Impact
One of the driving forces for Product innovation is that our research will make a real difference of some sort in the world, and this is fundamentally what is meant by saying your research has an impact. Research impact is often defined as “the demonstrable contribution that excellent research makes to society and the economy”.
We try to describe our impact in two main categories:
Academic Impact
The Academic impact includes significant advances in understanding, methods, theory and application. For us it implies that we are active on a local, national and international level to develop the academic area of product innovation. This is done in collaboration with industry and other academics.
For us one way to disseminate high quality research publications within the area of product innovation, at the same time we see that people behind the research is the ones that in the long term can make a difference. So therefore the post graduate education and long term development of researchers is very important.
Industrial Impact
Our research is often done in collaboration with industry. We think that our main impact to industry is when organisations improve and adapt their way of working based on research done by us. We believe that industry will not change their way of working based on our research papers, here more refined methods and tools has been to developed. Therefore we often strive to develop simple tools, methods and guidelines. These tools and methods will be rapidly introduced in engineering education at LTU. We see this as one of the quickest way of implementing tools, methods and industry.
We also see that our former Phd students are often the catalyst of implementing and transferring research ideas into industry.
Methods and Tools
The research topic has been focused on developing tools and methods for many years. These methods and tools are used both in daily research and in teaching
Creative Methods
In the functional product development perspective, the development is often carried out in cross-functional teams, where the participants have different skills necessary for the task at hand.
In the functional product development perspective, the development is often carried out in cross-functional teams, where the participants have different skills necessary for the task at hand.
To develop an innovative solution for a function, the team has to "think together", i.e. build on each others ideas and use the accumulated knowledge of the team.
We call these teams for "Tiger Teams" and in order to ease the process of supporting the teams we have developed methods to facilitate creative meetings in cross-functional teams.
Method Cards
To ease the facilitation of theses "Tiger Teams", we have developed 60 method cards; X functional knowledge creation. The cards have three main areas "Introduction", "Ideation" and ""Iteration".
- Introduction - is an introduction and warm-up the team so they get into the right mood. The methods prepares the team and also acts as warm-up.
- Ideation - is the phase where the solution space expands, here all new ideas are welcome. The method cards contains methods for brainstorming and creative thinking.
- Iteration - here we evaluate the ideas that have sprung out from the work, to find pros and cons.
Development and Evaluation
The method cards are partly developed within the Faste Laboratory in the project "Radical Innovation", which is a part of the "Faste Excellent Capabilities" work package. The methods have been developed in an iterative process where we test the methods in real, industrial, "Tiger Teams". We have used the cards in a number of industrial workshops within the Faste Laboratory.
If you are interested in how the "Radical Innovation Workshop" concept would work for you, contact Peter Törlind or Andreas Larsson.
Four I:s For Innovation – 4I4I
In this book you will find four pillars to guide product development processes. The pillars are; Inspiration, Identification, Ideation and Implementation – the four eyes for innovation (4I4I).
Introduction
Innovation is a daunting task, so our idea is that you need an extra pair of eyes, or at least new glasses – this book is intended to give you that. 4I4I is based on the P2I process developed and used in education over several years at Luleå University of Technology.
The idea to write this book comes from the experience that students (and people at companies) needs a light version of P2I to quickly get into that specific design thinking. 4I4I is a guided tour to innovative and creative product development.
How to Use the Book
There are four main chapters in this book, one for each pillar. The introduction page for each chapter presents input and output, i.e., what you start from and what you should achieve. Read the chapter and you will get guidance for how to achieve it.
Before each new chapter we encourage you to reflect on the issues that have been presented and the exercises that you have done. You can move on to the next chapter if you feel satisfied with your team performance and result.
Four I:s for Innovation
The product development process presented here is based on four pillars – Inspiration, Identification, Ideation and Implementation. This basic process encompasses activities from finding needs to a developed product.
