Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What Customers Want - Hardcover

Carlson, Curtis R.; Wilmot, William W.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0307336697 ISBN 13: 9780307336699

Verlag: Crown Business, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

Outlines a series of essential principles and steps that managers can use to foster a culture of innovation and creativity within their own companies that can be used to develop an organization that consistently delivers value to its customers. 35,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Curtis R. Carlson is the president and CEO of SRI International, working with leading companies in a wide variety of industries, including pharmaceuticals and health sciences, computers and communications, energy and the environment, and national defense. Dr. Carlson started and led the team that set the U.S. standard for HDTV, for which his team shared an Emmy. He lives in Menlo Park, California.

William W. Wilmot helped create the SRI Discipline of Innovation workshop and is director of the Collaboration Institute, a group specializing in workplace communication and collaboration. Dr. Wilmot, an emeritus professor at the University of Montana, lives in Georgetown Lake, Montana.

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Chapter 1: The Essence of Innovation: How Frank Hit a Home Run

“Innovation is now the primary driver of growth, prosperity, and quality of life.”1
Paul M. Romer, Stanford University

If you ask a group of people the simple question “What is innovation?” it’s likely you will get a wide range of responses, such as

•a new technological breakthrough, such as the discovery of the transistor

•a new invention, such as a one-wheel scooter

•a new business model, such as a no-frills airline

•a new production process, such as a lower-cost way to make computers

•a new creative design, such as a sleek, sexy automobile

Innovation certainly requires creativity, invention, and often the other ingredients listed above. But none of these alone is an innovation.

Innovation is the process of creating and delivering new customer value in the marketplace.2 Until this happens, you may have invented something but you still don’t have an innovation. A new system of delivering products, such as selling books via the Internet, once established, is an innovation. It provides new customer value because it allows consumers to conveniently select and buy a large selection of books from home. Of course for an innovation to be viable, it must be affordable and also provide a sustainable profit to the company.

Many people have invented revolutionary new products but have been unsuccessful at getting them into the marketplace. Philo Farnsworth invented television in 1927, but it was David Sarnoff who created tele- vision broadcasting to bring black-and-white television to the consumer in 1939.3 He developed a successful business model that put together televisions, cameras, broadcasting stations, program content, and advertising. Farnsworth invented a device, while Sarnoff was the innovator who put all the pieces together to create an industry.

Sometimes the new customer value of an innovation may seem small, such as a better way for a nurse to administer a medical procedure or a better way to keep notes, such as 3M’s Post-it notes. At other times an innovation has revolutionary, worldwide impact, such as Wal-Mart’s approach for mass product distribution and sales. Regardless of the magnitude of impact, all innovations provide additional customer value, with customer value defined as a product’s or service’s benefits minus its costs. Customer value includes not just tangible product or service benefits, such as that provided by a higher-resolution computer screen, but also intangible needs, such as service, convenience, and personal identity.

Consider convenience. The Apple iPod Nano can contain thousands of your favorite songs and can be attached to your key chain, allowing you to carry your music conveniently in your pocket. By addressing multiple aspects of customer value—product, convenience, service, experience, and emotion—companies such as Apple, Disney, Lexus, and Starbucks create significant customer value and can thus charge a premium.

The phrase customer value is thrown around so often that it may sound like just another buzz phrase. Yet the failure to think through the process of creating successful innovations by providing value to the customer is one reason that so many talented—and sometimes brilliant—people experience so much frustration. They can’t find a way to be successful because they don’t understand all the pieces that must be in place. This also explains why people in management often fail to act on potentially important new products and services. In the mind of many managers, far too many employees with allegedly innovative ideas are seen as a bother. They feel that employees don’t understand the practical realities of the company’s business and can’t demonstrate to management why customers would care enough to buy the supposedly wonderful new widget. These managers have no process in place to engage employees and turn them from bothers into superstars of innovation.

That was certainly the case with Frank Guarnieri, a brilliant researcher who was full of new ideas but felt that he was banging his head against the wall. I* was vice president in charge of new ventures when Frank visited me in my office. Frank hadn’t been with us very long and we had never really gotten to know each other. His meeting with me was a final test to see if he could get some help with his idea. With dark hair and eyes radiating intelligence, Frank spoke with an unusual accent, a combination of “Brooklynese” and some obscure form of erudition, pronouncing words with unique emphasis. He exuded passion and sincerity, and I immediately felt that he was someone to listen to.

Frank asked, “Do you know anything about biology?” When I told him no, he rolled his eyes slightly. Frank was probably thinking that this meeting was going to be another waste of time. He had come to see me because I was his last stop before walking out the door. As I learned later, that was supposed to happen just after he saw me. I was the last box to be checked on the way out.

Not knowing any of this, I asked Frank what he was up to. He told me he had an idea and that he was having a hard time getting anyone interested in it. I asked him what it was. He said, “Do you know that proteins are huge molecules made up of many tens of thousands of atoms?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Do you know why?” he asked.

I said, “No,” and again I saw a slight eye roll.

He told me that proteins had to be huge because they had a small spot, called a binding site, where they did their work when interacting with other proteins. All those atoms in the molecule were needed because the binding site had to be very specific in what it did. Otherwise, proteins would incorrectly interact with one another and our bodies wouldn’t function. “That makes sense,” I said, not fully understanding the implications of what he was after.

*This section is in the voice of coauthor Curtis R. Carlson when he was at SRI’s subsidiary, the Sarnoff Corporation.


Frank went on to say that if something goes wrong with one of your proteins, you have an illness, and you need a drug to fix the defective protein. The problem is that drugs are tiny molecules compared with proteins. They must attach themselves to exactly the right place on a particular protein to do their job. And to make this harder, if the drug attaches itself to any other protein in your body, it may cause a side effect. These two criteria make it incredibly hard to develop drugs. You must fix the broken protein and not interact with any others. Drug development is like walking into a football arena with 100,000 unknown spectators and trying to find the one person who will best connect with you and no one else. This is why a new drug can take a billion dollars and fifteen years to develop. It is truly like finding a needle in a haystack.

This was fascinating, so I asked, “What’s your idea?”

He said, “By calculation in a computer I can design small molecules that will attach themselves to just the right place on a protein to fix the problem.”

“Wow,” I thought, “this is a very important problem.” On my checklist of whether we should support a project, Frank had just hit the jackpot. If he could do this, it would be a huge contribution to medicine. The question was “Could Frank really do this?” What he was describing was a very...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Crown Business
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0307336697
• ISBN 13: 9780307336699
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 356
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar