Creativity & Innovation

BM006-3-2-CRI (VC1) 1st April 2018

Lecture 11:
The process of technological innovation
 Topic Learning Outcomes

• To deploy established techniques of

analysis and enquiry in the process of
innovation.

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 Eight stages of technological
innovation

1. Basic research (for general nature laws)

2. Applied research (for specific problems)
3. Development (design for prototyping)
4. Engineering (design for assembly)
5. Manufacturing (design for efficiency & quality)
6. Marketing (design for acceptance & affordability)
7. Promotion (design for diffusion)
8. Improvement & enhancement (design for
sustainability)

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 Corporate innovation process

• Concept formation
– Product concept definition
• Technical analysis
– Market research & analysis
• Industry analysis—SWOT & business strategy
• Commitment & support from strategic apex
– Development
– Market testing
– Manufacturing & marketing
– Promotion & selling
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 Chain-reaction of successful
innovation
• Scientific invention ←→
• Engineering development ←→
• Entrepreneurship ←→
• Management/strategy ←→
• Social demand ←→
• Fit environment

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 Innovation trajectories

• Border crossings
– Inter-disciplines, -parties, -nations, -sectors
• Emergence of complex technologies
– Fit to and cause from diverse demands, perspectives,
approaches, contexts
• Age of knowledge and distributed intelligence, KDI
– Network of knowledge—Building and extending the
invisible college
– Learning and intelligent system—exploring the human
behavior
– Computing challenge—exploit the numeric barrier
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 Innovation System
Concurrent Integration (Bordogna, 1999)
Analysis Synthesis
Reduction Integration
Scien ring
ce i ne e
Eng
Innovation
Discovery of Wealth Creation Design
New Knowledge Manufacture
& Basic Laws
Sustainable Development Maintenance

Econ
y C ontext omic
Conte
Polic xt
Societal Needs T Capital Formation
The Public Good e & Investment
Natural Capital c
h
Devices n Ideas
Processes o
Systems l Information
o
g
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION yINNOVATION
THE PROCESS OF
 Creative transformation

• Searching for innovation requirement & change

demand
• Monitoring technological change &
organizational change
• Transformation for sustaining performance
– On internal structure of R&D, manufacturing
– On external market of customer, interested parties
• Successful process of innovation fulfillment
– Project management & management renew

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 The Process of Creative
Destruction

Business leaders usually visualize a market

economy in the context of how capitalism
administers existing structures, whereas the
wiser approach is to understand how it
creates and destroys them.

Paraphrased from J. Schumpeter

Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy
Chapter VII, page 84
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 Creative Transformations
The Schumpeterian Factor

• The interaction of technological innovation

with the competitive marketplace is the
fundamental driving force in capitalist
industrial progress. (Schumpeter, 1942)

• The normally healthy economy was not one in

equilibrium, but one that was constantly being
disrupted by technological innovation (The
Economist, Schumpeter, 1999)

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 History of Xerography

• Market dissatisfaction for document reproduction even so cheap

and easy

• Scientific information
– Electrostatics, photoconductivity & photoreceptor, sensitization of Se
element
• Entrepreneur
– Carlson, Battelle, Wilson of Haloid
• Novelty—industry creation & user education
• Branding for new product—Xeros & graphein
Xerography and registered trademark “Xerox”

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 History of Xerography (ii)

• 1949, the pioneering copy machine, Xerox A

– User unfriendly, manually performed by the high-skilled
operators
– Unstable performance
• Enhancement & Market switching
– Target the lead user—lithographic plate printing
– Lease rather than sale—reduce the novelty risk of durable
goods
• 1955, automatic version, CopyFlo
• 1958, Xerox 914 for office users
– the two-part tariff leasing mechanism a successful
incentive for copying usage
– Nationwide retailing & service network
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 History of Xerography (iii)

• Scientific improvement
– New material for cheap and sensitive
photoreceptor: carbonic/organic polymer
• Evolution with laser & IC technology
• Integrated into computer industry
– Laser printer

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 Lessons from Xerography

• Innovation success was determined by markets

eventually
• Breakthrough the diffusion constraints including
designing, technological, economic, political,
societal, and even religious factors
• Visionary enabler—entrepreneur & entrepreneurship
• Systemic improvement process—monitor the gap
and retest for objective
• Inter-disciplines—evolution with the sources of
innovation
• Luck blessed the risk lover and opportunity seizer
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 A technological innovation model

• The case of biomedical devices

– Concept formation—market pull or technological push
– Feasibility analysis—technological, economic, operational
– Product design and prototype development & testing
– Engineering & Manufacturing design—user interface, P/P
ratio, extensible/upgrade capability
– Meet the FDA requisites—the min. quality standard
– Production & quality control
– Marketing promotion—pricing strategy, technology cycle,
market structure, channel selection
– Customer satisfaction, post/disposal service
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 Entrepreneur & Entrepreneurship