- INSPIRATION
Here, user needs are explored. These activities build up a shared understanding of the assignment and provide the design team with insights into the situations that users perceive as problematic. - IDENTIFICATION
The exploration of a solution space is supported by this pillar. The activities here identify the frame for innovations in the development project. - IDEATION
The heart of these activities is creativity. Here, the solution space is populated with numerous ideas. Creative sessions performed here aim for quantity – the more ideas the better. - IMPLEMENTATION
So far, the process has encouraged and supported ‘bold strokes’. Embarking from a lot of ideas, the activities here focus on creating a few appropriate concepts. In turn, these are going to be packaged into a product. Going from a wide perspective to a narrow perspective is the soul of product development processes.
In each chapter, you will also find a few key words to help your search for more information.
Creative Collaborative Methods: FUNC3
Innovation is important to create new solutions, whether, for example, new products or services or a new organization. The creative abilities of employees are becoming more interesting to support and develop. A creative environment can be said to have at least two dimensions, the room and the atmosphere. These two dimensions need to support each other. The room can design for this, but can you do it with the mood too?
Creative work is often recommended to be faciliterat of some third person, ie. a person who is more interested in managing the process than to contribute to the content. The person can be someone outside the company or organization, but also any outside group that does not have equal ownership and responsibility for the group's work. As a facilitator, it is an advantage to have practiced the ability to see and feel in the group both working and working, but the facilitator also needs supporting approaches that propose to achieve the level of activity that you want from the group.
Evaluation of Radical Innovation Workshop (RIW), ie. a workshop format for idea creation, identified that there are lots of creative methods in industry, but they do not fit together. This pointed to a need for a framework, a form of process thinking, which is aimed at practitioners.
The methods from RIW package was therefore in terms of FUNC 3, an acronym for Fun, Unique, Novel, Collaborative, Creative and Crazy, a framework for creating innovative facilitated workshops. The framework for FUNC 3 consists of three steps:
- Now: is a situation analysis that includes the intended users / customers' problem situation - a deep dive into their perspective simply.
- Wow: that's a vision that includes expressing the impossible, it can only dare to dream of - a world where everything is possible simply.
- How: bridging the current state and future vision by examining how to get there - a plan for the solution simply.
Each step includes three creative approaches to activity the purpose, three step x three methods are nine methods to choose from for a workshop. Since there are over 40 different methods (both proprietary and others) to apply, you can create countless variations of a FUNC third You can adjust the time for each step / method so that the workshop can be anywhere from one hour to two days long, which makes several iterations between now-wow-how. That way you can quickly get an alternative image or a deep and detailed understanding of the problem. During the now-wow-how participants should follow the instructions method, generally you get over those not comment, question or defend ideas and thoughts, either their own or others. This is because such a procedure every time without exception creates a bad atmosphere.
The result is thus a method which takes into account the current situation and then make room for dreams and visions and allow engineers to act and come up with ideas based on these. The important thing is not to feel inhibited and to let the thoughts run wild in a permissive environment. When you have formulated the dreams and visions, you move on to how to practically move forward in the process. The method is diverging and converging, and thus acquire the group together with an overview of what has been learned. The process is structured according to the different stages and one of the keys is to linger at the crossings, and not to rush into the next.
FUNC 3 is implemented in Innovation Factories, Innovation Pilots and performed on behalf of other companies.
Business training in creative methods
Innovation pilots 2013
Publication: A deep dive into creative thinking: the now-wow-how framework
Ericson, Å.&Törlind, P.2013 Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design 2013 (ICED 2013).
FUNC3 material
Here is the material for conducting a FUNC3 Workshop.
Knowledge Enabled Engineering Guidelines
Why?
We all need guidance in our lives! Knowledge Enabled Engineering is not as simple as purchasing a system, or following a process, there are nuances and differences in organisations that must be taken into account.
It is important to understand the nature of collaborative working and decision-making within a supply chain environment, team dynamics, and why collaboration is often difficult to achieve by technology alone. To enable organisations to consider these aspects and embed good working practices, a set of guidelines have been produced.
How?
