W. Edwards Deming recognized the importance of a systems perspective in his Theory of Profound knowledge some 30 years ago.  

Once an understanding of the innovation competencies has been identified, the next concern becomes how are they taught and developed in students and employees.  Results in this area are still being developed, but in general, they are taught and developed through a combination of content and experiences.  In addition, they must be taught simultaneously and purposefully to produce innovative results.  Engineering programs clearly teach and develop discipline competencies and sometimes provide some exposure to the systems competencies.  In The Innovator’s DNA (3), exercises are presented to develop each of the discovery skills individually.

The Business Model Canvas (4) and more recently the Innovation Canvas (5) have been introduced to develop innovative business models and product designs.  The figure presented is the IDEO shopping cart represented on the Innovation Canvas.  The canvas concept itself represents a framework and teaching tool for a team to simultaneously exercise the three innovation competencies.   First, use of the canvases requires expertise in engineering or business disciplines.  The structure and elements on the canvases are derived from a systems decomposition of models for the business plan or the design process.  Finally, using the canvases requires a team to exercise most of the discovery skills including networking, associating, questioning, and experimenting.
 

The discipline of innovation is rapidly advancing past tips, tricks, and best practices to identifying core competencies and tools and methods to develop them.   Results in these areas are continuing to be developed but innovation is clearly on a path to becoming better defined and supported through model based approaches with underlying tools and methods.

(1)     http://industrytoday.com/article_view.asp?ArticleID=we442

(2)     Schindel, William D., Samuel N. Peffers, James H. Hanson, Jameel Ahmed, and William A. Kline. “All Innovation is Innovation of Systems: An Integrated 3-D Model of Innovation Competencies.” Proceedings of the 2011 ASEE Annual Conference, Vancouver, Canada, July 2011.

(3)     Dyer, Jeff, Hal Gregerson, and Clayton M. Christensen. The Innovator’s DNA. Boston, Harvard Business Review Press, 2011.he Innovators DNA,

(4)     Osterwalder, Alexander, Yves Pigneur, and Tim Clark. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2010.

(5)     Kline, William A., Cory Hixson, Thomas W. Mason, Patricia Brackin, Robert Bunch, KC Dee, Glen Livesay, 'The Innovation Canvas -A Tool to Develop Integrated Product Designs and Business Models,' submitted to: Proceedings of the 2013 ASEE Annual Conference, Atlanta, GA, June 2013.

Nurturing Innovation at the Branam Innovation Center

The Branam Innovation Center (BIC) is a collaborative project space where students work on competition team projects involving the latest technology and real world problem solving.  The center is 16,000 sq ft under one roof and houses eight student competition teams with over 200 students in total involved across all the teams.  The center has been named for our former President Matt Branam who was a strong supporter of innovation programs on campus and championed the building of the center in the summer of 2011.

 

The format for most teams and competitions is the same.  The teams form in the fall at the start of school under the supervision of a faculty adviser.  They develop their vehicle or solution for a competition that happens in May or June and the cycle repeats each year.  The project work is inherently multidisciplinary and involves students from freshman to senior.  Rose-Hulman teams have been remarkably successful and our teams have competed in locations as close as the Indianapolis Motor Speedway or at venues across the country.

At the grand opening in 2011, Trustee David Hannum humorously referred to the center as a ‘garage’ and that cool things happen in a garage.  He was right about cool things happening in the building but there is more to it than just the space.  What makes a garage an ‘innovation center’?

The themes of the practice of innovation are collaboration, teamwork, applying the latest technology, prototyping, and speed of development.  The center has been developed and operated with these themes in mind.  First, the building was designed in an open concept with no walls between teams. The only separation between them is a tape line on the floor.  The competitions themselves encourage application of the latest technology.  Activities in the innovation center are team based and the open design fosters excitement and interaction between teams.  Speed of prototyping and development is encouraged by having resources available here for students to rapidly build and test ideas.   There are meeting areas, a small machine shop, welding room, and teams have resources at hand for their project work.

Through these competition team experiences, students apply their technical skills and learn teamwork, communication, project management, and solving complex problems involving technology, budget, and schedule constraints.  These are great professional practice experiences for students and are highly valuable during the job search process.

Another important theme of innovation is that ‘anyone can play’ - being innovative does not take a big capital investment or years of experience.  A garage can become an effective innovation center and has at our Branam Innovation Center.

The Invitation to Dream: Innovation is a Necessary Organizational Competency

October 2012 - Today globalization and connectivity mean that businesses and organizations compete not only in products, services, and market share but for who will survive or perish. In many markets, competitive advantages have eroded, barriers to entry have lowered, and the speed and intensity of competition has increased.  

Is ‘innovation,’ commonly cited in advertisements and mission statements, just the latest fad or the next real thing?  Although misused, overused, and misunderstood, I believe innovation is an emerging discipline that is not only here to stay but is quickly becoming a critical organizational competency.  The organizations that will survive and thrive will not be the best inventor of new ideas and technology, but will be the best innovator who is nimble and resourceful to capture market and customer opportunities.  

Innovation has many definitions and uses however here it means focusing on turning ideas into something of commercial value, speed of development, working in diverse teams, embracing technology, and a willingness to rapidly develop and test new solutions.  

While innovation may be yet another competency to be developed, the good news is that it can be understood, taught, learned and practiced.  In the way that entrepreneurship and quality have developed as academic disciplines, innovation is ripe for the same analysis and presentation.

At Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, one of our priorities is graduating students who will be the innovators and technical leaders of the future.   Our programs inspire innovation by establishing teams of students to take part in high quality, high touch project work that requires grappling with the complexities of the real world and practicing the skills of innovation.

Our most unique program, Rose-Hulman Ventures, works in the ‘innovation-stage’ of development taking product ideas from outside clients and employing student teams alongside professional project engineers to develop the ideas into fully realized, workable solutions that are ready to be reproduced or manufactured for market. 

In our decade of experience with the Ventures program and working on hundreds of innovation stage projects, we have had many successful and a few unsuccessful project outcomes.   Out of all these experiences, these best practices and lessons learned for inspiring innovation in a team or an organization have been captured and offered here.

Anyone can play - Innovation is within the reach of any organization or individual.   Being innovative does not require an advanced degree or significant capital investment.  Innovation is the great equalizer as the next great innovator in a market may be anywhere in the world or any person in the organization. 

It’s a team sport - Achieving success in the innovation stage of development requires multiple hands, a variety of skills, and a group of independent perspectives approaching problems from different angles.  To achieve innovation in your organization, get people to work together in teams.

Speed wins - Speed is the fundamental principle of innovation.  Speed energizes the organization, creates a sense of urgency, and is the key element of ‘fail fast and fail often’ or 'experiment often and learn quickly' – many unsuccessful experiments or prototypes leading to a successful outcome.  

Scopes creep - Creating and developing something new often means that it is not possible up front to write the detailed plan for going from start to finish.  Develop a general scope and direction at the start of the project, begin the work, and accept that the scope will evolve over time as intermediate results and new information become available.  It’s a real innovation killer to insist that a detailed project plan be developed when creative and innovative solutions must be developed.  

  

Walnuts before peanuts - Every project breaks down into multiple problems and tasks that must be solved before an innovation breakthrough can be accomplished.  It is imperative to prioritize and crack the tough nuts first in order to make effective progress on the project.  Taking on the easy tasks first likely means revisiting them when the tough ones are addressed.

Let others drive – A top down, authoritative leadership style encourages great followers, not great innovators.  Great teams find their strength by assuring that opportunities to lead and innovate are available for all team members.  

These lessons learned provide guidelines for innovation stage development and also more broadly to inspire innovation in teams and organizations.  We have found at Rose-Hulman that innovation can come from anywhere and can be instilled in anyone. The next great innovator in your organization could just be you.

Prototyping an Innovation Canvas in the High Sierras

October 2012 - What happens when over 60 of the leading educators and scholars in the fields of entrepreneurship and innovation come together in a setting of spectacular scenery and opportunity for reflection and collaboration ?  The Stanford Epicenter program hosted a two and a half day conference from September 30 to October 03, 2012 focused on advances in entrepreneurship and innovation education, and I had the good fortune to attend.

 In an ‘unconference’ format at the Stanford Sierra Camp at South Lake Tahoe, the gathering was led through exercises to build collegiality and to identify topics of interest to advance the effectiveness of undergraduate education in entrepreneurship and innovation.  As the workshop progressed, working groups formed around topics of interest and converged on sharing ideas and developing prototypes to illustrate their ideas.  It all culminated on the final evening with inspiring presentations by each team to the assembled group on topics ranging from online courses to dealing with ABET.

Our group of two was small but mighty and focused on developing an ‘innovation canvas’ to use as a teaching tool in entrepreneurship and innovation courses.  My partner was Cory Hixson, graduate student pursuing a Ph.D. in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech.   Before the conference at Rose-Hulman, a small faculty working group has considered the idea of a ‘design canvas’ and the collaboration time with Cory provided the opportunity to expand and develop the concept.

The inspiration for the work is the ‘business model canvas’ from the popular text Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur.  The canvas provides a unique approach to developing the case for a new business opportunity by presenting the key themes to consider in a canvas concept which encourages a team approach to sequential and simultaneous thinking as new information is added to the canvas.  The canvas concept is a great teaching tool so why not develop a canvas for the larger problem of getting from initial concept to business model. 

The real insight of the canvas concept comes from the fact that the design, innovation, and entrepreneurship processes are often modeled as step by step processes, chapter outlines, or other some other structured format.  In reality, the processes are anything but structured with jumps, loops, roadblocks, pivots, and success (or failure) is often reached in mysterious ways though a team approach and simultaneously considering a broad range of issues.  The canvas encourages the team approach as well as both sequential and simultaneous consideration of key themes.  

Over the span of a morning working session, Cory and I developed a prototype for an ‘Innovation Canvas’ to capture the technical and business process of going from concept and opportunity recognition to developing the business case for the idea.  We sketched a round canvas with ‘value’ at the center as value creation is a fundamental measure of success or failure.  We landed on four main phases, concept, innovate, design, and business model and set about identifying the key themes to consider in each phase.  The key themes were detailed as puzzle pieces in each of the four quadrants.  The business model canvas as-is became our fourth quadrant.  Cory is a Prezi whiz and whipped up a great presentation in about 30 minutes to capture the key thoughts.  Our prototype sketches are just that, interesting idea, some initial good thoughts, possibly useful, but more work to do to fill in the blanks and test it in a classroom.

So what’s next ?

At the close of the conference we were encouraged to continue working on our ideas and prototypes.  Cory and I intend to continue working on the Innovation Canvas concept and in addition to the Rose-Hulman working group, several of our colleagues at the conference from Bradley, Olin, Saint Louis University, and Arizona State also indicated an interest in supporting the effort as well.  Several have used the business model canvas in their classes. In the spirit of innovation and taking a team approach, it will be great to have the insights and experience of a diverse group aimed at further development.

Where will it end up ? 

Who knows, but stay tuned.  The business model canvas concept is red hot these days. It is certain that others are working on the same concept of an expanded canvas for the innovation and design phases and we may be scooped by them.  Let’s see if our group can advance the idea, share ideas along the way, and maybe publish results in a paper or two for all to build upon.