When I first began blogging I had no idea that my journey would take me to Amsterdam within six months as a guest blogger for the Front End of Innovation Europe 2010, an event sponsored by the (IIR) International Institute of Research.

Although I had vast experience selling emerging technologies and I represented internationally renowned thought leaders in the world of creative thinking and innovation, I was a novice at blogging. 

I had signed up for a social networking class with Sabrina Gibson.  We received our first assignment and we created a blogging strategy plan.

Now six months later, I responded to a bid to be a guest blogger for the Front End of Innovation Europe.  Imagine my delight and surprise when I was selected.  I was notified of my acceptance five days before the event would begin in Amsterdam. 

My assignment is to blog LIVE and post during the sessions while the speaker is actually speaking.  I also had to produce ten tweets each day of the conference and post on two websites, the website of Front End of Innovation Europe 2010 and my own website, Develop Your Creative Thinking.  I am up for the challenge.

Over the next three days, I worked 15 hours per day and generated 22 blogs within that time frame.  When I first arrived, I was asked if I had brought my camera.  I was taken by surprise.  I do not travel with my camera because I typically do not take photos.  Fortunately, I did have my iPhone with me and it has the ability to take photos.  Now, I realize not only am I to blog but I have to hop up and take photos as well.

When I returned home, I redid all of my blog posts.  Now they read much better and make more sense.  Despite many challenges, I am incredibly pleased with myself.  

Remember, it was only six months ago that I began blogging.  I am quite proud of what I have accomplished.  I assure you if I can learn to be this productive with social media and social networking due to the superb training from my incredible teacher, Sabrina Gibson, than you can also learn these same skills.  

I just want to express my deep gratitude to Sabrina Gibson for giving me the necessary skill set to prepare me to blog at a major international design thinking and innovation conference.  Thank you, Sabrina Gibson!

LIVE Front End of Innovation Europe 2010

Speaker: Dr. Andreas Bong, Senior Vice President, HILTI

Topic: Customer Orientation Throughout the Innovation Process

The focus is on the front end of innovation.

Agenda:

• HILTI
• Innovation management
• Customer integration
o Fuzzy front end
o Development

You cannot duplicate what they have done at HILTI. They use a direct sales model with only 30 people selling to their customers. HILTI is about cultural diversity and this fosters creativity and the outcome of innovation. Their employees include more than 50 nationalities.

HILTI has a worldwide presence for construction professionals worldwide, they increase productivity, and provide the benefits from innovation to generate significant added value. They are known for system solutions for professionals.

Sales development doubled the company in the last ten years. They invest 4% in R&D, 10% is done in applied research.

In the HILTI business model they have a common purpose and values. HILTI passionately creates enthusiastic customers to build a better future! The foundation of their culture is integrity, courage, teamwork and commitment. They put people first.

Business improvement, customer competence concentration, customer needs versus requirements, innovative and value adding solutions, management and support creates higher customer satisfaction and better bottom line results.

Innovation management at HILTI is integrated with a holistic view. They have normative innovation management, strategic innovation management, and operational innovation management.

The focus is on outside-in innovation. This is a contradiction as innovation. Horizon 2020 is the identification of future key technologies. They look in the crystal ball to determine global trends and predict construction trends. They generate various scenarios using “Construction 2020” to forecast HILTI relevant applications in 2020, and to create a HILTI relevant global technology roadmap.

They are driven by sustainability. HILTI identified trends by interviewing customers to come up with scenarios. This led to the creation of roadmaps. They learn to survive in each scenario, so they are prepared regardless of which trends or applications occur.

It is important to understand applications and customer needs. What is their value chain? What is their application chain? How do they operate?

HILTI uses science methodologies, work methods, work flow and task durations. There is cooperation and communication to review problems, errors, and identify opportunities for improvement.

By observing their customers at work, HILTI learns what their customers really need. They do this by using video. The customers who are observed forget they are being videotaped. They then behave normally in a brief amount of time. Think about this, 10% of total construction costs are caused by job site injuries. Return on sales of the average construction company is only 2-3%.

