On March 31^st, Excellence in Manufacturing held a very special Strategic Interest Group meeting at the Holiday Inn in Mississauga.  Special guest speaker Dr. Glenn Brophy from Nipissing University talked to a full house about Adding Innovation to Your Toolbox, and how to manage innovation in you workplace.  Several local area manufacturers were in attendance:   Lynch Group, U-View, Tectrol, Cosmetica, Gyptech, Nu-Tech, Fenzi N.A. and Comtek to name a few.

I would like to thank everyone for coming out this very special event, please see below for some highlights the presentation Dr. Brophy delivered... if you would like to see the entire presentation please go to the GTA home page at:

http://www.emccanada.org/membersonl/ontario/gtatoronto/2010/innovationpotentialtorontopptx

 

Dr. Brophy discussed innovation diffusion rates and the factors that affect innovation, we discussed how the following factors affect innovation diffusion rates, and he talked about:

• ·         Infrastructure
• ·         Training
• ·         Investments required by customers (money, time and fear)
• ·         Peer pressure (ie. Facebook)

 

He also talked about the types of innovation, and the importance of understanding the different types of innovation in your workplace:

• ·         Product, process, service, administrative, radical, incremental, exploitative, explorative, line extension, breakthrough, variation, reorientation, disruptive, sustaining.
• ·         Novelty and challenge are the common themes whether new to world/market/firm or division
• ·         StatsCan Research SME Survivor Research, best types?

 

During the presentation Dr. Brophy also talked about typical barriers to innovation in SMEs... some of these barriers that small manufacturing enterprises face on a day-to-day basis are:

 

• ·         Day-to-day 'fire fighting' trumps innovation efforts for the long term
• ·         Inappropriate idea evaluation tools
• ·         Insufficient senior management time to deal with innovation properly
• ·         Innovations aren't managed as projects when appropriate
• ·         Ideas from certain individuals are only ones considered, while ideas from other groups are ignored (e.g. service or shop floor personnel)
• ·         Value of increases in absorptive capacity ignored in innovation evaluations,
• ·         Etc.,

Innovation management advice:

Managers of SMEs who wish to practice effective innovation management should;

a)      Identify their principal business strategy and industry norms for innovation. Prioritize innovation activities accordingly.

b)      Repeatedly tell personnel they are expected to generate ideas that fit a). Respond within 48 hours whenever they generate ideas.

c)       For process innovation, generate new ideas by searching out and treating problems raised by internal personnel as opportunities for innovation. For product innovation, search out and treat customer problems in a similar way.

d)      Use cross-functional teams that are appropriate.

e)      When possible, use outside pressures to drive schedules.

f)       Buy a project management software package. Train the right person to use it.

g)      When new ideas emerge, isolate the toughest technical challenge(s) associated with the idea and find a way to test the proposed technical solution(s) as early, quickly and inexpensively as possible.

h)      Begin by roughly evaluating possible margins and then get more rigorous as you progress. 

i)        Repeatedly celebrate how innovations come to happen in order to inculcate a culture of innovation

j)        Keep a rolling prioritized list of ideas in front of personnel.

k)      If innovation costs are going to be tracked then track innovation profits too.

l)        Increase senior management capacity to increase innovation capacity

 

Do you…

• ·         …know how you win orders?
• ·         … know how your innovation process really works?
• ·         … measure the success of your innovation process?
• ·         … know where the barriers are in your innovation process?

 

Summary of advice…

• ·         ID your strategy.
• ·         Keep telling your people you are looking for these kinds of ideas - then turn them into money.
• ·         Audit your innovation practices - figure out where the barriers are - work to knock them down.
• ·         Monitor what seems to work - keep celebrating wins and getting better at the practices which lead to wins.

 

If you have any questions regarding this session, please feel free to contact me...I would be more than happy to help in any way possible.

Cheers,

Kevin.