The Innovators’ Dilemma: Developing thoughts and strategies for the next big thing (IoT 101 v0.01)

The Innovators’ Dilemma* (by M. Clayton Christensen) suggests that companies pander disproportionately (and develop) to current customer needs. In so doing they stand to miss the opportunity to develop (their business and/or products) to cater for possible next big thing.

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IoT (Internet of things) at PTC. An avid work in progress…. and showing promise.

I attended PTC’s LiveWorx event in June. PTC’s investments and product announcements over recent times are, to me anyway, a commitment to IoT that’s beyond that of many of their competitors. There again, PTC’s ‘old’ competition aren’t necessarily their new ones, especially in the rapidly evolving IoT market. Continue reading

Hannover Messe 2016: Digitalisation, Industrie 4.0, IoT and all things manufacturing

I’ve just returned from Hannover (Germany) having spent two days at the world’s largest industrial fair. For those unacquainted with Hannover Messe, this is a mammoth fair (trade show) with over 5,200 exhibitors. These aren’t just German companies. According to the organisers’ press release, overseas accounted for about 58% of the exhibitors. 465 of these from the US, this year’s partner country, and (not surprisingly?) about 650 from China. Continue reading

IBM : Connected and InterConneted

IBM, known by many as the world’s IT ‘super tanker’, is transforming their image of former years, to a one that’s more innovative, approachable, cool, connected and industry focused.

The message from both IBM’s PartnerWorld and InterConnect conferences (held a few weeks ago in Las Vegas, NV) is one of change. They (and their partners) are clearly excited by a new era of opportunities. One that will be driven, to a large part, by the dynamics of today’s more connected and insightful world. Continue reading

An explosion of individual innovation …incited by the Internet of Things (IoT).

Carl Bass’s (President and CEO of Autodesk) presentation at the 2016 Design Conference in San Francisco spurred me to think more on topics IoT. Specifically, his conversation spurred me to reflect that the IoT’s future is, in part, going to be defined by the enthusiasm (and possibly genius) of individual innovators, new entrants and communities of like-minded ‘boutique’ innovators. Continue reading

PTC delivers an impressive view of their unified IoT product strategy.

Last week in Boston (MA), PTC provided press and analysts with significantly more flesh to their product bones in their integrated CAD, PLM, SLM, Internet of Things (IoT) and Augmented Reality (AR) product lines. Although many press and analysts were there in person, the event was also livestreamed to a wider (14,000+) global audience. Continue reading

OPEN INNOVATION : Ideas from outside an organisation can reinvigorate business innovation

Like individuals, companies can develop tried-and-true ways of tackling challenges and evaluating opportunities. No matter how successful, these ‘standard operating procedures’ also come with blinders to new ideas and even better ways of working. Involving outsiders – a process known as ‘open innovation’ – can help to reinvigorate innovation, reduce risk and increase speed in identifying and achieving solutions.

Two heads are better than one. It’s a well-known concept that explains why brainstorming sessions are so popular in modern business. Apply more minds to a problem and you’re more likely to find an innovative answer to a tough challenge.

Open Innovation, a concept first described by Henry Chesbrough, adjunct professor at the University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, in his 2003 book Open Innovation: The New imperative for creating and profiting from technology, applies the same idea not just to individuals, but to companies as well. Also known as external or networked innovation, open innovation allows companies to move from a closed innovation process involving only internal resources to one that innovates by involving external resources.

“Open innovation is dramatically changing today’s business world,” said Sandy Carter, general manager for IBM Ecosystems and Social Business Evangelism. “It’s not just for our customers, but also for us, IBM, internally.”

THE MULTIPLIER EFFECT

By supplementing the brainpower available inside one company with input from partners, customers, consultants, government laboratories, crowdsourcing and more, the options for increasing a company’s inputs and improving its chances of finding a truly innovative solution expand exponentially. Expanding their available brainpower is one major reason that companies acquire other companies and form strategic partnerships – to bring new ideas and new ways of working into an established culture.

“Companies can no longer afford to do it on their own,” Martin Curley, vice president and director of Intel Labs Europe, wrote in “The Evolution of Open Innovation,” his “Letter from Industry” to the Journal of Innovation Management. “Indeed the unit of competition is changing in that it is often no longer about how good an individual company or organization is but the strength of the ecosystem in which they participate is often the differentiating factor for great success, mediocrity or even failure.”

But why has a 12-year-old idea become so relevant today? One reason is the changing nature of competition. “The historical, kaizen-like methods of iterating innovation simply aren’t enough to defend today’s business from the radical thinking and clearly differentiating new entrant,” said Gary Barnett, CTO of UK-based not-for-profit environmental start-up AirSensa.

A second reason: The advent of social networks (both internal and external), social-listening tools, dashboards, unstructured data search, crowdsourcing, big-data analytics and the like have made it faster and easier to solicit, collect, analyse and act on inputs from partners, customers and the general public. Armed with these tools, open innovation with almost anyone, anywhere has become both possible and affordable.

HEALTHY DIALOGUE

Social media, in particular, has thrown the channels of communication wide open, making it easier than ever to listen to and act on what customers and partners are saying. Used internally, social media- style tools help employees locate in-house experts or float ideas and get feedback from across the company. As more conversations take place, particularly among people who don’t normally interact, innovation bubbles to the surface more easily and more frequently.