Dr. Bong then shows us several examples of innovation at HILTI. One involves the installation of cable trays. It is a solution that is low tech, with low competition, and with a high improvement potential that saves 15-20% of the total time needed. Another example is to replace a yardstick with a laser measurement.

Once you have an idea and a business plan, then go out to customers and ask for their acceptance of that solution.

Enthusiasm creates innovation! Innovation creates enthusiasm!

Key Points are:

1.) Employee satisfaction is the key driver for customer satisfaction.
2.) Understand your customer’s needs.
3.) Idea of scenarios, learn to survive in each scenario.
4.) Creating enthusiastic users is a very steep one.

LIVE Front End of Innovation Europe 2010

Topic:
Part 2: Innovation Think Tank – Develop a Vision for the year 2050

Led by: Per Sandberg, Managing Director, WORLD BUSINESS COUNCIL FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

After listening to Part 1: Using WBCSD’s Vision2050 of a Sustainable World to Drive Corporate Innovation, attendees at the Front End of Innovation 2010 conference were invited to generate ideas for Vision 2050.

These are their ideas:

• With open innovation you lose control.
• The biggest challenges are the names: the toothbrush example, protecting the market brand and existing business structure. It is hard to create partnerships.
• The big companies and brands have resources and money.
• How can we convince them to abandon existing business challenges?
• Here is a different opinion. How could the future look like? Make it transparent; current business models are an inhibitor. Business models are preventing new types of partnerships.
• Low hanging fruit represents a large win referring to the McKinsey chart in Vision 2050.
• Recognize that in IT and the building industry, the way you purchase influences things.
• There is a lot of stuff you can do now; it does not take fancy things.
• In large organizations, there is a lot of inertia.
• Different viewpoint is that scale increases consumption in oil energy, 1% change. They used the same data set from McKinsey.
• Trying to stimulate grassroots for sustainability, the way forward is to do public-private funding.
• Needs to be focused and fast.
• Large corporations think long term very well. P&G began with candles.
• How do we finance, if the speed is too slow?
• It is unrealistic to rely on big corporations.
• Must have the politics of public-private partnerships.
• The average person will not be making the decisions.
• Create fast change by industry solutions.
• The internal organization is not conducive to innovation. Usually innovation occurs in R&D, or specialized departments.
• Innovation leads to financial performance.
• In bakeries the unsold buns are thrown away. This is not public knowledge. Public image was the driver that led to these results:

1.) Reduce by half in 10 years.
2.) Increase the value of the bread left.
3.) New products developed in 2 month, is multiplier by 100.
4.) Use bread as fuel.
5.) Lot of packaging is needed, use in biochemical or bio plastics.

• Smaller scale needed for innovation, important to parcel out the problem to small issues that can be solved. It is better to work in small teams.
• Megatrends: Intra entrepreneurship will play a big role.
• Can be accelerated, entrepreneurs can be glue for systemic change to occur. We need to incentivize entrepreneurs. Embrace entrepreneurs from all angles. They are driving change.
• We not want to waste bread but want to make money.
• Companies should not pretend to be something and do something else.
• FEI conference focuses on sustainable innovation with cases, etc.
• With a background in a chemical company, the challenge in the fashion or cosmetic industry is that as a supplier we have difficulties communicating with R&D, marketing, and not being able to talk to the right people. We need to remove the walls between different organizations.
• From organizational development, if you do not have a leader like Richard Branson, then your organization needs urgency. She had a prior experience in Shell. They had to work on composition on their oil. You can create a sense of urgency from the outside.
• In the U.S. nothing was learned from the banking crisis.
• Need a burning platform; this is needed to drive change. Ask yourself, what if tomorrow there is no more water? As a company we must question ourselves, and then we will innovate. What as a person what would you do?
• In the brewery industry, cans are recycled. They learned:

1.) Be on consumer top of mind. You need meaningful communication with the consumer.
2. ) Renovation reuses the bottle. Now label bottle, “Hello this is the 4th, 5th time you have seen me.” This changed the consumer mindset.

• Will not get big companies to agree at high altitude. Small companies are good at speed and entrepreneurial. Bring together small companies with funding provided by large companies. Use the leverage of both small and big companies.
• Lots of large companies have huge foundations, like the United Nation’s foundation. Address them and can make big changes occur.

• Summary of key points :

1.) Create sense of urgency
2.) Small bits of a problem
3.) Tools
4.) Project oriented approach, small teams
5.) Create Partnerships

LIVE Front End of Innovation Europe 2010

Topic:
Part 1: Using WBCSD’s Vision2050 of a Sustainable World to Drive Corporate Innovation

Speaker:
Per Sandberg: Managing Director, WORLD BUSINESS COUNCIL FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Per Sandberg posed this question, “What innovation does the world need?” Vision 2025 was just launched in India.

Agenda:
• Argue that sustainability is the key driver for innovation.
• Describe what sustainable innovation needed to deliver.
• Dialogue how best to do sustainable innovation.

Based on the vision 2050 platform, gaps are identified to develop a pathway and identify areas of action. The idea is to clarify the business perspective, quantify market potential, and then agree on action points and next steps. Vision 2050 was run by 29 companies within 20 months.

They evaluated the sustainability status to see how are we doing? We plotted the quality of life and the ecological footprint. This identifies a sustainable quadrant for different nations. Countries such as Africa and the South American countries are using fewer resources than available but with a lower quality of life.

We only know one way of developing. How can we keep the quality of life with fewer resources, without overusing the resources? The status is that we are not doing well.

We are borrowing from the future. Over the next 40 years, we will see fantastic growth, more people, and more wealth. Growth means wealth and spending power. The global middle class is expanding. There is growth in the emerging markets. Global economic power is shifting. The top ten economies will change.

We are experiencing inertia with an accompanying inadequate policy response. There is degradation of water and degradation of resources such as oil.

To summarize, we will consume 2.3 Earths in 2050!

In Vision 2050, nine billion people will live well, and within the limits of the planet. Vision 2050 proposes using one planet.

This means that business as usual is not an option. Neither is policy as usual, financing as usual, nor consuming as usual. Innovation as usual is not an option either! We must build an attractive path.

Please read HBR: Why Sustainability Is Now the Key Driver of Innovation

“…sustainability is now the key driver for innovation. In the future only companies that make sustainability a goal will achieve competitive advantage”

How do we close the gap?

1.) Resources and carbon: halving CO2 emissions while doubling agricultural output.
2.) Costs: internalize cost of carbon, water and other ecosystem services.
3.) Consumption: change consumption patterns in favor of more sustainable lifestyles.
4.) Areas of activity: people’s values, human development, economy, agriculture, forests, energy and power, building, mobility, materials, etc.

What does it mean? It is all about resource efficiency around labor, productivity, and financial. We have a rising cost of capital with fluctuating prices. There is availability of raw materials, increasing complexity of risk, changing consumer behaviors, and evolving framework conditions. This creates significant business opportunities.

Key insights are:

1.) Global challenges will become key strategic drivers for business and innovation.
2.) There will be tremendous change.
3.) Opportunities abound for those who turn sustainability into strategy.
4.) Business must work closer with government and society worldwide to transform markets, prices and competition.

The needed radical resource efficiency improvement will require sustainable innovation by all means. Sustainable innovation is waiting to happen. We can begin by harvesting the low-hanging carbon fruit.

It takes 30 years for new energy technology to have market penetration. It is very possible to triple Africa’s agricultural yield. We can make IT work for sustainability. Systemic, integrated innovation is needed and attractive. We can form complex coalitions, do co-innovation with customers and competitive, suppliers. We can forge public-private partnerships.

How do we make it happen? How can we make systemic, integrated “sustainable innovation by all means” happen at a radical scale, with speed and performance?

Per Sandberg then invited the Front End of Innovation attendees to form an Innovation Think Tank to generate additional ideas for Vision 2050. Please go to blog post, Part 2: Innovation Think Tank to see the results.

Topic: The Invention Environment and its Difficulties

Speaker: Peter Hilfinger: Inventor of the Powered Toothbrush & former R&D Director, BRAUN/ORAL B

Peter Hilfinger invented the electric toothbrush; he was the leader of the team. He outlined the conditions for innovation as exemplified by the development of a revolutionary electric toothbrush. Braun/Oral B will now be a part of Procter and Gamble.

They were searching for a new product to fit into their portfolio. There was a big potential in the worldwide market, but there was an existing electric toothbrush that had not done well. It had no special benefits and the price was very high. It was a conventional electric toothbrush that had the same thing as a manual toothbrush.

There was a need to offer benefits that the manual toothbrush did not offer. Therefore, they tried to find out why people did not like existing electric toothbrushes. There were few consumers who are willing to pay for same benefits as a manual toothbrush.

Recommended time for brushing of 3 minutes was perceived as 3 minutes. Consumers use their toothbrush less than one minute; this is still true today.

Desired Benefits:
1. Is more convenient to use and creates pleasant sensation when being used: leaves you with a good mouth feel.
2. Does a better job at cleaning, compared with common manual cleaning practices.
3. Does it in less time than the recommended three minutes.
4. A brush head motion which was seen as not reproducible manually. So everybody understands that an electric device is necessary.

You cannot innovate by asking people what they want. This is useless and not productive. If you use nonfunctioning mockups, consumers do not understand the concept. This is due to psychology.

Consumers like mirror images of themselves versus pictures of themselves. They have strong preferences to old established ways. You have to make the decisions. Recommend strongly, otherwise remain in the mainstream. They were not committed to a final business plan. They only had a rough idea of what they wanted to do.

If a final business plan is approved then any new idea is reviewed against the business plan.

The electric toothbrush was considered as the most unneeded product. One of the features of the new electric tooth brush is that the brush head is circular.

Conditions for innovation include:

1. Top management understands and supports that final project plan has to be flexible while in progress.
2. R&D management has the freedom to set interim targets.

Each team member is aware of the entire project, including the financial targets and the desired contribution to the success of the company. The R&D team agrees with the project targets set up by the management! Meanwhile the team develops a sense of responsibility for the whole project Team members enjoy periods of creative rest.

Their initial tries resulted in bleeding gums. Eventually a working sample was built. The prototype outperformed the manual toothbrush with a better interdental plaque index, it was more convenient, it had a better feel of clean, and the teeth felt more polished.

They had some difficulties with production of the product. They were given more time to fix these issues and resolved them by using different materials to produce the bevel gears. Top management decided to go into the market.

Peter Hilfinger summarizes by saying that innovation needs freedom and creative rest, do not press innovation work into timeframes and financial constraints too early, and rely on your own strength.

LIVE Front End of Innovation Europe 2010

Topic: Inventor’s Forum
The MP3 Story: From Basic Research to Changing the World of Music

Speaker:
Prof Karlheinz Brandenburg: Inventor, MP3 Format, Director, Franhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology

The MP3 story involves basic research standardization. Internet marketing works. Lessons learned are to try to do the impossible.

Today there is decoding functionality on every PC. There is playback on mobile phones, DVD players, and alarm clocks. Name a device category such as MP3 players. This stands for the move from physical media to the internet economy. It earns money.

Prof Brandenburg took us on a historical journey:

It began with only some dreams in 1982. We should use ISDN to transmit music. There was coding of pictures, video, and speech. However it was not of high quality audio signals. Digital audio broadcasts needed high quality with a low bit rate audio.

Work started at Erlangen University and Frauhofer IIS and other places at the same time. What they wanted was the transmission of music at 1/10th data rate. The basic idea was perceptual coding. The signal sink was to be our ears.

