Is Innovation Engineering only for Products and Consumer Goods?
Absolutely not. Innovation Engineering is a “mental operating system” that you can use in any industry and on all manner of innovation projects - from internal process improvements to new services for customers and everything in between.
In fact, many of the companies engaged in Innovation Engineering are not consumer packaged goods companies but rather service companies, business-to-business companies, non-profit institutions, governments and universities.
What is the relationship between Innovation Engineering and The Eureka! Ranch?
The Eureka! Ranch is a company in Cincinnati, Ohio that - with the help of the University of Maine - invented Innovation Engineering®. The Eureka! Ranch has been an innovation consultancy for 26+ years. They essentially practiced Innovation Engineering inside their company and used it to help their clients with innovation - but they never taught clients how to innovate themselves.
In 2008 the groundwork began to structure Innovation Engineering as an actual academic discipline and body of work. In 2010 it was made publicly available for executives.
You guys used to be about delivering "BIG IDEAS." Do you not do that anymore?
On the contrary, that's the work that served as the perfect laboratory to learn about how to do innovation systems. To this day it remains the cornerstone of our Innovation Practice and namely, it's flagship offering - Eureka! Inventing.
What's the best way to learn more about Innovation Engineering?
Many people like to learn more before starting work - so we have two options to help. For small companies, Innovation Engineering Workshops give you a taste-test of the system in one day. For larger companies, the Innovation Engineering Leadership Retreat is the best model for experiencing the Innovation Engineering system and formulating how you'll address innovation in your own organization. And if neither of those work for you, just contact us and we'll figure something out just for you.
Can I do Innovation Engineering just in my division / department?
Yes, Innovation Engineering can be implemented just within one group or department within a larger organization.
Doesn’t putting in a “system” like this crush the creative spirit?
No, this system does not crush the creative spirit. Actually, the opposite is true. With Innovation Engineering in place, people have a means to make their ideas real. Innovation Engineering simply gives them a process and structure to start from. Take for example stimulus mining. On one hand it’s a critical part of the I.E. system. On the other hand, it’s an extremely creative exercise to stretch your mind to what’s possible.
We don’t have creative people. How can you possibly make them innovative?
ANYONE can do innovation. Some of the most innovative solutions were invented by those people deemed “not creative” - engineers, left-brained types, operations experts, accountants, etc.
Innovation Engineering teaches everyone how to create, communicate and commercialize ideas in their area. We teach them how to build meaningfully unique ideas and show them how to decrease risk and increase speed with those ideas.
It’s not that anyone cannot do innovation, it’s simply that they’ve not been taught. As Dr. W. Edwards Deming said, “How could they know?”
It seems like this is good for teaching teams how to run innovation projects. Is that it?
Once you’ve “flipped” to the Innovation Engineering Mindset, you’ll see all aspects of work in an entirely different light. You’ll use the system to run projects, yes. But you’ll also:
How does management retain control in a system like this?
Some people have referred to I.E. as the “democratization” of innovation in an organization. Others have said, “It’s like turning every employee into an internal entrepreneur.” While both are true, these things are not without management engagement. Management sets out Very Important Problems and Opportunities for the organization to focus the organization around a common aim. They participate in projects as a Management Coach “advisor” and have total transparency to all projects.
With Innovation Engineering, everyone is freer. Staff have reported that “this is what I hoped my job would be like when I was younger.” And management report they have more fun because they don’t feel the pressure to create and drive all the ideas themselves. Instead, employees come to them with ideas and options for growing the business.
How do you make sure this isn’t just “another fad”?
To say, “We’re compulsive about this.” would be an understatement. Years ago in a meeting with Bill Conway he cited this at fundamental to the challenge of instituting lasting change. It is why we have things like “Black Belts” - to create a support system of experts within your organization. It is why we use use social networking systems inside and outside the organization to get help and build ideas. It is why we build learning communities to help practitioners connect and share learning. It is why we educate, and educate, and educate.
How does a company “mess up” doing innovation?
To truly “mess up” doing innovation would simply be to not do innovation at all. If you’re doing something, anything at all - you’ve at least taken the first step of acknowledging how critical it is.