Companies need to recognize, however, that these tools only work in a culture that encourages free thinking and free speech. If people think they’re being censored, excluded or judged, they won’t participate. Participation also must be transparent. All feedback has value; no one’s input should be shut down.

One way to jump-start involvement in organizations unaccustomed to open innovation is to organize competitions, such as IBM’s facilitated “hackathons,” Samsung’s Open Innovation Centres, Nokia’s Open Innovation Challenge, Philips’ Innovation Fellows Competition and GE’s Ecomagination Challenge. Maker movements, fab labs, innovation networks, idea hubs and crowdfunding platforms offer additional opportunities to gather inspiration and to encourage employees to stretch their innovation muscles.

THE CULTURE CHALLENGE

Any company that dedicates itself to an open-innovation approach, however, needs to be prepared for certain common stumbling blocks. Professional innovation enablers know this situation very well. “Internal culture, for example, can be a principle challenge in maintaining an innovative environment,” said Martin Duval, president and COO of French-based open innovation services company Bluenove.

Internal innovators and influencers are critical assets, but years of experience, successes and failures can lead to prejudices and resistance. IBM’s Carter tells the story of a non-US company that sent a team to study open innovation in Silicon Valley companies. The team returned from its visit, brimming with ideas for improvement – and met a stone wall of resistance. A year later, frustrated by obstacles and disinterest in their home organization, every single member of the team had resigned.

“We need to listen to everyone that’ll talk and talk to everyone that’ll listen,” Barnett said. Listening to an organization’s youngest members is especially critical. “The young help us avoid falling into the trap of always listening to those that are as wrong as we are.” Generation Y, the most tech-savvy generation in history, often sees possibilities that experienced experts might not consider – the types of possibilities that enable radical change.

Ultimately, the best way to create a culture of innovation is to be open to the new ideas of open engagement, as well as the platforms and methods that enable them. Modern technologies make open innovation easier than ever before. What is most important, however, is for forward-thinking businesses to look at opportunities with fresh, open eyes.

This article is a reprint excerpted with permission from Dassault Systèmes’ COMPASS magazine. http://compassmag.3ds.com

Siemens PLM Software – A digital ‘engine’ provider for Industry 4.0

Siemens PLM Software’s analyst event last month provided much food for thought. First off, Siemens showed a new dimension to their messaging. One that’s simpler and more focused on customer outcomes. Second, they provided a vision and many of the pieces that deliver ‘Industry 4.0’ as (to a large extent) a practical proposition.

For those that’re unaware of Industry 4.0, it’s a German Government sponsored initiative, supported by companies such as Siemens, Bosch and SAP. It focuses on a vision of industry focusing on the digitisation of design, factories and (customer and supplier) networks around Cyber-Physical Systems, the Internet of Things and the Internet of Services.

Chuck Grindstaff, Siemens PLM’s CEO and President rightly pointed out that today’s innovation ecosystem is relentless. Products are getting smarter and more complex; definitely true when considering the trend to more software (and electronics) driven product content. To this Siemens wants to be the be the company that helps customers deal with the contradictory drivers of product/ecosystem complexity and business velocity/agility. They aim to do this by providing a broad swathe of solutions that allow companies to design, make and support their products. A world where ‘digital twining’ (such as in areas of design and manufacturing) is as close to reality as possible so that Siemens’s digitally-led proposition to customers is both practical and (clearly) valuable.

Achieving the vision (of Industry 4.0) might be considered quite an objective from any one vendor, but in Siemens PLM’s case we have to remember that they’re supported by the technologies and know-how of the greater Siemens. Having said this, there some provisos; not least amongst these that the PLM division continues to show support for ‘open’ technologies and encourage and grow third party ecosystems.

Back to the conference. Much of the content was focused on providing press and analysts with updates on Siemens PLM’s ‘Smart Innovation Portfolio’, with some excellent customer presentations including one from Dell on their use of big data and analytics in the area of customer service.

Siemens PLM’s product messaging is one of a ‘Smart Innovation Portfolio’. This integrates ‘Engaged users’ (collaboration and intelligent app environments etc.), ‘Intelligent models’ (cyber-physical systems/digital twins etc.), ‘Realized Products’ (automation/manufacturing/planning etc.) and ‘Adaptive systems’ (data driven decision making etc.). While there’s much to comment on I was intrigued by new offerings made possible by their acquisition of Camstar, and so too their new mobile app Catchbook.

Camstar’s suite of tools allow Siemens to expand their available markets beyond traditional domains (well beyond that of MES) to areas of customer service (and by extension IoT), big data and analytics. Their first consumer-friendly (sketching) mobile app Catchbook allows Siemens to expand their reach not only to new customers but also to consumers, mindful of the (sketching) needs of new/next generation users.

Siemens have already made public their interest in transitioning their large platforms (Teamcenter for example) to more ‘app-like’ forms, and to date they’ve done a good job so far in simplifying (and beautifying) their offerings. But the next generation (Y) is (rightly in my eyes) critical on the complexity of monolithic software products and Catchbook is an interesting take on Siemens’ capacity to react to these objections. Transforming to ‘apps’ (and born-on-the-Cloud/subscription based) might be considered by many as primarily a technological exercise; but I’d suggest that it’s as much, if not more so a challenge to (Siemens’) existing pricing, business and sales models.