A systematic approach to innovation, based on a proven methodology can enable companies to achieve real breakthroughs.

1. CI
InnovationinManufacturing
INNOVATEORDIEA systematic approach to innovation, based on a proven
methodology, can enable companies to achieve real breakthroughs.
Here’s a framework called the Innovation Genome that can help.
......................................................................................................................................................................................
B y L i s a C a m p b e l l

2. powerfully crafted single sentences,
each of which outlines a specific area
to which you think innovation could be
usefullyapplied.Beaudacious.
3: Generate innovation ideas. Start with
a specific innovation target, and apply
the seven innovation questions (more
on that in a moment) to generate ideas.
Look for the strongest ideas or combi-
nationsof ideaspossible.
4: Prioritize the innovation ideas. Decide
which ideas have the greatest potential
for impact so that you can focus your re-
sources efficiently. The methodology’s
scoring system—based on whether an
idea is both “wild” and “worldly”—
helps weed out concepts that are either
not imaginative enough or impractical
intherealworld(orboth).
5: Create innovation projects. Create spe-
cific projects to pursue the ideas you’ve
prioritized; then, support those proj-
ects—andthepeopleworkingonthem—
astheydevelopandheadtomarket.
When you’re generating innovation ideas
(innovation technique No. 3 above), the
process calls for asking the following inno-
vationquestions:
• Look: What could we look at in a new
wayorfromanewperspective?
• Use: What could we use in a new way or
forthefirsttime?
• Move: What could we move, changing its
positionintimeorspace?
• Interconnect: What could we intercon-
nectinadifferentwayorforthefirsttime?
• Alter: What could we alter or change in
termsof designandperformance?
• Make: What could we make that is truly
new?
• Imagine: What could we imagine to cre-
ateagreatexperienceforsomeone?
To illustrate applying the Innovation
Genome in context, consider reimagining
acarengine.Startingwiththeexistingtech-
nology, you can apply the seven innovation
questions to see how a typical engine might
beimproved.Lookatitdifferentlyandcon-
sider, what is the fundamental purpose of
an engine? How could you use other pro-
cesses or workflows to create the engine?
Could you move the placement of the en-
gine in a vehicle? How can you intercon-
necttheenginetotheuserexperience?How
are you going to alter the design or perfor-
mance of the engine? What new part of an
engine could you make that has never been
created before? And, finally, what improve-
ments to the entire value chain for that en-
ginecanyouimagine?
“Using a methodology for innovation
does not preclude getting great ideas while
you’re jogging or in the shower,”O’Connor
says. “That’s going to happen anyway. But
we should also apply structured techniques
like the ones we’ve developed to make sure
we’re being as innovative as possible in the
courseof ourday-to-daywork.”
new technologies to create new or different
productsforyourcustomers.
The problem for manufacturers, like all
businesses, is the innovator’s dilemma. You
have an established company, a trained
workforce, an installed customer base, and
existing processes, but it’s hard to disrupt
thosethingswhileremainingaccountableto
shareholdersorotherstakeholders.Toinno-
vate successfully, you have to be purposeful
about it, and that means not only planning
for innovation but also making the time,
money,andresourcesavailableforit.
That may seem easier said than done.
You can get so embroiled in the here and
now—this quarter, this month, this week—
that before you know it, a year has gone by
without any purposeful innovation. That’s
why following an established innovation
methodology can help. As companies like
Autodesk and others have found, follow-
ing a systematic approach to innovation
can lead to real breakthroughs that drive
actionable innovation. And by incorporat-
ing or modifying one of the approaches de-
scribed here, you can kick-start innovation
inyourmanufacturingbusiness.
AutodeskMaps
Innovation’s“Genome”
O
ne methodology that provides a
frameworktothinkbigyetbepro-
ductivewithyourideasistheInno-
vation Genome (http://bit.ly/2u2fjLK), de-
veloped by Autodesk Innovation Strategist
Bill O’Connor. He and his team researched
innovations spanning 3.5 million years,
from crude stone hand axes to the Internet.
As they searched for common characteris-
tics among those innovations, ubiquitous
patterns began to emerge—specifically, five
techniques consistently used by innovators
throughout time (even though they might
nothavebeenawareof themconsciously).
No matter what your business is, apply-
ing the Innovation Genome starts with
thesefivetechniques:
1: Visualize the innovation environment.
Start with the essential building blocks
of company, customer, competition, and
context. Then, draw connections, iden-
tify lines of influence, and illustrate what
yourinnovationlandscapelookslike.
2: Develop innovation targets. Create
WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO IT, INNOVATION IS RE-
ally just constructive disruption: disrupting your business,
disrupting your process, disrupting your market—but always
in a quest to make something better. Whether you’re looking
to innovate in your manufacturing processes or your prod-
ucts, the objective, of course, is to achieve specific business goals. That could be finding
ways to cut costs and improve efficiency on the process side, or it could be leveraging
MANUFACTURING
LEADERSHIP JOURNAL
..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... ..........................................................................................................................
........................................
28
www.ManufacturingLeadershipCommunity.com
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
The Innovation Genome project
involved researching innovations
spanning more than three
million years, from crude stone
axes to the Internet.
1 Design for Manu-
facturability: How
to Use Concurrent
Engineering to Rapidly
Develop Low-Cost,
High-Quality Products
for Lean Production,
David M. Anderson
LisaCampbellis
VicePresident,Manu-
facturingBusiness
StrategyandMarket-
ingatAutodesk,Inc.
Shemanagesbusiness
andindustrystrategy,
go-to-marketand
businessperformance
forAutodesk’smanu-
facturingsegments.
Campbellhasover25
yearsofhightechsoft-
wareexperiencewith
extensiveknowledge
inbusinessandmar-
ketingstrategy,digital
marketing,ecom-
merce,branddevelop-
mentandnewmarket
entry.Autodeskisa
memberoftheManu-
facturingLeadership
Council.
Feature/ Digital Darwinism: Innovate or Die /4/7 CI
InnovationinManufacturing

3. What’s great about the Innovation Ge-
nome is that it doesn’t apply any artificial
boundaries—any idea is a good idea. You
start wide and narrow it down to the essen-
tial idea and then determine how practical
it is and how you will execute it. You leave
the process with the feeling that you’re go-
ing to make a huge difference for your com-
pany,andthat’stimewellspent.
InnovatingonAdditiveattheUnit-
edStatesAirForceAcademy
A
utodesk isn’t the only organi-
zation that has developed a re-
searched-based methodology
to drive innovation. At the United States
Air Force Academy, a group of design stu-
dents recently took on the innovation task
for a year-long senior capstone course
(http://bit.ly/2tHb6gV) in the Engineering
Mechanics department. Faculty Advisor
Captain Skyler Hilburn, along with Rich
Buckley as the contractor advisor for the
USAF Academy and Capstone Advisor to
the capstone team, worked with those stu-
dents to develop a methodology to encour-
age innovation in additive manufacturing
(AM). As the primary developer of the
process, Captain Hilburn created a set of
cards, called AM Capability Cards, which
are divided into four subsections: Product
Design Tools, Personal Manufacturing,
Customizability,andOptimization.
Designed to get students thinking about
additive manufacturing in new ways, each
card briefly explains a given AM principle,
with examples of the principle in action
on the back. The cards are divided into
subsets of methods. For example, Prod-
uct Design Tools covers ideas such as
combined parts, scaled testing, integrated
joints, rapid prototyping, and embedded
components.
“There wasn’t a comprehensive tool that
says, ‘Here are the ways that you can use
additive manufacturing to improve your
product or at sections of the design pro-
cess,’” Buckley says. “The cadets came up
with a mind map that lets you apply addi-
tive manufacturing techniques at all the
different phases of the design process—all
the way from the ideation phase, through
production,torepairandrecycle.”
You don’t have to apply all of the cards
to each design problem. Instead, you pick
what fits the idea at hand. “If they are in an
early-stage design process, they’re not go-
ing to be worried about 3D printing at the
point of consumption or printing obsolete
parts,” Buckley says. “They’re going to be
worried more about doing the rapid-scale
prototyping.We’llgivethemtheentirecard
deck, and they’ll go through and see which
principlesareapplicabletotheprojectsthat
they’reworkingon.”
For example, students working with
unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could
use the cards to think differently about
MANUFACTURING
LEADERSHIP JOURNAL
..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... ..........................................................................................................................
........................................
parts. “UAVs tend to crash a lot and break,”
Buckley says. “There are two applications
there: One is the rapid printing of replace-
ment parts after the UAV has crashed, and
the other is the combining of multiple func-
tional parts into one part. For example, if
you have a UAV body, traditionally you bolt
on a camera to the bottom. But there’s no
reason you can’t print the body with a cam-
erainsideof it.”
This innovation methodology works be-
cause it’s so pragmatic; anyone can adopt
and execute on this approach easily. Think
about what process or technology you could
use to create your own Capability Cards
for—maybe machining, milling, or injection
molding. Better yet, consider creating cards
for new technologies. With a set for genera-
tive design, you could have cards for light-
weighting or aesthetics. And for machine
learning, you could have cards for human-
robot collaboration and automation. In a
rapidly changing world, it’s great to innovate
quickly in a way that is easy to learn and easy
toimplement.