The KEE Guidelines are good practice aids, allowing adaptation of processes, behaviours and the approach or organisations take to better facilitate Knowledge Enabled Engineering. The guidelines focus on four aspects:
- How to collaborate and the role of collaborative knowledge sharing platforms
- How to learn lessons across the supply chain boundaries
- How to assess, review and improve supply chain relationships to support effective working
- How to assess the maturity of information through a gated process
Key Benefits
- Improved knowledge sharing across the extended enterprise, projects, and teams
- To support collaborative teams within an extended enterprise through the life of a project
- To use technology more effectively to support knowledge sharing and collaboration
- Mitigate knowledge loss by documenting key experience and background knowledge
- To mitigate the risks of working in a dispersed way within multi-disciplinary, multi-culture, multilanguage, multi-organisation working groups
- Higher quality processes due to a maturity based gated process
The following four guidelines are available with documentation on this page:
- Lesson Learnt (Methodology, TRL 5)
- Knowledge Sharing Guideline (Guideline, TRL 5)
- Relationship Evaluation Tool (Methodology, TRL 5)
- Gated Maturity Process (Methodology, TRL 5)
Tiger Teams
True to its name, the Tiger Team [1] approach is a powerful way of composing a special, multidisciplinary task force to rapidly solve a problem. The tiger teams aim to reach true collaboration, where diversity and competences of the whole team can be utilized and where team members can think together by using fragments of other’s ideas, gestures and drawings to create new ideas rather then merely exchange information or opinions and divide work.
The Tiger Team approach introduces a new way of working where academia and industry focus on jointly solving a specific research problem in a rapid response environment by refer to, for example, running an industry demonstrator together.
A movie (Sneakers) in 1992 made the term ‘tiger team’ known in the context of hackers breaking through computer security, not with the intention to steal data, but to highlight weaknesses of the computer system [2]. To make the system owner aware of the trespass, the hackers left evidence of their activities, a note, a message etc. Eventually, tiger teams were hired by organizations to check up the computer security, so tiger teams are also hackers that provide data-penetration services (ibid.). The group process of a tiger team in these services might be similar to what we are aiming for; however, the purpose to apply a Tiger Team approach is completely different.
Another application of a namesake to tiger teams which relates to the idea of a specialized group performing a specific task is Cheetah teams [3]. The task for a Cheetah team is to solve unexpected problems that are threatening to delay or disturb a running project. A Cheetah team consists of a few selected people separate from the product development team (ibid.). The Cheetah team takes out the problem from the ordinary activities, thus they can focus their efforts on solving the problem and, by the same token, avoid disruptions in the running product development project (ibid.). Some factors that characterize a Cheetah team are that the team is always ad hoc, initiated for a specific mission and is dissolved when it has solved the problem (ibid.).
The inspiration for our Tiger Team approach stems from a context of concurrent engineering, i.e., The Dapra Initiative on Concurrent Engineering [4]. The approach was seeking to “…stimulate small-team interactions among people in large, dispersed organizations.”(ibid., p.26). The aim was to enable similar freedom of interaction and information exchange among these people as in a small team working in the same room (ibid.). The structure in this way of working emphasized instant communication with each other, accessing, sharing and storing up-to-date information in a transparent way (ibid.). A tiger team is “… distinguished by both a high level of coordination and a deep interpersonal dialog among the members.” [5]. It is important that the members of a tiger team feel free to say what they think and that every member participates in a committed way. The physical place for a tiger team is, in some cases, suggested to be an informal living room, since such environment works better than a traditional conference room (ibid.).
Tiger teams are not work groups. Information exchange and coordination are typical activities for a work group, e.g., a traditional staff meeting [5]. A tiger team meeting is different from informative meetings. To be productive, such meetings insist on also facilitating a social process.
Working in a Tiger Team
The selection of participants in interdisciplinary tiger team groups is important. A tiger team must include people providing ownership and motivation to accomplish results, as well as providing integration of a diverse set of outside expertise to the mainstream project team Pavlak]. To be able to make all participants’ available information and knowledge explicit, all members must be given the opportunity to speak in meetings. The restricted air time must not be consumed by a few people [6]. Therefore, creating a climate for rich dialogues are critical. A problematic situation is that people holding different competences and interests also speak different languages [7].
