Radical Innovation: a new approach to creative product development at AB Sandvik Coromant

B A C H E L O R ' S T H E S I S

Radical Innovation

A new approach to creative product

development at AB Sandvik Coromant

Jonas Almkvist

Luleå University of Technology

BSc Programmes in Engineering Arena innovative technology and business

Department of Applied Physics and Mechanical Engineering Division of Functional Product Development

Preface

This thesis is the final project conducted in my education programme Arena Innovative technology and Business at Luleå University of Technology (LTU). The project has been performed in collaboration with AB Sandvik Coromant and the division of Functional Product Development (FPD) at LTU during the time period of October 2008 until March 2009.

The thesis has been a great opportunity to evolve my personal skills in creative product development in context of team based innovation. The work has been an enjoyable experience and rewarding from start to finish through great collaboration with people from both AB Sandvik Coromant and Luleå University of Technology.

I would like to thank all people within the division of Functional Product Development at LTU, your help, trust, knowledge and positive enthusiasm is always inspiring in moments of frustration.

Thanks to the students within the 2009 Sandvik Team for your attendance and participation in the Radical Innovation Workshop.

Special thanks to my supervisors Peter Törlind and Åsa Ericson (LTU) and Vahid Kalhori (Sandvik Coromant) for your never-ending help, support, and guidance through the thesis work.

Last but not least, thanks to my family and friends for your support during my education.

Thank you!

Jonas Almkvist Luleå 2009-03-01

Abstract

The goal of the thesis is to evaluate research findings of a new and highly creative methodology in the context of creative product development - Radical Innovation (RI). Radical Innovation is a methodology that contains creative tools and methods for team based innovation and are the result from research in the Faste Collaboratory in the domain of creative product development which contains areas of how to utilize multidisciplinary teams efficiently in creative workshops with the goal of creating innovative products. The thesis has been performed in collaboration with AB Sandvik Coromant and the division of Functional Product Development at LTU.

The thesis evaluates two Radical Innovation Workshops. One of the RIW was done within the scope of this thesis. These RIW:s differed in terms of; team composition, the problem/challenge to solve, and in what project phase they where performed. The first RIW was performed in the projects start up phase during a time period of 2 days, whilst the second RIW was performed after 3 weeks time in the concept design phase, meaning that there was already performed several idea and concept sessions within the team. The performed RIW:s has been evaluated through questionnaires containing different questions to find out pros and cons about the methodology Radical Innovations compared to the present work with idea and concept build up.

With experience from the performed workshops and the results from the evaluating questionnaires there have been developed a five step process called, The RIW-process, which describes how a Radical Innovation Workshop can be performed. Together with The RIW-process, it is also suggested, and stated an example on how the methodology of Radical Innovation can be used continuously in a product development process.

Keywords

Product development, Innovation, Radical Innovation, Team based Innovation, Creative methods, Design Thinking.

Content

1.3 SANDVIK COROMANT – THE COMPANY... 13

1.4 HOW NEW PRODUCTS ARE MADE... 14

1.5 INCREMENTAL INNOVATION VS.RADICAL INNOVATION... 15

2 METHOD... 16

3 LITERATURE STUDY ... 17

3.1 DESIGN THINKING... 17

3.2 TEAMS... 18

3.2.1 Tiger teams ... 18

3.2.2 Core teams / Extended teams ... 18

3.2.3 Users... 19

3.2.4 Diversity... 19

3.3 RADICAL INNOVATION CAPABILITY... 21

3.3.1 Capability ... 21

3.3.2 Organizations... 22

3.3.3 Cultures ... 22

3.4 FACILITATION... 23

3.4.1 What? Where? When? Who? Why? and How? ... 23

4 RADICAL INNOVATION ... 25

4.1 THE RIW PROCESS... 25

4.1.1 Workshop-Analyze ... 26

4.1.2 Workshop-Preparation... 26

4.2 RADICAL INNOVATION WORKSHOP... 27

4.2.1 Workshop Review... 28

4.2.2 Workshop Documentation ... 28

4.3 TOOLS AND METHODS... 29

4.3.1 X-Functional Knowledge Creation... 29

4.3.2 X-Functional Knowledge Sharing ... 29

5 RESULT... 30

5.1 RADICAL INNOVATION WORKSHOP 2009-01-22... 30

5.1.1 Pre-Workshop Analyze... 30

5.1.2 Team Sandvik SIRIUS ... 31

5.1.3 Introduction of RIW ... 31

5.1.4 Starter/Team building Exercise – The Charades... 32

5.1.5 Rules of the Game - how to behave in a RIW ... 32

5.1.6 SOLUTION INDEPENDENCE... 33

5.1.7 KANO: user satisfaction ... 34

5.1.8 Break... 36

5.1.9 VOTING DOTS ... 37

5.1.10 NEEDS BREAKDOWN ... 38

5.1.11 PIPE DREAM ... 40

5.1.12 Team Exercise, Build your Best Concept ... 42

5.1.13 SWEETSPOTS – WEAKSPOTS... 44

5.1.14 Why didn’t I think of that?... 45

5.1.15 Parked issues ... 45 5.1.16 Uncovered Ideas ... 45 6 EVALUATION... 46 6.1 QUESTIONNAIRE... 46 6.1.1 Feeling ... 47 6.1.2 Difference ... 48 6.1.3 Sweetspots / Weakspots... 49 6.1.4 I Like…. I Wish…. ... 50

7.1 WHAT MAKES A NEW METHODOLOGY LIKE RIW SUCCESSFUL?... 51

7.2 MEASURING EFFECTIVENESS OF DIFFERENT TOOLS AND METHODS... 51

7.3 ONE WAY TO USE RADICAL INNOVATION... 51

7.4 IMPLICATIONS AND FUTURE WORK... 53

Readers Guide

The first chapter introduces the reader with the concept of Radical Innovation. It is attended for those who wish to get a basic understanding of the subject Radical Innovation and how it is used as an effective methodology in modern product development.

Chapter 2, Method

Contains a description on how the thesis work has been performed. Chapter 3, Literature Study

The chapter describes relevant topics from literature for the thesis work such as Design Thinking, Tiger Teams for creative (team-based) innovation, Companies adaption within organisations and cultures, and what kind of functions a facilitator has in context of Radical Innovation.

Chapter 4, Radical Innovation

The chapter describes the methodology Radical Innovation. What is Radical Innovation? How is it used? How does a Radical Innovation process look like? The information is presented as general information as well as an explicit five step process in how to analyse, prepare, perform, review, and document a Radical Innovation Workshop Process.

Chapter 5, Result

This chapter contains the results from the second Radical Innovation Workshop and is visualized in a Mind-map format that shows what type of work that is performed, how it is performed, explicit method used, and finally the result of each different step in the RIW process.

Chapter 6, Evaluation

This chapter contains the results from the evaluation of the two different Radical Innovation Workshops and contains reflections from the participant’s as well as the facilitator notes from the work with different creative tools and methods. The chapter describes the difference between the present, by the time of this thesis, Idea/Concept development at AB Sandvik Coromant and the new and highly creative methodology Radical Innovation.

Chapter 7, Conclusion and Discussion

The chapter presents the conclusions from the work in order to find out how a new and highly creative methodology can be implemented in an already defined product development process. The author also presents reflections about Radical Innovation, its usage in idea and concept development and how creative methods could be used continuous in a product development process.

1

Introduction

There is no secret any longer, the world is changing rapidly. Imagine a situation where you and your company is in the competition of other emerging businesses, the playing field is in rapid movement, and the customers have multiple choices to fulfil their needs. There is no time to feel comfortable. What would you do? How would you solve the problem?

Radical Innovation is described in general terms as; ”the commercialization of products and technologies that have strong impact on; 1) the market, in terms of offering wholly new benefits, and; 2) the firm, in terms of its ability to create new businesses” [1] (p.24). This is also the basic idea behind the methodology named Radical Innovations “Faste Laboratory, Work package 1.1, Internal deliverable 2“ (WP1.1-D002). In this thesis, the name Radical Innovation is referred to the methodology of Radical Innovations that is developed by researchers within the FASTE laboratory a VINN-Excellence Center for Functional Product Innovation at LTU. The methodology of Radical Innovation is highly creative with numerous tools and methods designed for innovative product development to be performed by multidisciplinary teams. The methods are designed to attack and explore problems, needs, and opportunities with a creative and diverse approach towards the goal of finding novel solutions together with different evaluation tools in a quick and collaborative manner.

The need for new products to be designed and brought to market in a quicker pace is increasing in parallel with user’s gradually higher demands and awareness of needs. There is not always enough to optimize and perform incremental changes to existing products in order to stay ahead of competition, every now and then a company needs to develop and launch products and services that delivers new benefits for the market and the firm. It is at this point new tools and methods for creative product development come to true potential, novel ideas, concepts, and products needs novel ways of approaching product development. In the perspective of a company’s ability to design, build, and launch radical innovations and doing so repeatedly in an iterative manner there is a direct need for using a creative process in the product development process. Different stages and gates are to be carried out in a well defined product development process, but the real question is; where in the process, and in what phases should the company put more time and effort to continue to be an effective leader in their world market? Work is most often thought of as the process of actually doing something hands on and practical, the implementation/realization phase, but if there just was a little more time spent in the early phases (the thinking phases) the whole design process could be more successful and shorter in time, figure 1.

1.1

Background

The methodology Radical Innovations is a toolkit for the use of creative tools and methods in context of team based innovation with focus on development of already existing-, as well as, new and novel products. The toolkit is the result of several years of research performed at the Faste Collaboratory at LTU. The research had until the start of this thesis mainly been focused on the development of the workshop format, the tools, methods, facilitation and material to facilitate the process.

The goal of this thesis is to evaluate these research findings and propose how the creative methodology can be implemented into the existing product development process at the company of AB Sandvik Coromant.

With the customers increasing demands, the companies are forced to perform better in their process of designing new products and see this as an opportunity to continue to be best-in-class. Figure 2 shows how the methodology can be used to find new emerging technologies in order to meet present and future customer’s needs.

Figure 2. S-curves approach to find emerging technologies through Radical Innovation

T e c h n o lo g y Time Present Present Present Present Innovation Optimization Present Technology Emerging Technology

1.2

What is…

What do we mean when we use words like; idea, invention, and innovation? For a better understanding of the meaning and difference between some of the expressions thrown around in daily life and in this thesis, there has been collected some general definitions of the most common words.

1.2.1

..an Idea?

One example of the definition of an idea is:

An idea is a form, such as a thought, formed by consciousness (including mind) through the process of ideation [3].

Another example is given by the Swedish creativity lecturer Fredrik Härén.

“An idea is the same thing as when a human being takes at least two previously known things and pairs them up in a new way. This automatically mean that it doesn’t exist any “new” ideas, instead, every idea that pops-up is a result of something already known”[4]

1.2.2

..an Invention?

One example of the term invention is stated;

An invention is a new technical device or discovery, that has been documented in order to exist (e.g. as patent). Everything that is accepted by people and isn’t from nature, is inventions. An invention doesn’t have to come into practical use [5].

1.2.3

..an Innovation?

The word innovation origins from the Latin expression innovare; which means renewal. One definition of the term Innovation:

An innovation is something that people actually use. An innovation is the result (the outcome) from a innovation-process, but doesn’t have to be an touchable object, an innovation can just as well be a service, a new philosophy, or a new approach of doing something [6].

An invention and innovation are therefore not the same thing, the differences are in what way they get received by people, and if they come to practical use or not.

In context of this thesis and the operation mode of Radical Innovations the word Innovation is referred to the creative process that goes from a defined problem, need, or opportunity to the creation of ideas and concepts that satisfy these problems, needs, and opportunities in ways that offers new values to both the market/customers and the company using it.

1.3

Sandvik Coromant – the company

Sandvik Group is a high technology engineering company with interest in the global world of manufacturing industry. AB Sandvik Coromant is one of Sandvik Groups strategic business areas and is specialized in cutting tools for manufacturing industry. AB Sandvik Coromant is the worlds leading company in the area of cutting tools for manufacturing industry and is entitled to a product scope of about 25 000 products.

The company is more to the customers than just the hardware products, they have realized the fact that they are selling benefits instead of hardware and therefore deliver complete service-systems including knowledge and software to their customers. There way of deliver a system instead of just the hardware makes them unique in their area of business [7].

Figure 3. Cutting tools from Sandvik Coromant

The company has 7500 employees which are represented in over 130 countries worldwide, they also have about 20 well-equipped productivity centers where their customers can learn about tooling solutions for their own progression in productivity, so called value added training.

Their product development is focused on technical research and development in collaboration with their customers, which ultimately drives their products to be more effective. All this is a benefit for their customers who end up being more effective for each product delivered by AB Sandvik Coromant [Ibid].

1.4

How new products are made

Figure 4 shows a general way which products once used to be, and in some cases still are, developed in a process that is referred to as “over the wall” engineering. The context is that people used to work separated in different divisions and in scattered organizations, and during the development process, very important information like the basic need which the product should solve, where often lost in process.

Figure 4. Visual presentation of "over the wall" engineering [8].

The shown process provides an inefficient product development process that may end in products that aren’t designed for the particular problem and need. Törlind argued that one future challenge is to enable teams collaborate, despite of their location, competence, and background.

One challenge is the development of tools and methods that support true collaboration within global design teams, where diversity and competences of the whole team can be utilized and where team members can think together rather then merely exchange information, opinions and divide work [9] (p.11)

The process should for that reason be performed in an iterative manner by multidisciplinary teams, with different professions, backgrounds, education, containing diverse knowledge and therefore multiple perspectives which are more likely to succeed in meeting the wishes, demands, and needs of customers.

1.5

Incremental Innovation vs. Radical Innovation

Product development can be roughly divided in two different categories, Incremental Innovation and Radical Innovation. The main difference is their individual approaches to product development. Incremental innovation is an optimizing approach, like for example simulation and modeling, that can be used with great success in the case of small improvements of already existing products; a general example of an Incremental innovation is the development of a “White-board” instead of using a “Chalk-board” to write on, it surely is a new product but not revolutionary and definitely not changing the behavior of the users and offerings in terms of market and companies. Companies are in general really good at their area of products and services, and consequently also good at performing small improvements (Incremental innovations) to their products and services.

This could be compared with Radical Innovation, often conducted by creative methods within teams, which is seeking to drive the development process towards products that offers wholly new benefits for both the market and the companies. Radical Innovation is often changing the behavior of the companies and users in larger terms than Incremental Innovation, a general example of a Radical Innovation is the previous step, the innovation, of the above named “chalkboard” that changed the whole social structure within a classroom and enhanced the teaching towards the whole class instead of teaching/learning individually [10]. Another example is the introduction of scientific calculators which ended up with closing down big companies, like the Swedish company FACIT [11], and complete industries when the “old” knowledge of how to produce analog/mechanical calculators went useless.

There is though, very important to remember that no innovation is greater then the actual added value it can deliver, so you might see the case as you need to evolve every Radical Innovation with Incremental Innovations, that is small improvements, to keep the product deliver added value to its users for several years to come [12]. A visual description of the two approaches to innovation is shown in figure 5.

Figure 5. Incremental vs. Radical approaches to innovation

Incremental Innovation Radical Innovation

A d d e d V a lu e A d d e d V a lu e

2

Method

The main work during this thesis has been focused on preparing, performing, evaluating, and analyzing Radical Innovation Workshops in order to find ways to implement the methodology into Sandvik Coromant AB and their product development process.

A literature study was performed within the areas of Design Thinking, Tiger Teams, Innovation capabilities, and Facilitation, this to achieve knowledge about the different functions within the methodology of Radical Innovation.

In order to attain further knowledge and experience in the area of Radical Innovation there have been performed two Radical Innovation Workshops. The first RIW was prepared, performed and facilitated, completely separated from the thesis work, by Andreas Larsson and Peter Törlind from the division of Functional Product Development (LTU) together with a Tiger Team from AB Sandvik Coromant during three days at Högbo Bruk located a few kilometers outside the company of AB Sandvik Coromant. The second RIW where prepared, performed and facilitated by the author, Jonas Almkvist together with a team of students, the Sandvik Sirius team in a graduate course at LTU.

The results from these RIW are listed in two separate workshop documentations, where the document from the Workshop at Högbo Bruk October 10-12 2007, [13] is not presented in this report due confidentially issues. This workshop was evaluated by interviews with the facilitators and a questionnaire that was sent out to the participants. The evaluation set the foundation to build a five step process that describes how a Radical Innovation Workshop can be performed by answering a few key questions to each phase. This RIW-process worked as the base for the second Radical Innovation Workshop that was performed in 2009/01/22 at LTU.

The resulting document from the second RIW performed 2009-01-22 at LTU is presented in chapter 5 and summarized in a Mindmap-format to achieve a visual and holistic description of the Radical Innovation process, the tools and methods used and the result from each method, see appendices.

After each RIW there have been performed questionnaires with the participants from each team which has worked as the base of the final evaluation and analysis of the methodology Radical Innovation.

3

Literature study

Literature studies has been performed with the aim of increasing knowledge in the area of evaluation and implementation of Radical Innovation, the contexts of the given area is mainly about Design Thinking, Diverse Team Collaboration, Radical Innovation Competency, Organizational Structure, Company Cultures, and Facilitation of different teams in the scope of creative product development.

3.1

Design Thinking

In context of radical innovation, one of the most important factors to the success rate of delivering new products and services lay in the mindset of the people involved in the process of designing new products.

“The lightbulb is most often thought of as Tomas Edison’s signature invention, but Edison understood that the bulb was little more than a parlor trick without a system of electric power generation and transmission to make it truly useful. So he created that, too.”[14] (p.85).

This is just one example of many, which imbues the importance of a big-picture thinking of innovation and contributes to a thorough understanding of what people want, what they need, what they like, about how the products are designed, manufactured, maintained, sold, and how service is delivered, and also why it is so through direct observation/interaction with customers and users.

An open mind and a holistic approach are important in terms of developing new products and services. The ‘Design Thinking’ mindset is something worth striving for in terms of the people involved in designing new products. To achieve this mindset, it is important that people increase their knowledge about why different creative methods are used, the rationale behind them, and also are open to accept new ways of developing new products and services. Tim Brown, CEO of the American design company IDEO [15] listed five qualities which a design thinker should possess in his/hers personality profile:

Empathy

They can imagine the world from multiple perspectives – those of colleagues, clients, end users, and customers (current and perspective). By taking a ”people first” approach, design thinkers can imagine solutions that are inherently desirable and meet explicitly or latent needs. Great design thinkers observe the world in a minute perspective. They notice things that others do not and use their insights to inspire innovation.

Integrative thinking

They only not rely on analytical processes(those that produce either/or choices) but also exhibit the ability to see all of the salient – and sometimes the contradictory – aspects of confounding problem and create novel solutions that go beyond and dramatically improve on existing alternatives.

Optimism

They assume that no matter how challenging the constraints of a given problem, at least one potential solution are better than the existing alternatives.

Experimentalism

Significant innovations don’t come from incremental tweaks. Design thinkers pose questions and explore problems in creative ways that proceed in entirely new directions.

Collaboration

The increasingly complexity of products, services, and experiences has replaced the myth of lone genius with the reality of the enthusiastic interdisciplinary collaborator. The best design thinker’s don’t simply work alongside other disciplines; many of them have significant experience in more than one. (Brown 2008 p. 87)

3.2

Teams

Today’s product development consists of multidisciplinary problem solving which sets the needs for problem solving activities performed by multidisciplinary teams. The most basic ground rule for using teams in product development is that “more is better”, but there are something else too it than just the quantity of brain capacity.

3.2.1

Tiger teams

The products and services which are to be developed for tomorrow are at a higher complexity level than yesterday’s products and services. These high complexity problems are in the need of high-performance teams utilized by a diversity of individuals with multidisciplinary knowledge with the purpose to bring out multiple perspectives to the problem and work to come. The individuals are often gathered from a company’s different divisions such as Marketing, Manufacturing, Materials, Product Development, and Sales etc., in general from all areas that are involved in the company’s products and services. The idea is to bring diversity into the team, because what happens if everybody see the problem from the same angle?

The term Tiger Team origins from among others the American military industry of defense called DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) [16], which during projects in the late 1980’s tried to implement Concurrent Engineering into the military industry. The overall goal of DARPA was to achieve ”small team interactions among people in large, dispersed organisations” [17] (p.26). The result of this is a multidisciplinary team that is enabled to communicate and share insights, often containing multiple perspectives, in a free, open, and trustful manner in the work of achieving a common goal. This is what the term Tiger Team implies, a high-performance problem solving/product development team.

Pavlak 2004 [18], describes the term Tiger Team from a perspective of reactive risk management, and declares that the purpose of Tiger Teams “is to help project teams to problem-solve” (p.8). The Tiger Team is in this case described as a team which has deep interpersonal trust and is achieving their goals in project troubleshooting through uninhibited constructive conflict. The conclusion is that the Tiger Teams broader knowledge brings clarity to the broad problems to be solved.

To build a high-performance team and manage it to be effective and deliver continuous results, there is a need of some factors to be present. The team and its members should be able to fulfil the characteristics of; Thrust and Respect to each other, manage to handle Uninhibited Constructive Conflict during the problem solving process, declare Commitment and apply Accountability in different tasks, and create acceptance of the problem/need to fulfil the overall goal, that is to share a Common goal [19]

3.2.2

Core teams / Extended teams

The so called Tiger Teams, formed to solve problems and develop new products are often divided into different groups called core-teams and extended teams. The knowledge composition in Core-teams can differentiate depending on company, market, and what

Figure 6. Visualisation of a Core-team, Extended-team and Users

kind of products and services that is to be developed, (e.g. it is more likely that a technology-driven company has more technical knowledge/resources in the core team compared to another type of market and company). The idea is to end up with a multidisciplinary Core-team (often individuals from the company/project in consideration) that is quickly accessible and through its diverse knowledge and company “know-how” can efficiently solve problems occurring in the process of designing new products. Whilst the Extended-team, often composed by individuals from different special areas like; partner companies, consultant firms, and partnering university researchers, is seen as experts and contributes with special knowledge to the Core-team when needed. Core-teams usually remains small enough to meet in conference rooms, while Extended-teams may consist of a few individuals, up to hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, like in the case of developing airplanes [20].

3.2.3

Users

Considering the approach of Design Thinking and taking a holistic approach to product development there is still one more factor that can affect the success of the product and/or service, namely the users. Through user involvement in early phases of innovation there is another dimension of knowledge added. The users often have greater insights and always better product experiences in “real life situations” which gives a better feeling of functionality about the product and its usability, functions, benefits, flaws, and things like assembly and service-issues from an experience-based perspective. By integration of the users into the design process the team and company is given the opportunity to see life, work, problems, and need through the eyes of the users which most probably end up with greater value creating in the products and services. An example of a similar approach is the global search engine company Google’s method called “user experience” [21], containing interactions with users in different ways to collect and understand information, problems, and needs. There is also a better chance for unveiling latent needs that aren’t spoken out in interviews and other methods for the search of needs. The conclusion is; don’t just listen to them, a better way is to integrate them in your design process.

Extended Team

Users Team Leader

Mechanical Electrical Market Purchasing Material Core Team Process Manufacturing Specialists Experts Partners Science R & D

3.2.4

Diversity

What are the elements that make a Tiger Team effective and efficient in terms of creative product development? When performing creative methods with high performance Tiger Teams, there are several features that influence the effectiveness and quality of the ideas generated, as well as, the quality of the discussions that leads to every decision taken. Ottenheijm, Van Genuchten and Geurtz [22] stated that “although teams bring a lot of expertise together, working in teams is not always very productive” (p. 1). Bringing different knowledge, expertise, and people together is not always easy in terms of making quick and qualitative decisions as to the fact that people tends to say things that they believe the rest of the group wants to hear, so called group think occurs.

One of the most important issues with decision making performed by teams is to achieve a shared understanding of the problem situation. This shared understanding is reached through a social process between humans/individuals within the team that shares information and knowledge around a problem area. Or as Ottenheijm et al. (1998) argued;

A shared understanding of the problem situation means a shared understanding of all the available information, value trade-offs and alternatives of the problem (p.2)

The other factor that needs to be fulfilled in order to take effective and efficient decisions is agreement of all the elements that are included in the solution space of the given problem. As Ottenheijm et al. (1998) argued;

Understanding and agreement need to be worked upon to a level where all group members have a shared understanding of the elements of the decision base of the problem and all group members agree on these element (p.3)

This means that the team members needs to understand and respect what everybody else within the team thinks about the problem area, without thinking the same thing. Figure 7 shows how shared understanding and agreement can affect decision making within teams.

Figure 7. Decision making within teams, from Ottenheijm et al. (1998) [23]

Conflict Decide Now

Group Think Uncertainty/ Ambiguity U n d e rs ta n d in g Agreement High Low H ig h L o w

3.3

Radical Innovation Capability

There are in many businesses not enough to only maintain and administrate a certain type of product line and or service portfolio. Every now and then the company should be able to deliver new products and services which bring out wholly new benefits and value to the market, customers and the company itself. Radical innovation capability is a company’s ability to successfully commercialize these kinds of innovations over and over again. So, what does it take for a company to start making these innovations happen, and how can employees, organizations, and company cultures affect these types of creative and innovative campaigns?

3.3.1

Capability for innovation

By looking at companies successful at radical innovations and their capability in making innovation happen there are several factors crucial for success. Collarelli O’ Connor and Ayers [24] found in studies of 12 large companies, which all had on-going experiments in building radical innovation capabilities, that

To have a fully developed Radical Innovation capability, firms find they must manage three sets of activities and ensure that the transition between them is smooth (p.23)

The three activities are; discovery, incubation, and acceleration.

The Discovery phase is about exploring the world for opportunities that can help the company towards new solution-spaces in context of Radical Innovation. The company must manage to recognize opportunities as for example emerging markets and or segments that are starting to grow in some area. Recognition is followed by communication of different opportunities and creation of ideas that would possible contribute to the discovered prospects.

Incubation phase is about evolving the opportunities into business models (hypothesizes) suited for the actual company. The progress is often experimental and focused on both learning the technical aspects as well as the market and its domains. Evolution of business propositions should be compared to the company’s strategic intent simultaneously with testing for both technical aspects and market creation.

In order to commercialize the business propositions there is a need for skills in management of new business concepts. The build of an infrastructure that enables the concept to be commercialized is more about sales forecast, focus on the leading market position and exploitation of the complete business hypothesis; the phase is referred to as Acceleration.

The progress of these three stages should be seamless integrated to a smooth process without hard transitions. The process described above could be compared to a well prepared Radical Innovation Workshop that enables the company to perform creative work in every stage of Discovery, Incubation, and Acceleration in a quick and iterative manner for 2 to 3 days and of course together with traditional ways of making sure the products and services are transitioned to the market according to the company’s strategic intent.

3.3.2

Organizations

The structure and function of a company’s organizations can affect the possibilities to develop and achieve a sustainable innovation function. There is generally common that companies practice some kind of incremental process in their work process for new products and services, but in what way is that linked with the process of radical innovation? O’Reilly and Tushman [25] stated that “established companies can develop radical innovations – and protect their traditional businesses” (p.75). Studies of 35 attempts to launch radical innovations unveiled a much greater success for the companies that separated their organization structure for the incremental and radical innovations. The separation enabled the use of different; development processes, cultures, personnel, and structure, but maintained organizational linkage through senior executive level. Separation of the incremental and radical innovation organizations was very successful and the ambidextrous organizations gained over 90 percent in success rate in achieving the goals. Although the success rate in this study was based on the companies own interpretation of what a radical innovation is, in terms of the goal statement, it is very obvious that a separation from traditional company bureaucracy and process is good for creating products and services that offers radical improvements for a company, this by maintaining the existing product line whilst carrying out products and services that are new to the company and customers.

3.3.3

Cultures

What affect has a company culture to a creative and radical approach to innovation. Many company cultures are traditional in its approach to innovation, traditional in the meaning of their attitude to test and try new ways of developing products and services. For example, many cultures have traditions that “punish” employees for errors and mistakes in their way of work, which eventually ends up in a closed culture that is afraid of trying new things, because of the higher risk it might encounter.

How are creative cultures and environments that nurture innovative, creative thinking accomplished? The first step is to develop an open and curious mindset with the people involved in product development. The mental vision Impossible is nothing [Muhammed Ali, 1965] is something that should imbue the company and its development teams. Adidas sports apparel manufacturer made a progression of the vision and stated;

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing [26]

This clearly defines the mindset. The second achievement is to provide a long-term vision for all development activities, meaning that everything you do is a learning experience that should be shared with others, both the positive and negative ones. Do not punish for failures, instead bring the failures to knowledge and learn from them, it’s just like prototyping, a learning experience. If you punish, the ideas will be rapidly stopped in distribution and that’s why a company culture shouldn’t make credit to critique thinking/thinkers.

and bring them to discussion without the shame of done something wrong. Instead, failing fast and often gives you a long-term competitive advantage to your competition through a continuously increasing knowledge base delivered by trial & error, experimenting, and prototyping your innovations.

3.4

Facilitation

Modern day product development is getting more and more complex in context of the problems to be solved and the needs to be fulfilled. Complex problem solving requires new tools and methods to achieve successful products and services. The tools and methods are often carried out in teams (Tiger Teams), and to provide the process some structure, there is a need for a process leader often referred to as a facilitator. A facilitator is someone who uses knowledge in group process and group dynamics to provide structure and effectiveness to team interactions. The interactions could be anything from simple planning and information sharing meetings to more complex interactions like creative workshops performed to define problems, generate novel ideas and build concepts of new products and services.

3.4.1

What? Where? When? Who? Why? and How?

The idea of using Tiger Teams in product development is to bring diversity into the design process and create multiple perspectives to the problem solving process. The diversity however, is something that needs to be managed by a facilitator in order to keep the process structured and effective. The team is most effective if every individual is left to be focused on the content/context in question, and is provided with a predefined process to evolve the problem and need into novel ideas and concepts. If the diversity is left without structure there is high risk of ending up in messy and conflicting discussion’s that doesn’t bring the content forward or perhaps bring it in numerous directions away from the common goal.

McFadzen [27], stated that”Conflict should never be avoided because it is a natural part of group life”. Instead she argued that “Effective groups learn to use conflict in a positive manner” (p.540) and that is where the role of the facilitator becomes clear. It is through the facilitator’s interventions a balance is maintained between content and process. Interventions are used in order to keep the team on track and focused on content and is mostly undertaken with a positive sense to make the team and its participants feel at ease.

From the viewpoint of Radical Innovations, facilitation is one of the most central parts to make the operation mode successful. Even though there already exists tools and methods for creative product development in the operation mode of Radical Innovations, there is a need for someone to Pre-Analyze the session and define the workshop objectives (also recognised as session desired state), compose a correct mix of knowledge in the Tiger Team, also build and agree upon a holistic agenda together with the client in question. The pre-analyze session helps both the client and facilitator’s to understand the business environment and creates a shared understanding about what is going to take place.

After the pre-analyze is performed there is time for the next step which is the build-up of a RIW-process, Workshop Preparation, meaning the choice of, and order of performance, for the different creative methods that a RIW are characterized by. The choice of methods to each RIW is rarely the same from one RIW to another, because of the different problems, challenges, products/services and complexities in the different cases. But if you describe the process in what kind of methods you perform, instead of how by the explicit method, you can obtain a more specific design of the RIW-process.

When the workshop process is analyzed and prepared, there is time for the actual Radical Innovation Workshop (RIW) to take place. That’s when the facilitator(s) make the official performance by coaching the tiger team towards successful performance in idea/concept development. The facilitator(s) role is not to come up with new ideas and to be an expert in the area of workshop content, instead, the facilitator(s) major role is to use his/hers knowledge in the RIW process, its different tools and methods, and knowledge of team interaction to coach the team in successful collaboration and knowledge sharing between the multidisciplinary members while maintaining valuable team collaboration. The balance is reached through interventions when the team or its individual members is failing to play the game, stay on schedule and maintain momentum in each specific method or when the discussion is moving away from the given process. The actions taken, in form of interventions, should be delivered in a positive way as far as possible to keep an encouraging environment in the team.

After the RIW is performed, there is important to quickly reflect over the performed work and collect the participant’s feelings and reflections about; the process, tools, methods, and facilitation. The stage is referred to as the Workshop Review and is prepared by the facilitator(s) and performed by the participants.

At the end there is a need for a documentation of the work performed in the RIW, its resulting ideas/concepts in addition to analyzes over what can be improved for the next session. This Workshop Documentation is also falling under the responsibility of the facilitators.

4

Radical Innovation

Radical Innovations is a new and highly creative operation mode developed to support team based innovation in context of creative product development. The approach of working together in high-performance Tiger Teams during the use of different creative tools and methods is a modern way to attack and explore opportunities, problems, and needs from a multidisciplinary knowledge base, and by using methods to attack the “problem” from multiple perspectives you create a holistic understanding for the purpose of creating new products. The methodology contains two different method card decks that are designed to support high performance teams within academia, industry, companies and other types of projects in their way of sharing knowledge and create new ideas and concepts. The different tools and methods can be composed into numerous different processes, so called Radical Innovation Workshops that suits diverse needs of innovation. Performing a Radical Innovation Workshop (RIW) process with different tools and methods for creative product development is a modern way of increasing the teams knowledge in the actual area, this is achieved through a process that both increases and decreases the design space in a creative and iterative manner along with the creation of new ideas that is continuously evaluated and further developed into concepts. The RIW process contains different methods that enable the team to widen and narrow the design space in an iterative manner in order to find novel solutions, figure 8.

Figure 8. Divergent and Convergent phases

4.1

The RIW process

The methodology is a structured approach to develop new products and services with the perception of building solutions with wholly new benefits for both market and users from the needs identified before or during the RIW. The operation mode is built by a five step process with its heart in the actual Radical Innovation Workshop that is performed by a high performance tiger team and people that works as process leaders (facilitators). The RIW process can be divided into five different phases that describes how the Radical Innovation Workshop is performed and what kind of work to perform in the different phases as seen in figure 9.

Problem Need Opportunity

Novel-Solutions

Figure 9. The Radical Innovation Process

4.1.1

Workshop-Analysis

The first step in the RIW-process is to analyze the problem, need or whatever the actual client are having problems with. This process phase is designed to be performed by the problem champion/client and the facilitator’s for the RIW. The questions that need to be answered in this phase are:

o Do we understand the business environment?

o Have we stated clear objectives for the workshop (session desired state)? o Is focus directed toward an initial problem definition, stated in a topic? o Have we stated workshop ground rules (session ground rules)? o Is the team (Tiger Team) composed correctly for the workshop? o Have we developed and agreed on a holistic agenda?

After these questions are answered the facilitator(s) should have enough information to continue to next phase (Workshop Preparation) which contains the build up of the RIW-process.

4.1.2

Workshop-Preparation

The second phase is aimed for the facilitator(s) to design the Workshop process by choosing suitable tools, materials and methods for the specific topic. The environment is important in order to reach success in the creative feeling among the participants. The questions to be answered in this phase are:

o Is the workshop-process (included tools and methods) finished?

o Have the participant’s received and understood the preparation exercise to be performed before the workshop? o Has the Physical environment been selected and prepared?

o Do we have suitable workshop material?

In this phase, the facilitator shall choose which methods are suitable.

Workshop Analysis Workshop Preparation RIW Workshop Review Workshop Documentation Workshop Analysis Workshop Preparation RIW Workshop Review Workshop Documentation Workshop Analysis Workshop Preparation RIW Workshop Review Workshop Documentation

Figure 10. The phase of Workshop Analyze

4.1.3

Radical Innovation Workshop

The RIW process should deliver the divergent and convergent phases needed for the team to reach the session desired state, interesting about this phase is the fact that there are no way to know how the exact outcome from the RIW looks like in advance. There are no wrong or right answers in this phase; there is just the team’s ability to perform the methods with their composed knowledge along with the facilitator’s skills in coaching and inspiring the team in the process that determines the specific outcome. A definitive RIW process is difficult to describe because of the dynamics and the from time-to-time different problem, need, opportunity that works as the RIW input. However there are some general factors that a RIW always should contain. The different types of methods are briefly described below.

Teambuilding/starter Exercise

There is always important to start with a method that creates a positive and open mindset within the team. There is also beneficial to let the participants collaborate in this exercise to create the right feeling in the team and kick start the creative feeling.

Shared understanding of the problem – Method

Important in the beginning is to create a shared understanding of what the problem/challenge is in the particular project, and build consensus among the team members.

Divergent Methods

Methods that are designed for widening the design space are called divergent methods and the purpose is to explore the design space in a free (often without constraints) manner.

Convergent Methods

In comparison to divergent methods the convergent methods are designed for decreasing the design space by use of different constraints that could be very different depending on the actual situation. So the convergent methods rationale is the right opposite to divergent methods.

Evaluation/Refining Methods

Whatever idea or concept the team ends up with there is always room for improvement, that’s when the evaluation and refinement methods enter the playing field. The rationale is to evaluate the ideas and concepts in context of one, or a few, parameters, and after identifying spots to improve just iterate some divergent method to make the idea or concept better.

Final Methods

The last methods performed in a RIW should lead to a concrete series of ideas and concepts, or whatever the workshops objectives are, stated in the Pre-workshop analysis.

Workshop Analysis Workshop Preparation RIW Workshop Review Workshop Documentation

4.1.4

Workshop Review

After the workshop is finished there is really important to gather reflections from both the participants as well as the client, depending on the situation of the Workshop there may be a need to separate these two reviews in order to successfully develop the Workshop format and the people involved in the process. The questions to be answered in this phase are:

o I like…. I wish….. –format!

o What do you think about the workshop output/outcome?

o What are your feelings about the Workshop-process, its methods and approaches? o What was the contribution from the facilitator(s)?

o How can this workshop improve our way of working in the future? o Did we reach the goals?

o What is your feeling about the timetable? o What was your learning experience?

The outcome should be reflections in form of I like… I wish… statements from all participants in the RIW and aims to continuously improve RI.

4.1.5

Workshop Documentation

The documentation of the workshop is to be performed by the facilitators(s) and should contain everything from short presentations of each one of the participants to the methods used, and the result from them. The questions to be answered in this phase are:

o What have we performed? (E.g. what kinds of methods have been used in the RIW, divergent, convergent, etc.) o Why did we perform that kind of method?

o How did we perform the methods? (E.g. which explicit method has been used in the RIW, Brainstorming, KANO, etc.)

o What was the result from each method performed during the RIW? o Is this visualized in a Mindmap-format?

The result file should summarize the RIW process and the outcome from every used method containing both pictures and listings of ideas. If a more visual overview is wanted from the RIW, it could be composed by a mindmap containing; What kind of methods (Divergent/Convergent), How they where used (the explicit method), and the Result from each method, and a link to the rationale behind the method in the workshop documentation. Workshop Analysis Workshop Preparation RIW Workshop Review Workshop Documentation Workshop Analysis Workshop Preparation RIW Workshop Review Workshop Documentation

Figure 13. The phase of Workshop Review

4.2

Tools and methods

The different tools and methods that are used in RIW:s are collected in two separate method card decks.

4.2.1

X-Functional Knowledge Creation

The first method card deck is called X-Functional Knowledge Creation, and contains about 30 different tools and methods that enables creation of new ideas and challenge the team to thinking outside the box. In this card deck there exist three (3) different types of cards for creative product development, but can beneficially be used in any type of product development project in order to solve a problem or to

iterate or redesign a solution, [WP1.1], figure 15. The different card types are;

INITIATION – Methods to start up a creative session, warm

up exercises and understanding the problem.

IDEATION – Methods for creation of new ideas, concepts and topics

ITERATION – Analyzing solutions, finding advantages, problems and possibilities.

4.2.2

X-Functional Knowledge Sharing

The second method card deck is called X-Functional Knowledge Sharing, and contains 20 different tools and methods developed to find out what the customers really need, and how to effectively communicate these needs across the

organization [28] figure 16. Also this method card deck is composed by three (3) different card types, but the approach is different from the first method card deck. The different card types are;

INSPIRATION – Fresh perspectives on how innovation can be spurred by effective knowledge sharing.

INTERACTION – Methods for interacting with customers and promoting shared understanding in cross-functional work teams.

INTERPRETATION – Analyzing knowledge assets from several viewpoints will help you think outside the box.

Figure 15. Knowledge Creation Deck

5

Result

The documentation that follows is one example of how a workshop documentation can be presented. The documentation contains; What kind of methods used, Why they where used, How they where used (the explicit method), and the Result from the different methods.

5.1

Radical Innovation Workshop 2009-01-22

The following documentation is a result file of the RIW-process, its tools and methods used, and the ideas that was generated during the RIW with the Sandvik Team at Luleå University of Technology 22 of January 2009. The workshop is a good example of the great collaboration between the industrial company of AB Sandvik Coromant and Luleå University of Technology.

The topic for the actual RIW was taken from the challenge that the Sandvik Team was given to the project course called SIRIUS, and was stated as follows:

- development of integrated adjusting device for an indexable drill –

Date: 2009-01-22

Location: Luleå University of Technology

Facilities: Conference-, and Boiler-room at the division of Functional Product Development

Tiger Team: The Sandvik Team 2008/2009:

Rebecca Andersson, Emma Rydh, Mojgan Mohseni, Magnus Persson, Anna Söderlind, Tomas Furucrona, Lu Juan Juan, Per Mattson, figure 17.

Facilitator: Jonas Almkvist

Co-facilitator: Peter Törlind

5.1.1

Pre-Workshop Analyze

The RIW was preceded by an open discussion, a pre-workshop analyze, between the Facilitator and the client, in this case the Sandvik Team. This workshop analysis gave the facilitator a well defined information base about the challenge that the Sandvik Team was assigned, as well as, what the Sandvik Team wished to achieve through the RIW. This is summarised as the workshop objectives, as in this case was a bit unordinary because of the fact that the Sandvik Team already had started their ”concept phase” and had worked with different creative methods for idea/concept generation (traditional brainstorming). This was very interesting because it gave a great opportunity to test and analyze the RIW process

in a later stage in the development process. The pre-workshop analysis provided the goal of; evaluation and further development of already generated ideas, combined with new idea build-up to nurture the design space.

5.1.2

Team Sandvik SIRIUS

The participants of the RIW was the complete group of the Sandvik Team including eight people with different backgrounds and life experiences, the team represents knowledge from industrial economics, mechanical engineering with majors in both construction and production.

Figure 17. The Sandvik Team 2008/2009, Rebecca Andersson, Emma Rydh, Mojgan Mohseni, Magnus Persson, Anna Söderlind, Tomas Furucrona, Lu Juan Juan, Per Mattson

5.1.3

Introduction of RIW

The workshop was introduced by the facilitator, who gave a short description of the methodology RI while explaining the process that was to be performed.

5.1.4

Starter/Team building Exercise – The Charades

To accomplish the right atmosphere in the team and to build an open/creative mental environment in each participant the session started out with a starter exercise by using the game of Charades. The Sandvik Team was thrown into this exercise right at the beginning of the RIW. The participants paired up in teams of two and got to pick a sentence (which was prepared by the facilitator) and step out of the room for a 30 seconds preparation together. The rules were very simple,”you are not allowed to speak or write the sentence but must convey it to the others, special effects are allowed”. The goal of the game was to get the other team members to say the sentence. Each team of two people only got a time limit of two minutes, and that was well enough for most of the sentences to be explained.