That said, there are certainly some common mis-steps that can undermine your progress that you might not know (unless you’ve been practicing innovation for 20+ years.)
Mistake: Doing a big training and hoping a miracle will occur.
Without structures, systems, processes and support - the training simply doesn’t stick...no matter how clever the content.
Mistake: Asking employees for ideas and not giving them a system to process them.
The funny thing about ideas, there’s no shortage of them. And if you’ve never asked for them before, be ready for a firehose of all kinds of ideas - ones you want and ones you didn’t even know existed. But as soon as you get them, if you don’t do something with them soon - or better yet, enable employees with a system to do something with them themselves - you’ll be left with a workforce that was excited at the start but is now pretty disgruntled. Organizations can usually get away with this once, maybe twice, before employees start to revolt altogether.
Mistake: Approaching Innovation as a “Nice to Do” and not a “MUST do.”
Business life cycles are crushing industries, literally. Where years ago it took a very long time - years, decades even - for an industry to change, today’s timeline is extremely short. In every category and business, a new way of working, a new competitor on the market, an industry-sweeping change...any and all of them can have massive effects on the business you assume you can keep. Study after study cites the same - if you want to retain employees, earn money, stay competitive and keep the doors open - you must innovate.
On the upside, there’s never been a better time to innovate. There are more systems for testing and learning today than there have ever been in the past. Customers are savvier, technology is revolutionary and the communication systems today mean the concept of “export” is no longer a far away dream.
Mistake: Creating a special Innovation Department.
As soon as a company goes through the “Innovation Awakening” - realizing that this innovation thing is probably something they should do something about - the first step seems to always be appointing a Chief Innovation Officer (or Innovation Manager, director, etc.) and assign them an innovation team to “do innovation.”
While accountability is a good thing, innovation should not be a silo’ed effort reserved only for a chosen few. Companies that do innovation well do innovation in EVERYTHING - in the way they work every project, in the way they interact without silos, in the way they move quickly, in the way they run experiments, in the exploration and collaboration they use. Said another way, innovation should be for everyone in the organization - not a select few. Why should they have all the fun?
That said, creating a group that does work on special projects and has an mastery-level of skills is a great thing. We call those folks Innovation Engineering Black Belts and they work on high profile innovation projects and spend the remainder of their time coaching others in the organization accelerate their own projects using Innovation Engineering.
Mistake: Thinking you have plenty of time to figure out how you’ll approach innovation.
Once the organization is aware that someone is actively working on innovation, there is a real and tangible window for making it real. Taking swift action to get an innovation process in place is a great thing - to demonstrate action. However, if you don’t demonstrate SUCCESS with that action - in 100 days or less - most organizations will assume it just doesn’t work. And the next time you try, convincing them to believe it will work will be 10 times harder.
When we start working with a company, we often start with an Project Accelerator to demonstrate how the system works by doing a live project immediately. In 100 days or less we’ll show success with the project such that 1) it serves as a great pilot to see how Innovation Engineering works and 2) it serves as a great internal case study to show those inside that it does work.
Mistake: Designing your “innovation strategy and plan” in a PowerPoint deck before you even start.
Imagine this. You’ve never ridden a bike before - ever. Someone demands that you ride it perfectly the first time you get on. You’re allowed to read as many books as you want about it - can google about it - can ask others for tips - but you CANNOT get on a bike or try it before the big debut. Ridiculous, right?
It’s the same with innovation. You cannot expect to put together a great process on the back of a napkin and then just hold a training session, roll it out and wait for your organization to innovate like Apple the next day.
Even with all of our experience, we have a fantastic template for getting started that includes training, support, systems, coaching and even consulting to adjust the system to your unique company and needs. But we do it through live Learning Cycles to get smarter through experience and practice.
What does it look like to “flip” to a “Culture of Never-Ending Innovation?”
Of course, the path to a culture of never-ending innovation can and should be never-ending. That said, there is a point at which organizations see a noticeable difference in a cultural shift. It tends to be when:
How long does it take to “flip” to a “Culture of Never-Ending Innovation?
