« Protecting your intangibles: Feta is Greek | Main | State of Manufacturing »
October 28, 2005
Rediscovering the "Skunkworks"
Seems like every so often we need to re-discover some old ideas. For example, we are re-fighting all the battles from the 1980's over science and technology policy and funding. Now, it seems that business (or at least the business press) has re-discovered a key element in our innovation-system: the skunkworks (or to use the more dignified term, the "innovation lab"). Here is Business Week's latest praise of skunkworks - "Mosh Pits" Of Creativity:
The Razr, Motorola's (MOT ) half-inch-thick, ultralight cell phone, broke a few rules in the industry when it appeared late last year. It's impossibly compact, simple to operate, and elegant, with an artfully hidden antenna and impressive photographic capabilities. The phone marked a sleek detour from the drive toward bulky features, such as powerful storage devices and high-power cameras, that were fattening up phones and preoccupying rival cell-phone makers. No wonder the Razr has sold a breathtaking 12.5 million units in less than a year.
But Motorola also had to break some internal rules to get the Razr to market. The biggest: Much of the critical work on the phone was done at a downtown Chicago innovation lab known as Moto City -- rather than solely in the company's sprawling traditional research and development facility in suburban Libertyville, Ill. Decorated in a trendy palette of oranges and grays, Moto City fills the 26th floor of a high-rise once occupied by a dot-com.
To hustle the phone into production, Motorola engineers left their cubicles in Libertyville to team up with designers and marketers 50 miles to the southeast in Moto City. With its open spaces and waist-high cubicles for even senior managers, the lab fostered teamwork and a breaking down of barriers -- both of which contributed to the success of the project. Razr developers, for instance, bypassed a normal process of running new-product ideas past regional managers across the world. Because they wanted to lead the market, not just give managers and customers what they thought they wanted, the Razr team put aside normal practices. "We did not want to be distracted by the normal inputs we get," says Gary R. Weiss, senior director of mechanical engineering. "It would not have allowed us to be as innovative."
FASTER, FASTER
Innovation labs are a key part of a movement to overhaul old-style R&D. They are designed to complement, and sometimes even replace, the intensive traditional system -- which required that scientists or engineers toil away privately for years in the pursuit of patents, then hand their work over to product developers, who in turn dropped it onto designers' and marketers' laps for eventual shipment out to the public. The leisurely old handoff approach worked fine a few decades ago, when the likes of Bell Labs and RCA Laboratories could take years to develop transistors and color TVs, knowing they would enjoy protected markets for years more. But today's rapacious competition means innovations grow stale fast. Companies must churn out updates far more quickly. Already, Motorola has unleashed follow-on phones, such as the candy-bar style Slvr and the rounded, pert-looking Pebl, along with a bevy of novel colors, such as hot pink, for the flip-top Razr.
Since Lockheed's Skunk Works started in the 1940's, I find it amusing to see the concept now touted as a radical break from past decades. In any truly innovative company, the old over-the-transom method of product development (scientist to product development engineer to designer to marketing) went the way of the dinosaur many years ago. (In fairness to the author, the piece does discuss other companies who use the innovation lab model and the difficulties these labs face.)
But, as the article illustrates, this old version of the innovation process remains fixed in our minds. No where is that more evident that in Washington. Our entire so-called innovation policy is built upon that pipeline model. Our debates are over how to create more inputs to that pipeline: increasing the number of scientist and engineers; improving math and science test scores; and, expanding funding for science.
What about the other parts of the system -- the designers, the product developers, the marketers? Not only are they completely left out of the process by this policy myopia, their contributions are downplayed (such as in the statements that the study of arts and crafts is useless to production and should be replaced by more science). Wrong! We need those folks who studied glass-blowing as well as those who studied differential equations. They all bring important skills to the process.
And what about the system as well? With policy focused on pushing more input into a pipeline that doesn't even work that way anymore, we are completely neglecting how the system really works. We need a policy that focuses on how the system works and how to improve the interaction among the various parts. There is a big push for funding of science and engineering students. How about support for students at the new Stanford Institute of Design? Or how about a program similar to the old Engineering Research Centers (ERCs) to replicate the Stanford model (and other variations)?
As long as our vision of innovation remains stuck in the industrial era model of the pipeline, we will continue, every few years, to re-invent to wheel -- of in this case, to re-discover the skunkworks.
Posted by Ken Jarboe at October 28, 2005 11:44 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.athenaalliance.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/385
Comments
Hi-
Glad to see there is someone else who knows a "skunk works", when they see it.
I've worked in "nontraditional", messy, collaborative, creative environments for 30 years - and found the writer's attitudes (and some of the interviewee's) naive and techno-elitist. But that's what we get for creating ghettos of thought, age, race, gender, disciplines, politics, religion, etc.
(I've included my letter to the editors of Business Week, below.)
In my college and post college years, while rebelling at the modernist dictates of my Industrial design professors - I delved into stained glass, the traditional arts, crafts, and music, 19th C. industrial history, AND early Computer-Aided Design. (Done by batch-processing, on punch-cards, at that time. With instructor Judson Rosebush - who later worked on the movie "Tron".)
I was certainly influenced toward interdisciplinary collaboration, and innovation process, by my favorite technology professor, Rolf Faste. A highly creative mechanical engineer who loved crossing boundaries, breaking-down barriers, and looking at a problem from MANY points of view.