Figure 19. The participants acting out the charades

This exercise turned out great and the team showed great engagement and commitment to the task, they all seemed to have a lot of fun; perhaps it was the winning prize of candy that nurtured the session.

5.1.5

Rules of the Game - how to behave in a RIW

There is a direct need for some Rules of the Game when performing a RIW, all participants must function as a team in parallel with their individual contribution of multidisciplinary knowledge sharing to the rest of the team while performing the different methods. This is maintained by rules that encourage the participants to be present and play the game, along with other similar Brainstorming rules to keep the team creative during the RIW process.

The method of Parked Issues was also presented at this stage, and the rationale behind the method is to ”save” some of the best ideas that come up during the session but lacks the time to deal with them at the time of the RIW.

Figure 21. Parked Issues Figure 20. Rules Of The Game

5.1.6

SOLUTION INDEPENDENCE

The first method to be performed on the subject ”development of integrated adjusting device for an indexable drill”, was Solution Independence. The idea with the method is to open up the design space (divergent phase) through focus on properties, functions, characteristics and behaviours of the future product instead of thinking solutions, figure 22.

Thinking what the product should do instead of how it should do it is key to maintain an open solution space during the different creative methods.

The team started out great by generating approximately 60 different properties, functions, characteristics, and behaviours that they strongly believed the future product should satisfy, by doing this well they showed their ability to step out of the ”solution-thinking” which often occur when performing creative methods.

Some of the generated functions, listed without importance to each other, for full list of functions see appendix 1:

o Good-looking o Recycable

o Adjustment last 1000 holes o Ratio

o Scale and measure in the drill o User friendly

o Adjustment while in machine o Clearly and apparent adjustment

o Adjustment without tools o Safe

o Robust adjusting mechanism o Easy to understand

o Automization o Qualitative adjustment

o Product name o Good balance

o Stable o Visual information

o Same operation – different drills o Hard to do wrong

o Feedback from tool/adjustment o Easy to measure and adjust

o Simple o Few parts

o Few steps o Robust

o Precision o Sustainable

o Nice to touch o High productivity

o Easy to manufacture o Ergonomic adjustment operation

o Standard: fit all o Impossible to assemble the wrong way

5.1.7

KANO: user satisfaction

The method called KANO: user satisfaction is a visual tool that is used to create a better and mutual understanding of the importance of the previously generated properties, functions, characteristics, and behaviours of the product in context of the users. The result of the method is to find out if the users are delighted, indifferent or disgusted by different features;

Threshold attributes are those which the end product must have. Having more of them doesn’t make the product more attractive but if any of them are missing it can be very damaging (e.g. if brakes are missing on a car). [i3-Method Cards, Faste Laboratory, Work package 3.2]

Performance attributes are those where more is better (e.g. more horsepower for the same amount of money) [Ibid].

Excitement attributes are those which are unexpected and which might not have to perform very well to make a customer excited (e.g. a car with built-in Wi-Fi access) [Ibid].

By pasting the generated properties, functions, characteristics, and behaviours on the KANO-model you also achieve a voting/rating regarded the importance of each attribute to the user. The method are of convergent character, by the visual rating of the different functions in context of user satisfaction and what kind of features which the end product must satisfy. The KANO-model is visually described as a two-by-two matrix that is also divided by three lines, Threshold attributes, Performance attributes, and Excitement attributes, figure 23.

Figure 24 below shows how the team was rating their previously generated properties, functions, characteristics, and behaviours of there future product in the KANO-model.

Figure 24. The functions rated on the KANO-model

The KANO-model can be a ”tricky” method to perform regarding the dimensions of the attributes involving both user satisfaction and the performance of the product meanwhile considering Threshold attributes, Performance attributes, and Excitement attributes. For example; there seems to be very thin lines between whether the user is indifferent or disgusted by the attribute. But if you keep focused on the Threshold attributes, Performance attributes, and Excitement attributes while still regarding how the different functions are affecting the performance of the product, you still get a nice evaluation of the different functions.

One interesting feature with this method is to find features in the upper left corner that doesn’t affect performance of the product but still satisfies the user, e.g. could be features of usability and or feedback to the user when adjusting the peripheral insert.

How the functions was rated by the team in the KANO-model, for full listing see appendix 2:

Threshold attributes Performance attributes Excitement attributes

Ratio Recycable Easy to measure and adjust

Standard: fit all Precision Measuring rod

Robust Hard to do wrong Automatizing

Few parts Impossible to assemble wrong Direct tolerance on adjustment

Robust Time efficient Easy to adjust

Easy to manufacture Ergonomic adjustment operation Good looking

Nice to touch Product name Adjusment without tools

Stable Efficient Same operation – different drills

Low vibration Few steps for adjustment Feedback from tool/adjustment

Precision Adjustment while in machine 16mm
16mm

Safe Good lifespan Integrated scale and measurement

Simple Tolerance

Good Balance

Adjustment last 1000 holes

Visual Information for settings

Sustainable

A few more functions was also rated in the KANO-model, but failed to make the photography of the KANO-model.

5.1.8

Break

When performing a RIW it is highly important to take breaks, and re-charge the batteries with a traditional ”SWEDISH FIKA”, it is also a great opportunity for everyone to socialize.

5.1.9

VOTING DOTS

After performing the rating of the different functions in the KANO-model, the team performed an importance rating of the functions, properties, characteristics and behaviours, by using the convergent method named Voting Dots. Each participant pasted three (red) Voting Dots on the functions which they personally believed was most important for there future product. (These functions, which the team rated by their individual believe in importance, failed to make the photography of the KANO-model rating, but can instead be seen here in the category list and figure 25 below.)

The rated functions was clustered together in order to create a holistic overview, finally the team ended up with five major categories.

Category 1: o Precision o Stay in shape o Good balance

Category 2:

o Visual information for settings o Easy to measure and adjust o Easy to adjust o Hard to do wrong Category 3: o Sustainable o Few parts o Robust o Good lifespan Category 4: o Time efficient o High productivity o Efficient Category 5: o Safe o Durable o Impossible to do wrong

o Ergonomic adjustment operation