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Stephen Lahanas

National Innovation Strategy

We are in midst of another presidential election cycle and innovation is emerging as one of the issues that may help distinguish the candidates from one another. Both major candidates have acknowledged that the United States is losing its advantage over its economic competitors. This decline encompasses both our current level of innovation as well as our future ability to continue our leadership role in science, technology and business.

While both candidates are addressing the problem, neither has yet presented a fully comprehensive Innovation Strategy for the United States. A comprehensive plan must cover the entire problem space and that tends to encompass the following elements:

• Education
  
• Research & Development (both private and public sector expectations as well as the relationship between them)
• Business Incentives - Tax credits focused on improving US advantages
  
• Start-up Incentives - Might include expansion of programs targeted to small business such as SBIR / STTR (Small Business Innovation Research). This would cover grants, incubators, federal contracts etc.
• Infrastructure Improvements
  
• Public Policy Coordination
• Workforce Development
  
• and then National Goals across a number of target areas - these could be considered challenges as well.

Of the two campaigns, thusfar Sen. Obama has come closest to addressing all of these elements in his Technology & Innovation Plan released late last year. Sen. McCain's Technology plan can be found here. Both campaigns focus on Internet Freedom within their plans, I think that falls under First Amendment rights rather than Innovation strategy, but of course any restrictions on the Internet would impact all other innovation related efforts.

The other thing that I noticed in both plans was the mixing of general themes or elements with specific applications or target areas - for example Healthcare Systems Integration, which is something I happen to be involved with. My concern is that there perhaps needs to be a way to understand what underlying policy needs to be in place to serve all Innovation initiatives and then set goals in target areas separately. Those target areas might include:

• Healthcare Systems Integration
• Cyber Defense
• Energy Technology
• Space Technology & Science
  
• Communications Technology
• Global Climate Technology & Science
• Environmental Technology & Science
• Nanotechnology
• Robotics
• Genetics

and so forth. Personnally I don't feel that emphasizing Free Trade in the context of this particular strategy makes much sense as what we are positing here is precisely how the United States will compete with the rest of the world. The last thing we want to do is position ourselves to lose intellectual property or business opportunities as soon as they are invented here and then exported elsewhere. We cannot become a funnel for ideas or starting point for others to fulfill. Our future as a leader in innovation depends on the ability to realize the full benefits from our discoveries and insights here, at home. This is the one way that we can build momentum and synergy with our domestic economy. Trade comes later...

The most controveersial part of this issue is immigration as it relates to the IT industry. That is a topic that warrants its own post, however I do agree with Sen. Obama's contention that there is not any IT workforce shortage now (and in fact there never has been).

I hope that both the candidates will take another shot at defining this issue before November.


Innovation is not magic, it requires a plan, a strategy...


Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Ideation

This is a new term that has come in vogue over the past several years and one fairly closely aligned with the notion of Innovation engineering. I thought it might be worthwhile to do some comparison and contrast between the two concepts (with the obvious disclaimer up front that I don't believe them to be the same thing).

First let's assess the definitions:

1 - Ideation: and this my take on it, as I somewhat doubt that there is any industry standard view as to what it is just yet. Ideation represents the front-end portion of concept and product development efforts. It is somewhat synonymous with brainstorming but more comprehensive than that. It is an attempt to standardize the creative process early in the initiative stage in order to produce more consistent or agreeable results. It is sometimes loosely coupled with follow-on product development efforts but seldom fully integrated with them. The connection though is why many PLM (product lifecycle management) vendors refer to ideation.

2 - Innovation Engineering: This represents an undercurrent or element within a larger set of lifecycle processes. While there is always a focus on innovation at the front of any endeavor that is not where innovation ends. There is a bit of a dual meaning at play here as well, when we talk of innovation engineering were not only referring to the application of innovative thinking to other problem sets, we are also discussing how to manage the creative process of innovation itself to make it more predictable.

So, we can see that there are some obvious overlaps here, including:

1 - The focus on creative problem solving
2 - The ability to produce more predictable results
3 - The emphasis on applying creative perspectives at the initiation of projects

The differences could be characterized this way:

1 - Ideation is more front-loaded whereas innovation engineering seeks cradle to grave improvements
2 - Innovation engineering is meant to have more of an applied focus
3 - Ultimately, ideation will never provide substantial metrics to determine its effectiveness given its esoteric and usally disconnected nature (i.e. lack of integration into the follow-through efforts)


copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Metaphors for Design

My all time favorite example of the use of metaphor goes back to the middle ages; traveling bards used to present stories and poems to audiences from town to town before the advent of print. This was an interesting variation of storytelling tradition that occurs in most cultures – but what many of the bards did to manage their storytelling experience was construct the story-telling experience out of a metaphor. The metaphor was often imagining a house – and within each room the storyteller would locate an important part of the plot, items within the room would trigger specific details in the retelling. In many ways what this represented was a mental discovery and / or content management application. We’ve all variations of this them today – the most obvious example is what we refer to as a “Chat Room,” but other applications have used the room and structures metaphors for similar functionality.

So why metaphors, what’s the value proposition we’re describing here? A metaphor is generally only useful if it applied as a means to leverage existing knowledge to help facilitate some other action. That action might be story telling or driving heavy equipment, but in most cases the action we’re hoping to facilitate is somewhat complex in nature. So the question is; can someone learn everything they need to know about fulfilling this new complex action in a reasonable timeframe, and if the answer is no, then what exactly can be done to reduce the learning curve? Simply because someone is using a new technology to accomplish a familiar task it doesn’t mean that all aspect of the task need to change also. There are many other benefits to this type of continuity besides a reduction in learning costs; they include:

• Greater likelihood of acceptance and adoption of the capability

• A Greater likelihood that the new capability will be able inter-operate with examples of the old capability still in place elsewhere

• The ability to improve on but maintain process approaches that have proven themselves to be effective.
  

Example

The best example of something I’ve been involved with that is essentially a metaphor is an online magazine or newspaper. Perhaps this was an easy step to take due to the nature of Internet and it’s ability to disseminate information, but the fact of the matter is that it allowed for massive restructuring of the previous business model (including operations such as printing and delivery) without significantly changed the user perception of the capability or product. The biggest difference of course is the lack of paper involved with the Internet versions; however this is something that is being worked out by vendors right now – new delivery interfaces that are nearly as thin as paper and are bendable will be available in the next several years. Along with anti-glare screens this will come fairly close to the hands-on tactile experience of reading a real magazine (and much more efficiently as the device can upload any magazine’s content through wireless connection and is not disposable).

Following the metaphor then, all aspects of content design (including advertising) would approximately the current look and feel of typical magazines. The one area that the current manifestation of the metaphor cannot handle which the new one can is the ability to embed interactivity with other applications. For the interactivity, the only guidepost we have with current publications are written games such as crossword puzzles. In these types of situations though, I think what actually happens though is that we tend to borrow from multiple metaphors to build a new capability. So, the new magazine borrows metaphors from video gaming, broadcasting, old publishing models and B2B web applications to achieve a new type of approach. This is not too different than what has just happened with the new i-Phones.

Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

The Tools of Innovation part 1: Concept Maps

If we wish to view Innovation as something that truly can be reproduced or engineered (at the individual or organizational level), then there must be a set of tools to facilitate those activities, right? It is perhaps hard to imagine what they might be without ever having worked with them and of course that's exactly how I approached the subject just a few years ago.

But I started small and worked my way up and all that while a new breed of tools were being introduced to the market as well. My introduction to this realm was the "Concept Map." Concept mapping tools are akin to Mind Mapping tools but without some of the constraints (in terms of how thought trees are captured and displayed).

The wikipedia definition for Concept Mapping is - Concept mapping is a technique for visualizing the relationships among different concepts. A concept map is a diagram showing the relationships among concepts. Concepts are connected with labeled arrows, in a downward-branching hierarchical structure. The relationship between concepts is articulated in linking phrases, e.g., "gives rise to", "results in", "is required by," or "contributes to".

In other words, the concept map allows you to quickly build, visualize and capture a crude ontology of any concept/idea. The tool that I've been using is freeware, it's the de facto standard - CmapTools. The product is in transition and it is now being sold commercially as well as Ceryph Insight.