• A technologist or marketer possessed with

– Vision, courage, initiative, concentration,
unbendingness, autonomy, ambition
– Appreciation, motivate himself and others, leadership
– The good sense of market rather than much more
invention
• Entrepreneur  enterprise
• Intre-preneurship incorporation

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 The management renew cycle

• Entrepreneurship style of management for the start-

ups or in the emerging stage of industry
– Organic system for flexibility, effectiveness, and growth
• Professional management for institutionalization or
after the mature stage of industry
– Bureaucratic system for cost-benefit consideration &
efficiency criteria
• Renewing demand after structural rigidity and
industry decline

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 Venture team

• Intrepreneurship
– Imagine the future product concept
– The gatekeeper of technology & market
– Plan enabler
– Project manager
• A stand alone research center
– Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)
– Keep flexible and innovative

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 Lessons from Xerox’s PARC

• Vision
– To be the future information architect and a documentation corporation
– Acquire SDS data processing
– Integrate xerography into computer office automation PC and WYSIWYG
interface, the Alto series
• Failure
– Asynchronous development between PARC and Xerox’s bureaucratic
structure
– Location dispersion & communication gap: New York state (E) vs. California
state (w)
– Too few product lines to fill market demand
– Competition from Japanese firm’s high quality copy machines—Canon,
Sharp, Minolta, etc. and the friendly innovation of add-on carbon cartridge
– Too concentrated on short-term financial performance to seize the industry
dynamics and growth opportunities
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 Recovery of Xerox’s PARC

• Research on working process as well as new product

• Innovating anywhere and learning through
• Innovation transfer to the counterparts in the
organization beyond endeavoring to research
• Promote linkage between technology and market
– The always partner of research—customers
• To be a responsible profit center
– Share and broker information for entrepreneurship & new
start-ups
• Motivation incentive by being the Xerox shareholder
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 The macro view of technological
innovation

• Appropriate context for innovation survival

– Complements, reformers & rebels
• Creative society
– Enjoy freedom without constraints
– Personal interest/survival rather than public new order
– Formal & informal club for information sharing
• Industrial cluster
– Specialization & cooperative linkage for production,
marketing, and international free trading
• Knowledge exploring & training
– Education & university

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 Lessons from Silicon Valley

• Vision of technology & life

• Knowledge center/window
• Facilitating context/infrastructure
• Venture capital
• Free mobility of job
• Weak-tie information network
• Continuous learning

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 Lessons from British Midlands

• Freedom facilitates entrepreneurship

• Lunar society in the Birmingham of
England vs. the Home brew computer club
in the Silicon Valle
– Diversity ignites the spark of innovation
– Club dialogue promotes the role playing at the
other’s position
– Championship drives competition,
cooperation, and benchmarking
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 Factors influencing technological
innovation
• Scientific capability & repository
• Technology life cycle
• Investment scale & level
• Political facilitator
• Complementary technologies
• Diffusion mode & rate

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION

 Factors impeded/facilitated
technological innovation

• World politic/economic dynamics

• Communication channel/speed
• Multiple research centers—competition or
cooperation relay
• Launch timing
• Education/diffusion system
• Visible/invisible committee
– Industry policy
– Mobility barriers
– Public/private organizational transformation
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 The innovative Skill Set of 2010 (Bordogna,
1999)

• Handle projects from initial conception of an idea through to

product realization
• Understand, nurture, and capitalize sustainably on nature
• Be alpha-numeric literate
• Articulate team goals, influence others to invest in them,
evince trust at all levels
• Envision rational solution scenarios to open-ended challenges
• Act as catalyst and master integrator in multifaceted,
multidisciplinary projects
• Understand and practice quality issues
• Manifest a strategic intent in design
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 The innovative Skill Set of 2010
(Bordogna, 1999)

• Enable comfort in interpersonal relations

• Pursue standards-based practice
• Practice creative transformation
• Focus on innovation
• Sense the coupling among seemingly disparate issues
• Make sense of complexity
• Contribute to, extract from, participate in the world of collective
intelligence base
• Be an astute observer of strategic inflection points and
anticipate their consequences at the moment of inflection
BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION
 Question and answer session

Q&A

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION Slide <28> of 13

 What we will cover next

• Consolidation of the module

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION Slide <29> of 13

 Activities
• Why is innovation often a lengthy process?
• Distinguish between research and development.
• Which personal qualities do you think are required of
those engaged in development work?

BM006-3-2-CRI CREATIVITY & INNOVATION THE PROCESS OF INNOVATION