I recently visited Peoria, Illinois, the global headquarters of Caterpillar. Caterpillar is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. They make a lot of really big things and innovation has been important to their 90 year history.
However, we know being an innovator is not all roses – at times you feel like a square peg in a round hole. This is especially true of serial innovators, a term popularized by the book of the same name written by Abbie Griffin and two co-authors. A serial innovator is often on the cutting-edge if not the bleeding-edge, in mature organizations. They are the problem-solvers that substantially contribute to their company’s financial value.
I found just such a serial innovator to interview at Caterpillar, Steve Pierz.
Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators
Highlights from the discussion include…
* Innovation is looking at things differently and questioning traditional wisdom.
* Innovators can be irritating to experts in the organization who do not welcome having the way things work being questioned.
* Serial innovators’ reputations for discarding old ideas and promoting new ideas can create uncomfortable first meetings. Steve often receives an “Oh, I have heard about you” when meeting people in the organization for the first time.
* Innovators fail – just don’t fail spectacularly. Quickly run experiments and learn.
* There are many types of innovation beyond product innovation, and process as well as business model innovation are key opportunities to consider.
* An example of process innovation was creating a database of common part failures that was expected to reduce material testing cost by at least 50%.
* However, as serial innovators know, not all good ideas move forward and a recession stopped the development for creating the system.
* The core idea for process innovation has been repeated many times – applying technology to dramatically improve a process. Recognizing trends and executing at the right time is important to success – the timing must be right for the organization to embrace innovation.
* Employee performance reviews must be structured to recognize contributions innovations make to the organization.
* The paradox of innovation is that we ask incumbents to innovate, yet their basis of knowledge only supports incremental innovation, not radical innovation. It takes new ways of thinking for radical innovation. External influences are needed.
* Steve started a weekly webinar for anyone at Caterpillar to learn more about innovation, called Friday Morning Coffee and Disruptive Technologies. Each week attendance has dramatically grown. Participants are from a wide variety of functions, not just engineering. Frequently, external experts join the webinar to present ideas and processes.
* While Steve has always had the mindset of a serial innovator at Caterpillar, it took 24 years before Steve was given the freedom to control the innovation efforts he gets involved in. He encourages serial innovators to not give up!
* A key to innovation is simply observing people and asking if there is a better way to solve the problems they deal with.
* Best advice for product managers – embrace ideas and never turn someone away who brings you an idea. The answer may be “not yet” but never say “no.”
Useful links:
* “Moonshot Thinking” video from Google X
* Steve works for
Chad McAllister, PhD - Helping Product Managers become Product Masters
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TEI 028: Creating an Innovation Group in a Large Organization–with VP of Innovation Jeff Honious
https://productinnovationeducators.com/blog/tei-028-creating-an-innovation-group-in-a-large-organizationwith-vp-of-innovation-jeff-honious/
Mon, 13 Jul 2015 11:55:00 +0000
https://www.productinnovationeducators.com/blog/?p=3267
Jeff Honious is the VP of Innovation at RELX Group, which you may know as Reed Elsevier, a multi-billion dollar international publishing and information company. To provide some context for this, the company bio shares that it helps scientists make new discoveries, lawyers win cases, doctors save lives and executives forge relationships with their clients. Jeff’s […]
Jeff Honious is the VP of Innovation at RELX Group, which you may know as Reed Elsevier, a multi-billion dollar international publishing and information company. To provide some context for this, the company bio shares that it helps scientists make new...
Jeff’s background is in technology and web-based product development. Previous to his innovation role he also contributed to his company adopting agile development practices.
Practices and Ideas for Product Managers, Developers, and Innovators
Highlights from the discussion include…
* Jeff has been with the RELX Group for 18 years and in a technology startup before that.
* He innovated the product development process by bringing agile practices into the company.
* Before RELX had an innovation group, a team was created to benchmark the best innovation practices at other companies.
* It was determined that a one-size-fits-all innovation approach would not work across the organization given its decentralized structure. Instead, a small team was created to share best practices and tools across the organization. Jeff became the leader of this group.
* The innovation team has two primary responsibilities:
* (1) build innovation capability across the business by helping groups set up their innovation process, provide training, and use tools.
* (2) provide resources for strategic projects with specific expertise and added capacity for developing products.
* Jeff’s team is very small – it acts as a catalyst to leverage innovation occurring throughout the organization.
* A key activity for Jeff is making connections across the organization – connections between people that can lead to improved products and new products.
* Jeff’s success often begins with the synergy of existing capabilities, additional smart resources, and business champions who have a problem that needs to be solved. He then uses the combination to investigate the possibilities, reduce risk, understand priorities, and create proof of concepts that reduce uncertainties.
* What has not yet been successful is the application of systems that allow employees to submit ideas for new products – internal crowdsourcing. Getting ideas from employees was easy, but determining how to synthesize and act on the ideas was overwhelming. Key lessons learned from the process include:
* communicating with those who submitted ideas,
* asking for ideas around very specific business challenges as opposed to general innovation possibilities, and
* creating a clear process for acting on submitted ideas.
* Jeff’s advice to new product managers is to engage customers throughout the product development process, not just in the beginning.
Useful link:
* Jeff is the VP of Innovation for the RELX Group
Innovation Quote
“It ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.” -Niccolo Machiavelli
Listen Now to the Interview
Thanks!
Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion,