What I like about it is the ability to save your designs to XML and if you get the plugin (Cmap Ontology Editor), to save your Concepts Maps as OWL files. So how does one use a Concept Mapping tool? Here's how I do it:

• Step 1: I have it loaded on a laptop and ensure that there is a projector available
• Step 2: I have an agenda of related topics, issues, assumptions or ideas already gathered in bullet point fashion on a sheet, which is either for me or handed out to a group.
• Step 3: Throw it on the chart - basically one begins to place the various elements on a screen and see how they relate to one another or whether they have merit.
• Step 4: Downselect - focus areas are developed and dead-ends are deleted.
• Step 5: Pretty it up - This is where we add some design elements to make the diagram outputs suitable for inclusion on presentations, web sites etc. This is also when you decide what text to add to the connecting arrows...

So what does it look like when you're done, well, it can look like any diagram, here are some examples:


This diagram follows a more traditional concept map portrayal



This diagram looks less like a concept map but can still be saved as XML

Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Linkedin.com Response: Limits to Semantic Web

From Logic to Ontology: The limit of “The Semantic Web” [The problem is we are trying to build an intelligent system to replace our way of thinking, at least in the information search, but the special nature of human mind is the use of time which lets human beings reach a conclusion, therefore does not exist in the human mind the halting problem or stop of calculation. ]

The limitations of the Semantic web relate primarily to the lack of several key constructs that would support the type of automation that is needed to make it work. The standards referenced, OWL & RDF do not provide for a reference architecture nor the actual best practices involved in providing semantic reconcilation (or integration).

The focus on Shared Upper Level Ontologies does not recognize the need for the merger of semantic elements into sets and the possibility of dynamic or context driven ontology. The key thing to keep in mind here is that ontologies are not all written in stone - in other words they represent community and individual perspectives and as such must have the flexbility to evolve. It is also important to recognize that Semantic Integration can and should be applied to the enterprise as well as the Internet.

Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Is there a Cultural Bias behind Innovation?

We'll start with an interesting and perhaps controversial question on the Innovation Engineering Blog - there is a widespread perception that certain cultures are inherently more innovative than others, is this myth or reality? This question strikes to the heart of whether innovation can be instilled, taught or otherwise coaxed from sources where it currently doesn't exist.

The traditional thinking goes that the United States is a leader in Innovation and other markets / regions such as China, Japan or India follow in our footsteps by becoming more effective in application of already existing technologies / innovations. This viewpoint of course only seems to hold water when viewing these regions at our present time (in other words, this doesn't represent long-standing historical precedents).

So, let's assume for a moment that the United States is more Innovative in terms of a few key indicators:

• Number of patents issued
  
• Number of scientific papers published
• Number of academic institutions engaged in research
• per capita income of nation targeted towards to R & D
• Number of industries started or more or less headquartered / centrally focused in the country

So, if we follow the assumption, why does the United States exhibit such advantages? Is it a result of our previous focus on Cold War research and the Space Race? Is it a byproduct of our economic climate, or is it somehow a product of our culture ? Or can these elements readily be separated ?

The reason I'm asking this question today is due to a great deal of discussion that I've overhead lately regarding the overall decline in enrollment within the United States in Science and Technology degree programs. There seemed to be a lot of concern that we are losing a competitive advantage as a result of this situation. It got me to thinking what factors might be involved in determining how or why this type of success occurs and whether it was truly related to the numbers of folks attaining science or tech degrees.

The short answer in my opinion, is yes, there is a cultural bias. This has nothing to do with ethnocentrism or jingoism - but rather a recognition of certain factors which are normally not considered. I'll address what those factors are in the next post...



Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.

Welcome to Innovation Engineering

First of all, let's start by stating that we're not discussing the topic of how to be more innovative with Systems Engineering - no the topic here is focused around the question as to how people and organizations can become more innovative, consistently.

Consistency implies a standardized approach and perhaps that's not entirely possible in this realm, however methodology can still be applied to the endeavor. The "engineering" part of the title relates to the specific approaches that can be used to apply that methodology happen. We will be looking at a wide variety of case studies, from the DoD to Hollywood, from agriculture to IT - Innovation is not limited to any one field and the approaches applied to achieve re in many cases applicable across all of these functional domains.

We of course have our own internal view of how his topic is framed (refer to the concept map below), but we will examine many perspectives in our quest to better understand Innovation.



Copyright 2008, Semantech Inc.