Rolf later went on to head the Product Development Program at Stanford - a position now held by his former student, David Kelly. (Cofounder of the "innovation" firm, IDEO, highlighted in the Business Week article.)
****************************************************************************************************
Another subject for a LONG discussion, is what I call Product Development's "Dirty Little Secret".
It's the fact that a combination of hand skills, technical knowledge, and aesthetic sensitivity, are STILL required - to transform ideas (and CAD-files) into physical reality for production.
There is currently a below-the-radar cottage industry, of the "remnants" of the industrial age.
Aging sculptors, model makers, machinists, pattern makers, and small prototype shops, transform the highly touted "paperless" techno-designs into the reality of "first article" prototypes for MANY high-technology companies.
Yes, they use CAD, CAM, rapid-prototyping, 3-D printing, etc., to do this. But it is their knowledge and experience in the traditional aspects of their craft, which allows them to cross the very real Digital/Physical Gap. (Virtual/Human Gap?) A gap which will probably always exist.
The car companies still make clay models.
They use CNC to input the well-hyped CAD models, and then rough-out the clay contours. But the final surfaces are still caressed by hand - because thousands of minute aesthetic decisions must be made while doing that.
THEN the hand-caressed model is laser-scanned and digitized - to create the next CAD file, for creating the production tooling. (Which in turn is also "massaged" by hands, at various points.)
Sorry, it's still not a truly integrated "idea-to-part" process - regardless of what the CAD companies and CNC equipment makers hype. Or what the MIT program on digital manufacturing is trying to do. (The direct-to-part process is suitable for components - not so good for objects people handle, and connect with.)
Boeing has been a leader in CAD for over 40 years. Their new "787 Dreamliner" is probably THE most advanced CAD-designed/CNC-built program in existence. An astounding achievement, and a gorgeous machine. (Let's hope it's also economically successful)
The hype is: EVERYTHING has been designed totally on CAD, and produced totally by CNC.
True, but...
I'm willing to bet a year's pay that hand-produced mockups, models, prototypes, machined-parts, and castings, WERE made - for at least portions of the development and evaluation process.
As a category, the old-time pattern makers are probably the most "natively" creative, inventive, and innovative people I've ever encountered. (And I've sought them out!).
They are the people who "make it work" - when all else fails. They cross the barriers of aesthetics, craft, mechanics, technology, materials, processes - and are a fulcrum for leveraging all of the other product development disciplines.
Unfortunately, those people and places - with their broad, extensive knowledge and skill sets - are becoming fewer and fewer. Partly because they are considered to be un-hip blue-collar workers, but also because they are being replaced by similar (but currently less-sophisticated) people in China, India, Malaysia, etc.
In the process, we are losing a valuable, and nationally strategic creative resource.
The "knowledge industry" and "virtual companies" don't seem to know it - but to produce any PHYSICAL product, their work has to be focused and translated by the use of hand, eye, brain, and emotion. That includes the keyboards we use, and the iPods we wear.
That can be done in the US, or in any other part of the globe. What do we gain? What do we lose? It's our choice. ******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Apologies for this turning into such a rant... **********
The Athena Alliance seems like an interesting organization
*************************************************************************************************** But HTML tags? A real pain for the average user. ******* So, I'll let you figure out where the breaks should go. It looks fine to me, in this little box. *******Perhaps the kinds of technological "production process" problems, I've been discussing - are evident right here? **************************************************************************************************** Using HTML tags to input is user-unfrendly - and the outcome (without them) is going to be VERY reader UN-frendly. But, in common industry jargon - "Whatever"... ***********
Ed Britt
Edmund Britt & Co.
Product Design and Development
Wakefield, MA
****************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Following is my letter to the editors of Business Week:
Re: "Mosh Pits of Creativity" (Business Week- 11/7/05)
*********************************************
Collaborative innovation works. It brings together multiple disciplines, knowledge, skills, viewpoints, and experiences - to explore diverse approaches, and create new solutions to problems.
But to read, "...older workers, especially baby boomers, might have a hard time..." with innovation labs, and to imply that only younger generations are open to them - is exactly the type of myopic BS the process should eliminate.
Creativity has never been limited to any particular discipline, race, gender, ethnicity, or (in this case) age group. Nor is innovation a gated community - populated only by young, black-clad technologists.
Artists, designers, and inventors, have *always* worked in the types of innovative collaborative environments described in the article - often in spite of corporate and societal rules. It's refreshing to see that some corporations finally realize a similar approach can be used to "free" the nascent creativity in other disciplines.
However, to say, "The market for handsets today is young people, and we have a lot of young people here..." also shows shortsightedness. Young people are *A market* - not *THE market*.
Where are the cell phones designed for bifocals, arthritic fingers, or memory and hearing problems - which many older people have? Why isn't that large market, being served?
Can't we do better than the absurdity of having to push "END" to *turn on* a cell phone - and use the "START" menu to *turn off* a PC? Is our goal to technologize humans - or humanize technology?
Eliminating physical barriers to innovation is a good start. Now let's bring down the attitudinal and cultural barriers to it, as well. We've got plenty of problems - and we'll need all the help we can get to solve them.
**************
Ed Britt*****
Edmund Britt & Co.
Product Design and Development
Wakefield, MA
Posted by: Ed britt at November 5, 2005 1:45 PM