Just 2 examples
DCB - Ditch-cum-bund defence was a master stroke in warfare planning. It was innovative thinking when it was first thought of and put into practice. We still rely on it decades later.
Clearing of mines and obstacles by air delivered explosive is another innovation that would be appreciated by Corp of Engineers
Innovation is what separates the winner from the pack. It is all about constant rethinking - redesigning - rebuilding and back to rethinking. Invention is about -ideas made manifest - cash into ideas. Innovation is about - ideas applied successfully - ideas into cash
While in Army, I used to think of crazy stuff all the time - product innovations, service innovations, process innovations and would keep sending my ideas to what I thought was the correct authority. For example if an officer gets a Charlie grading in the course, he pays for the costs incurred. Attendance for PT is voluntary as long as you have excellent gradings in quartely BPET and PPT tests. Using civilian mechanics for painting a water trailer than sending it away for 3 months to an Army Base Wksp. Everyday I would come up with an idea and send it to the respective authority. I never received any confirmation on what happened to my ideas. I hope that some day we have an Innovation center for the defence services that taps the amazing potential of the soldiers and officers.
This blog is about setting up of an Innovation Center. Why do we need an Innovation Center?
Problems encountered while handling innovations
- Lack of right incentives to contribute
- A significant work needs to be done to refine the original idea
- Lack of methods of socialization of the idea to a wide audience
- Lack of availability of experts to vet the ideas
- Lack of structured processes in place to drive transparency, metrics and collaborations
- Long lead times
Is there any way this innovation activity can be accomplished in a practical manner. Innovation is not about one crazy scientist slogging away in his lab and emerging years later with a revolutionary product. Innovation is about constant improvements big and small as a result of a focused effort.
Innovations could be
- Incremental
- Emergent
- Radical
And innovations can affect
- Products
- Processes
- Paradigm
- Position
The life cycle of an innovation starts with an idea and flows through the following phases
- Strategize: Origin of an idea
- Capture and Publish Idea: Preliminary review and categorization or re-categorization
- Evaluate: Detailed review and creation of a business case
- Define: Creation of a project based on the business case
- Execute: Successful execution of the project or proof of concept
- Transition: Transition of the project into mainstream
- Review and closure
Origin of the ideas: Ideas for innovation / innovation pipeline can emerge from two sources
- Proactive - formal business planning system as a result of a business plan or a strategic innovation strategy
- Reactive - suggestion scheme - which generally is a part of the continuous business improvement schema
The proactive sources are
- Formal R&D planning
- Annual business planning
- Periodic / quarterly / six monthly innovation workshop
- Continuous improvement programme
- Customer insights
- Employment strategy
The reactive sources are
- Competition analysis
- Market benchmarking not necessarily competition
- Employment suggestion scheme
- Customer feedback
Review - preliminary and detailed: Ideas are reviewed for merit
- Preliminary review and forward to appropriate department
- Detailed review by the appropriate department followed by a decision
The decision could be
- Idea is rejected because it is not valid
- Idea is rejected because it has already been implemented
- Idea is rejected because it has been suggested already and is in implementation state
- Idea is waiting on clarifications
- Idea is accepted and taken to next step of project initiation
Business case creation: An accepted idea should meet the following categor
- Valuable - it should add value to the organization
- Feasible - it should be within means or doable
- Acceptable - should be in line with the organizations' objectives
- Worthy - sustainable over long term
An accepted idea could fit into any of the below categories
Doing what we do better
- Business as usual
- Business process improvement
- Existing product improvement
New to the enterprise
- New product development
- New market development
New to the world
- New business development
Project implementation: This is where the rubber meets the road. Or this is where the idea falls apart or makes it through to success. Based on my experience I developed a 30-20-10 % rule. Out of every 1000 ideas, 300 ideas were selected. Of these 300 only 60 made it to prototype level and only 6 were highly successful. Truly transformational ideas were very rare. Most were at incremental improvement levels.
Till now I was talking of the Ideation Management Life Cycle. Let me take a step aside to define the framework. To enable the innovation circus to function seamlessly (circus because there are are so many events happening simultaneously and seamlessly transitioning from one act to another) we need a framework. The framework should address the 4 questions
- Are we doing the correct thing? - strategic alignment
- Are we doing it the correct way? - architecture
- Are we getting them done well? - delivery
- Are we getting the results? - value
The Innovation framework should support the enterprise goal of
- Creating optimal value from innovations at an affordable cost, with an acceptable level of risk
- Guided by a set of principles applied to the innovation processes
- Enabled by key management practices
- Measured by performance against goals and metrics
There are 4 levels at which this framework needs to be built
- Innovation Governance
- Portfolio Management
- Investment management
- Delivery management
Innovation Governance
The goal is to ensure that innovation practices are embedded in the enterprise.
- Establish the innovation governance framework that is fully integrated with overall enterprise governance
- Provide strategic direction for the investment decisions
- Monitor the effectiveness of the overall innovation governance framework and supporting processes and recommend improvements as appropriate
- Integrate the innovations across the enterprise
Portfolio Management
The goal is to ensure that innovations are treated as portfolios for example incremental / radical / revolutionary
- Establish the strategic direction for investments, the resources and funding constraints within which decisions must be made
- Evaluate and prioritize programs within resource and funding constraints, based on their alignment with strategic objectives, business worth and risk
- Monitor and report the performance of the overall portfolio
- Optimize
Investment Management
The goal is to ensure that the investments contribute to optimal value
- Develop and evaluate the initial innovation business case
- Understand the candidate innovation idea and implementation options
- Develop the plan
- Develop the full life cycle and benefits
- Develop the detailed candidate innovation idea business
- Launch and manage the program
- Monitor and report
- Close the program
Delivery Management
Once the innovation program based on an idea is launched it will fall within the ambit of Delivery Management. This is about managing scope, quality, cost, time, resources, integration, etc. Typically the processes fall under 4 domains
- Plan and organize
- Acquire and implement
- Deliver and support
- Monitor and evaluate
What the framework assists is in
- Discipline based innovation - merit, transparency quality, impact and urgency
- Optimize R&D by spending and incubating investments
- Culture of innovation
- Increased speed of innovation process
- Enable collaboration
Most of the blogs in this Kaikaku series seem far fetched. For me I am using most of this knowledge almost on a daily basis due to the nature of my job - enabling clients to serve their customers better. Knowledge is useful irrespective of its origin. Our defence services can leap frog the process by tapping into such knowledge.
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