1983: The philosophy is we have CD; so who needs this anyway?

1986: Now they are saying that this will never work well enough for the “golden ears” in the industry.

1988: MPEG starts soliciting proposals for video.

1989-1991: Fierce competition emerges.

1992: MPEG-1 audio gets three modes
1. DCC
2. DAB,DVB, CD-I
3. Feeding audio over ISDN

Conquering the market means understanding what do with it? They used the internet as a marketing tool due to a lack of funds. They used shareware as a tool to get their coder to people. Everybody should have access to good software. The first plans were to do PC based decoding.

1994: There are nearly no licensees for their technology.

1995: World space decides to use MP3; this is the first CE application.

1995: Ricky Adar wants to start the internet music distribution business, he asks us, “Do you know that you will destroy the music industry?”

1995: Harald Popp and Dagfinn Bach visit the offices of a major record label in Munich.

1995: First software is running on Windows.

1996: Students write other decoders.
First license issued to Microsoft.

1997: MP3 encoder is stolen and now the technology can be found widely.
Mp3.com starts. This is freeware. This helped because it gave many people the ability to use the technology. This leads to Internet pirates in the music industry.

The first MP3 websites began at the end of 1996 / early 1997.

Summer 1997: Legal actions are taken and are documented in USA Today. This publicity leads to more pirates.

Music is the first to get away from physical media. You must ask yourself why? Innovation is driven by inventions. Inventions are driven by curiosity. Children are curious; we need to stay that way.

The key factors for success are vision, overtime effort, and stubbornness. You also need luck. Ideas from many people helped MP3 to become the best system by its time. There is no single inventor of the MP3. One of the strengths in Europe is the ability to build teams and work together. They set the joint success over the individual. Listen to the market and do not give up.

The age of digital media has just arrived.

Here’s a short clip from his presentation below:

By Connie Harryman, Applied Concepts Creativity
Guest Blogger IIR USA

Do you ever wonder if our current business models are serving our need to innovate? One of the keynote speakers at the Front End of Innovation Europe is Josephine Green, Senior Director of Trends and Strategy, Philips Design, Royal Philips Electronics.

Her background includes international sales and marketing. She is an acknowledged thought leader for future trends using social research for advanced strategy.

Josephine takes into consideration the complexity and interconnectedness of our socio-cultural values with emerging technologies. She acknowledges the benefits of creating new business models.

She reminds us that current management structures were set up to accommodate the needs of mass markets. Their primary focus is managing logistics. This has nothing to do with innovation. Current management is about command, control, and distribution.

For creativity and innovation to flourish, we have to create spaces where people can experiment. We must create an innovative environment where we can feel free to create a future that considers our complex and connected world.

Factors to consider include the need to introduce new thinking around our business models while considering the human element. We must consider the sustainability of development in our culture. We must be knowledgeable about the impact of processes we implement.

She asks us to imagine viewing the universe with childlike wonder with a willingness to explore new possibilities. We might go beyond our current notions of time and space.

This means engagement with artists, scientists, and academics. This allows us to explore the space between the creative and scientific disciplines.  Perhaps you can learn to trust in your own subjectivity and that of others as much as you do in objectivity.

In Josephine Green’s e-book, Democratizing the future, Towards a new era of creativity and growth, she tells us there are new ways to create value by transforming our worldview of social models.

We can create a transformation of new approaches with new tools, new research and innovation, new leaders, new networks and new partnerships. This all involves cross-disciplinary, cross-industry, cross-border and public/private collaborations that will create the industries and markets of the future.

I am pleased to announce that I have been selected to be a guest blogger for the Front End of Innovation Europe.  

I will be sharing many more posts with you about some of the most outstanding thought leaders in the field of creativity and innovation. They will be sharing leading edge ideas with us at the Front End of Innovation Europe on how to create a better future.
#FEIEUROPE