StanleyBlack&Decker
FocusesonDisruption
A
t Stanley Black & Decker, a manu-
facturer of industrial tools and
household hardware, Break-
through Innovation (http://bit.ly/2eR1tdd)
teams have been helping the company re-
mainnotjustcompetitivebutattheforefront
of its industry. The company set out on its
breakthrough innovation journey three
years ago with a desire to consistently deliver
customer-centric innovation. Inspired by
Silicon Valley, the Breakthrough Innovation
centersoperatelikestartupswithinthelarger
Stanley Black & Decker organization, sup-
porting the business with a funnel of ideas
that remove some of the risks inherent in in-
novation.
“Innovation in the core business is very
process oriented,” says Frank DeSantis,
vice president of breakthrough innovation
for the company’s infrastructure business.
“There’s financial processes you have to de-
fine, business processes that are very defined.
CI
InnovationinManufacturing
31
www.ManufacturingLeadershipCommunity.com
Feature/ Digital Darwinism: Innovate or Die /6/7
1 The PA case # is
USAFA-DF-2017-271
..........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Using cards that explain key
principles, the U.S. Air Force
developed an innovation meth-
odology to enourage advances
in additive manufacturing.

4. We’ve broken the mold with all of that. We
work very fast. We prototype, we test it, we
go out and get customer feedback, and that
loop happens very quickly. Our normal in-
novationprocesscouldtakeanywherefrom
six to 18 months on the core business side.
We’re churning through projects in about
twotothreemonths.”
DeSantis and his team focus on inno-
vation through three lenses: customer,
market opportunity, and enabling tech-
nologies. When all three lenses align, they
move forward with an idea. “We start with
problem statements from our customers
and understand what issues they’re fac-
ing throughout their business—whether
it’s the tools, the service, parts, any facet
of their lives,” DeSantis says. “We look at
large market opportunities and then try to
match that up with enabling technologies
that already exist or that we need to de-
velop ourselves. We look at the next three
to 10 years and how we either are going to
disrupt ourselves and come up with a new
product or process or potentially disrupt
anindustry.”
Inthepastyear,DeSantis’sBreakthrough
Innovation team has looked at more than
50 projects, with three of those moving on
to Stanley Black & Decker’s business unit.
Because the team focuses on rapid iteration
and prototyping, they learn quickly by tak-
ingrisksandnotbeingafraidtofailquickly.
“Part of our charter and our mantra is to
rapidly iterate, rapidly ideate, get customer
feedback very quickly,”DeSantis says. “So
every day we’re challenging ourselves to ei-
ther shift the model that we’re doing that’s
notworking;infusenewtechnologies;meet
entrepreneurs; meet startup companies;
and really push that envelope of how we
candothatquicker,fasterandbetter.”
Stanley Black & Decker is a great exam-
pleof innovationdonerightinalargeorga-
nization. The company not only identifies
time, staff, and resources to focus on in-
novation but also provides direction to the
innovation teams by aligning them with
business units. And allowing them to func-
tionlikestartups—withallof thespeedand
agility that comes with startup culture—
gives the Breakthrough Innovation teams
thefreedomtotakerisks,usenewtechnolo-
gies,andseekoutnewdesignchallenges.
MakingManufacturing
InnovationHappen
W
hether you call today’s man-
ufacturing era the Fourth
Industrial Revolution, the
Second Machine Age, or the Digital Revo-
lution, the reality is the same: Innovation
isn’t really a choice anymore. Fortunately,
as the examples here show, tools and tech-
niques are available to encourage creative
thinking and establish innovation process-
eswithinyourorganization.
By codifying an innovation process with-
in your business, you’re sending an impor-
tant message to your employees that you
value innovation and it’s important work
for them to do. And you’re also giving them
the tools to go do it. By providing a meth-
odology or process that helps harness the
energy, excitement, passion, and creativ-
ity of the team, you’re empowering them
to surface actionable outcomes. Otherwise,
you’re likely to have a lot of interesting dis-
cussionsthatsimplywon’tgoanywhere.
The key, of course, is to create an environ-
ment that encourages big thinking and quick
action.Byapproachingideagenerationlikean
agile, disruptive startup and tapping into the
proven methods of past innovators, you’ll be
preparedtokeepupwithtoday’spaceof inno-
vation,whichissomuchfasterthaneverbefore.
MANUFACTURING
LEADERSHIP JOURNAL
..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................... ..........................................................................................................................
............................................
33
www.ManufacturingLeadershipCommunity.com
32
www.ManufacturingLeadershipCommunity.com
.....................................................................................................................................
Stanley
Black &
Decker set
up Break-
through
Innovation
centers in or-
der to consis-
tently deliver
customer-
centric inno-
vations.