Every company is different for the amount of time it takes to get to that point, and that’s usually attributed to leadership engagement. If leadership is fully engaged and 100% “all in” - the flip can happen in 24 to 36 months. (Though you’ll see clear improvements in the first 100 days.) If it is not a key driver to the company / division / department and it’s leadership, it can take longer.
How does someone go about becoming an Innovation Engineering Black Belt?
In order to become a Black Belt, you must:
be part of a large organization doing an Project Accelerator project
be part of a large organization doing Innovation Engineering Culture Change System Implementation
be part of a small company doing an Innovation Engineering Management System Implementation
be part of a licensee that has been licensed to offer Innovation Engineering to clients
Why do you have to be part of an organization doing Innovation Engineering? Because learning a new approach but being unable to implement the systems within your organization would be setting you up for failure - and we want you to win. When an organization / department /division decides to support innovation, Black Belts then become the change agents to lead the transformation.
The process for becoming a Black Belt can be found here.
I wanted to sign up for an Innovation Engineering Leadership Institute. What happened to those?
We've improved them! We practice what we preach and we constantly innovate new and better methods for advancing Innovation Engineering education. What used to be Leadership Institutes have been transformed into Leadership Retreats for large companies and Workshops for small companies.
You have different options for small companies and large companies. Why?
We've worked with 6,000+ small company teams and 7,000+ large organization teams. The adjustments to the way each type of organization uses Innovation Engineering have been created as a result of working with those size companies throughout our 26 years. The offerings have been adjusted to increase the speed at which Innovation Engineering is accepted and implemented in the organization. They've also been adjusted to ensure the long term survival of this new innovation approach inside your organization.
Absolutely not. Innovation Engineering is a “mental operating system” that you can use in any industry and on all manner of innovation projects - from internal process improvements to new services for customers and everything in between.
In fact, many of the companies engaged in Innovation Engineering are not consumer packaged goods companies but rather service companies, business-to-business companies, non-profit institutions, governments and universities.
What is the relationship between Innovation Engineering and The Eureka! Ranch?
The Eureka! Ranch is a company in Cincinnati, Ohio that - with the help of the University of Maine - invented Innovation Engineering®. The Eureka! Ranch has been an innovation consultancy for 26+ years. They essentially practiced Innovation Engineering inside their company and used it to help their clients with innovation - but they never taught clients how to innovate themselves.
In 2008 the groundwork began to structure Innovation Engineering as an actual academic discipline and body of work. In 2010 it was made publicly available for executives.
You guys used to be about delivering "BIG IDEAS." Do you not do that anymore?
On the contrary, that's the work that served as the perfect laboratory to learn about how to do innovation systems. To this day it remains the cornerstone of our Innovation Practice and namely, it's flagship offering - Eureka! Inventing.
What's the best way to learn more about Innovation Engineering?
Many people like to learn more before starting work - so we have two options to help. For small companies, Innovation Engineering Workshops give you a taste-test of the system in one day. For larger companies, the Innovation Engineering Leadership Retreat is the best model for experiencing the Innovation Engineering system and formulating how you'll address innovation in your own organization. And if neither of those work for you, just contact us and we'll figure something out just for you.
Can I do Innovation Engineering just in my division / department?
Yes, Innovation Engineering can be implemented just within one group or department within a larger organization.
Doesn’t putting in a “system” like this crush the creative spirit?
No, this system does not crush the creative spirit. Actually, the opposite is true. With Innovation Engineering in place, people have a means to make their ideas real. Innovation Engineering simply gives them a process and structure to start from. Take for example stimulus mining. On one hand it’s a critical part of the I.E. system. On the other hand, it’s an extremely creative exercise to stretch your mind to what’s possible.
We don’t have creative people. How can you possibly make them innovative?
ANYONE can do innovation. Some of the most innovative solutions were invented by those people deemed “not creative” - engineers, left-brained types, operations experts, accountants, etc.
Innovation Engineering teaches everyone how to create, communicate and commercialize ideas in their area. We teach them how to build meaningfully unique ideas and show them how to decrease risk and increase speed with those ideas.