Certain ground rules are suggested to provide team building, for example, listen for newness, staying loose until rigorous conditions count, questioning for understanding only [5]. Creativity is part of the Tiger Team work. Purposeful leadership is an essential part of effective tiger teams; one reason that these teams are rare is that the leadership style is difficult to implement (ibid.). In a tiger team, both content and process has to be managed; this requires a split leadership (ibid.).
References
- Ashley, S. (1992). DARPA Initiative in Concurrent Engineering. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Mechanical Engineering-CIME; April 01
- Steffora, A., Creek., M. (1994). Hacking goes legit. Industry Week, 28 (3), 43-45.
- Engwall, M., Svensson, C. (2001). Cheetah teams. Harvard Business Review, 79 (2), 20-21.
- Reddy, R., Wood, R.T., Cleetus, K.J., (1991). The Dapra Initiative: encouraging new industrial practises. IEEE Spectrum, July, 26-30.
- Pavlak, A. (2004). Project troubleshooting: tiger teams for reactive risk management. Project Management Journal, 35 (4), 5-14.
- Ottenheijm, S. van Genuchten, M., Geurts, J. (1998). What’s the problem? In Proceedings of the 31th Hawaii International Conference on Systems Science, IEEE, January, 555-565.
- Bucciarelli, L.L. (2002). Between thought and object in engineering design. Design Studies, 23 (3), 219-231.
Radical Innovation Workshop – RIW
The main idea with Radical Innovation Workshops is that:
- We can foster radical innovation by bringing diverse group of experts together
- We can reach true collaboration and utilize the full potential of the gathered team
- We can realize new, and innovative, solutions using a core team
Radical Innovation Workshop Process
- The RIW process has some main components, but is adopted to the actual context of the task at hand for the innovation team. The RIW consists of the main phases:
- Teambuilding exercise
- Be comfortable with the team and the facilitators
- Team challenge exercise
- Reduce “protective shield” in group work
- Prepare work together
- Workshop
- The actual work
- Choice of methods and tools according to context
- Post-workshop follow-up
- Documentation, analysis etc.
- For the team to use according to chosen strategy
- Teambuilding exercise
- The RIW process has some main components, but is adopted to the actual context of the task at hand for the innovation team. The RIW consists of the main phases:
Scenario based design
Scenario Based Design is an approach chosen for its high potential in putting, and keeping, users at the centre of product development. Scenarios are concrete descriptions of the work activities that a product or service is intended to support, but they are also very flexible, to allow designers to also devise products and services that are highly innovative and which addresses future ways of conducting collaborative work.
Scenarios are used to provoke questions and “what if” discussions in relation to revised or completely new design proposals, and they are written in a natural language so that particular problem situations can easily be understood by all stakeholders in the development project. It is important to note that these scenarios have not developed from thin air; they are based on thorough fieldwork on collaborative design teams in both industrial and educational projects.
Participatory Product Innovation - P²I
Participatory Product Innovation (P²I) is a need-driven approach to creative product development. It can be viewed as a hybrid of the systematic properties of integrated product development [1] and the creative properties of the “IDEO way” [2], with a solid base in needfinding approaches to design [3],[4]. The approach encourages designers and engineers to interact directly with users to gain insights into the customer domain.
1. K.T. Ulrich & S.D. Eppinger, Product design and development (USA; McGraw-Hill, 2000).
2. T. Kelley, The art of innovation. Lessons in creativity from IDEO, America’s leading design firm (USA; Currency and Doubleday, 2001)
3. D. Patnaik & R. Becker, Needfinding: The Why and How of Uncovering People’s Needs, Design Management Journal, 10 (2), 1999, 37-43.
4. R. Faste, Perceiving Needs. SAE Future Transportation Technology Conference and Exposition, Society of Automotive Engineers, Inc., Seattle, Washington, USA, 1987, 419-423.
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