It’s not that anyone cannot do innovation, it’s simply that they’ve not been taught. As Dr. W. Edwards Deming said, “How could they know?”
It seems like this is good for teaching teams how to run innovation projects. Is that it?
Once you’ve “flipped” to the Innovation Engineering Mindset, you’ll see all aspects of work in an entirely different light. You’ll use the system to run projects, yes. But you’ll also:
- run faster meetings
- collaborate more with others
- break down silos
- make decisions faster
- be able to communicate more clearly
- or as a company recently stated: “...what is very evident is that there is a growing sense that the company is becoming deeply engaged in the IEMS process. The cultural change toward a customer and product/market focus is very exciting to watch. It is very rewarding to see team members step forward to take on additional responsibility and to do it with a sense of pride and willingness.”
How does management retain control in a system like this?
Some people have referred to I.E. as the “democratization” of innovation in an organization. Others have said, “It’s like turning every employee into an internal entrepreneur.” While both are true, these things are not without management engagement. Management sets out Very Important Problems and Opportunities for the organization to focus the organization around a common aim. They participate in projects as a Management Coach “advisor” and have total transparency to all projects.
With Innovation Engineering, everyone is freer. Staff have reported that “this is what I hoped my job would be like when I was younger.” And management report they have more fun because they don’t feel the pressure to create and drive all the ideas themselves. Instead, employees come to them with ideas and options for growing the business.
How do you make sure this isn’t just “another fad”?
To say, “We’re compulsive about this.” would be an understatement. Years ago in a meeting with Bill Conway he cited this at fundamental to the challenge of instituting lasting change. It is why we have things like “Black Belts” - to create a support system of experts within your organization. It is why we use use social networking systems inside and outside the organization to get help and build ideas. It is why we build learning communities to help practitioners connect and share learning. It is why we educate, and educate, and educate.
How does a company “mess up” doing innovation?
To truly “mess up” doing innovation would simply be to not do innovation at all. If you’re doing something, anything at all - you’ve at least taken the first step of acknowledging how critical it is.
That said, there are certainly some common mis-steps that can undermine your progress that you might not know (unless you’ve been practicing innovation for 20+ years.)
Mistake: Doing a big training and hoping a miracle will occur.
Without structures, systems, processes and support - the training simply doesn’t stick...no matter how clever the content.
Mistake: Asking employees for ideas and not giving them a system to process them.
The funny thing about ideas, there’s no shortage of them. And if you’ve never asked for them before, be ready for a firehose of all kinds of ideas - ones you want and ones you didn’t even know existed. But as soon as you get them, if you don’t do something with them soon - or better yet, enable employees with a system to do something with them themselves - you’ll be left with a workforce that was excited at the start but is now pretty disgruntled. Organizations can usually get away with this once, maybe twice, before employees start to revolt altogether.
Mistake: Approaching Innovation as a “Nice to Do” and not a “MUST do.”
Business life cycles are crushing industries, literally. Where years ago it took a very long time - years, decades even - for an industry to change, today’s timeline is extremely short. In every category and business, a new way of working, a new competitor on the market, an industry-sweeping change...any and all of them can have massive effects on the business you assume you can keep. Study after study cites the same - if you want to retain employees, earn money, stay competitive and keep the doors open - you must innovate.
On the upside, there’s never been a better time to innovate. There are more systems for testing and learning today than there have ever been in the past. Customers are savvier, technology is revolutionary and the communication systems today mean the concept of “export” is no longer a far away dream.
Mistake: Creating a special Innovation Department.
As soon as a company goes through the “Innovation Awakening” - realizing that this innovation thing is probably something they should do something about - the first step seems to always be appointing a Chief Innovation Officer (or Innovation Manager, director, etc.) and assign them an innovation team to “do innovation.”
While accountability is a good thing, innovation should not be a silo’ed effort reserved only for a chosen few. Companies that do innovation well do innovation in EVERYTHING - in the way they work every project, in the way they interact without silos, in the way they move quickly, in the way they run experiments, in the exploration and collaboration they use. Said another way, innovation should be for everyone in the organization - not a select few. Why should they have all the fun?
That said, creating a group that does work on special projects and has an mastery-level of skills is a great thing. We call those folks Innovation Engineering Black Belts and they work on high profile innovation projects and spend the remainder of their time coaching others in the organization accelerate their own projects using Innovation Engineering.
Mistake: Thinking you have plenty of time to figure out how you’ll approach innovation.
Once the organization is aware that someone is actively working on innovation, there is a real and tangible window for making it real. Taking swift action to get an innovation process in place is a great thing - to demonstrate action. However, if you don’t demonstrate SUCCESS with that action - in 100 days or less - most organizations will assume it just doesn’t work. And the next time you try, convincing them to believe it will work will be 10 times harder.
When we start working with a company, we often start with an Project Accelerator to demonstrate how the system works by doing a live project immediately. In 100 days or less we’ll show success with the project such that 1) it serves as a great pilot to see how Innovation Engineering works and 2) it serves as a great internal case study to show those inside that it does work.
Mistake: Designing your “innovation strategy and plan” in a PowerPoint deck before you even start.
Imagine this. You’ve never ridden a bike before - ever. Someone demands that you ride it perfectly the first time you get on. You’re allowed to read as many books as you want about it - can google about it - can ask others for tips - but you CANNOT get on a bike or try it before the big debut. Ridiculous, right?
It’s the same with innovation. You cannot expect to put together a great process on the back of a napkin and then just hold a training session, roll it out and wait for your organization to innovate like Apple the next day.
Even with all of our experience, we have a fantastic template for getting started that includes training, support, systems, coaching and even consulting to adjust the system to your unique company and needs. But we do it through live Learning Cycles to get smarter through experience and practice.
What does it look like to “flip” to a “Culture of Never-Ending Innovation?”
Of course, the path to a culture of never-ending innovation can and should be never-ending. That said, there is a point at which organizations see a noticeable difference in a cultural shift. It tends to be when:
- every employee, every day uses an aspect of innovation engineering in their daily work,
- every employee, every week is reaching out for help from others and collaborating (using our IELabs.com platform),
- innovation culture audits show increased levels of innovation confidence and courage,
- the culture becomes more proactive,
- you ship meaningful offerings to customers at a premium (even if you’re an internal department!) and of course,
- you see a very clear and robust innovation pipeline.
How long does it take to “flip” to a “Culture of Never-Ending Innovation?
Every company is different for the amount of time it takes to get to that point, and that’s usually attributed to leadership engagement. If leadership is fully engaged and 100% “all in” - the flip can happen in 24 to 36 months. (Though you’ll see clear improvements in the first 100 days.) If it is not a key driver to the company / division / department and it’s leadership, it can take longer.
How does someone go about becoming an Innovation Engineering Black Belt?
In order to become a Black Belt, you must:
be part of a large organization doing an Project Accelerator project
be part of a large organization doing Innovation Engineering Culture Change System Implementation
be part of a small company doing an Innovation Engineering Management System Implementation
be part of a licensee that has been licensed to offer Innovation Engineering to clients
Why do you have to be part of an organization doing Innovation Engineering? Because learning a new approach but being unable to implement the systems within your organization would be setting you up for failure - and we want you to win. When an organization / department /division decides to support innovation, Black Belts then become the change agents to lead the transformation.
The process for becoming a Black Belt can be found here.
I wanted to sign up for an Innovation Engineering Leadership Institute. What happened to those?
We've improved them! We practice what we preach and we constantly innovate new and better methods for advancing Innovation Engineering education. What used to be Leadership Institutes have been transformed into Leadership Retreats for large companies and Workshops for small companies.
You have different options for small companies and large companies. Why?
We've worked with 6,000+ small company teams and 7,000+ large organization teams. The adjustments to the way each type of organization uses Innovation Engineering have been created as a result of working with those size companies throughout our 26 years. The offerings have been adjusted to increase the speed at which Innovation Engineering is accepted and implemented in the organization. They've also been adjusted to ensure the long term survival of this new innovation approach inside your organization.
