How the Neglect of Innovation Nearly Cost Britain the War Against Hitler

One of the many lessons we should remember from Word War II is that England's neglect of innovation nearly cost it the war against Germany. This is a minor but important aspect of a major new book on England's fight to survive in World War II. In Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom by Pulitzer-prize winning author Thomas E. Ricks (New York: Penguin, 2017), we learn about some of the reasons England struggled to defend itself from Germany. A key weakness discussed by Ricks was England's poor state of preparation with inadequate machinery, feeble industrialization, weak supply chains, etc., that made it hard to fight a serious war and led to embarrassing disasters like the rapid loss of Singapore, their imagined secure fortress in southeast Asia.

Closer to home in Europe, Britain often had a hard time just moving their troops around -- they often had to walk -- and the Brits were amazed at how quickly their American cousins could mobilize when they came to the rescue. Why was England so poorly prepared?

England, of course, was the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, yet by the time of the War, they were far behind in many of the basic technologies they would need. How could this happen? Ricks provides helpful insight in this passage from pages 203-204:

Managed by family members more interested in reaping dividends than investing in new machinery and other gear, “British firms were unable to adopt modern, best-practice technology,” concluded business historian Alfred D. Chandler Jr. As a consequence, Britain’s brilliant university research generally did not make the transition into factories. Britain had led the first Industrial Revolution of coal and steam power, but generally sat out the “Second Industrial Revolution” of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, built around oil, chemicals, metals, electricity, electronics, and light machinery, such as automobiles. By the end of the 1940s, it would have neither an empire nor an economy capable of competing with those of other major powers. As Correlli Barnett put it, the reality was that by the time World War II ended, the British “had already written the broad scenario for Britain’s postwar descent to the place of fifth in the free world as an industrial power, with manufacturing output only two fifths of West Germany’s.” Interestingly, Barnett was the keeper of the Churchill Archives at Cambridge University from 1977 to 1995.

Something similar happened in China, which once led the world in innovation and GDP, but from the Qing Dynasty until the late 20th Century, in part due to apathetic leaders unwilling to invest in or even open the doors to innovation and technology, China missed out on much of the Industrial Revolution. Only through massive reform and exerted effort in recent decades has China begun its return to a position of global leadership in innovation, IP creation, and economic growth.

In the paper industry, which I've been close to for many years, it's clear that the American paper industry has largely fallen into the same trap that nearly cost Britain its freedom and did cost many lives unnecessarily. The American paper industry has largely failed to invest in new technology and relies heavily on antiquated paper machines and pulp mills that are decades behind what we have in Asia (China and Japan in particular). Their slower, less efficient machines and less efficient plantations put them at a distinct cost disadvantage. Instead of taking steps to compete better, the US industry too often tries to rely on protective legislation to raise tariffs on imported paper and make everyone in the nation pay much more for their paper than they should. The real problem is not Chinese competition, but American businessmen falling into the same pattern that nearly cost Britain the war: focusing on immediate profit and dividends while neglecting the future.

Each industry, whatever it is, needs to build for the future with investment in innovation and a willingness to boldly cope with the threats and opportunities of disruptive innovation. If your industry is dominated with leaders who feel like they can just milk their business as a cache cow with no need to invest in the future, that industry will fail.

Recognizing a Major Chinese Innovator: China's Answer to Gutenberg

For those interested in the contributions of China to innovation throughout history, a significant event will take place in a quiet little Midwest town this month that may interest you. On October 15, 2015, the  Paper Industry International Hall of Fame in Appleton, Wisconsin will induct six people into its Hall of Fame. This unusual industrial hall of fame has around 120 or so honorees at the moment, mostly North American and European business leaders and scientists. This year, though, one of the new inductees is an innovator and leader from ancient China who can be considered as China’s answer to Gutenberg.

Gutenberg is frequently honored as one of the most important inventors ever for giving us the world’s first book printed with movable type. The printing of Gutenberg's Bible was a remarkable achievement from around 1455. As with many inventions long thought to have had European origins, there’s a touch of Eastern flavor in this one, for Gutenberg’s work came 142 years after the world’s first actual mass-produced printed book made with movable type, a Chinese book you probably haven't heard of. It's the large Book of Farming (or the Nong Shu) from China, printed in 1313 by Wang Zhen, as Wikipedia explains.

Wang Zhen was an official in central China in a difficult economic era in which famine was a serious risk. He recognized that vast amounts of agricultural technology scattered across the nation needed to be preserved to help all of China reduce famine and be more agriculturally productive. To achieve his quest of broadly spreading and archiving information, he took a Chinese invention, movable type, and improved it to create a practical way of organizing and selecting individual characters to print an entire book.

He used carved wooden blocks for each character, and developed a sophisticated way of arranging them on two rotating tables to allow typesetters to quickly find needed characters to place them in his press. The Nong Shu was printed and preserved many notable inventions in China, including an early form of a practical blast furnace for making molten iron driven with a reciprocating piston attached to water works, something long that to be a later European invention.

Recognizing Wang Zhen in the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame (PaperHall.org) for his important role in the advance of printing and, indirectly, the growth of the paper industry, is a significant step.  I look forward to many more Asian inventors, scientists, and business leaders being recognized in the Hall of Fame in future years. The historical contributions of China in numerous fields have received far too little attention, and I’m delighted to see folks in Appleton taking the lead in rectifying this problem. Kudos to the Paper Industry International Hall of Fame!

Imitation Without Knowledge: A Problem for Innovation and Potato Peelers

Pictured to the right is my potato peeler/fruit peeler which I purchased in Shanghai. It is dutifully based on the design of typical peelers long sold by Western companies. But I suspect this imitation object was copied and manufactured by people unacquainted with the finer points of peeling potatoes. In peeling potatoes, one frequently encounters eyes or other bad spots that need to be gouged out. Good potato peelers have a curved metal end that can be used for gouging potatoes and fruit. My Shanghai peeler has dutifully copied the general shape of other peelers, with a somewhat pointed tip and a concave surface below it, but the tip is made of thick blunt plastic that is useless in gouging. It is a classic example of imitation without understanding the details of how something works. It can look the same, but the results are disappointing.

The innovation efforts of many companies are like my potato peeler: they imitate what they see others doing, but lack the knowledge and experience needed to make the systems actually work. So we get innovation rhetoric, a temporary budget and Big Program, with consultants sailing in and trying to change employees when the real barriers to innovation may be elsewhere. We get brainstorming sessions that lead to nowhere, momentary IP races that waste resources and leave inventors discourage, innovation funnels that become echo chambers, and improvised staged product launch systems that result in decisions made without adequate knowledge and little hope of success. In some cases it all comes down to instinct and gut feel from an omniscient leader imitating Steve Jobs or some other charismatic innovator, while overruling all logic and leaving a wake of confusion.

Innovation requires experience and deep knowledge. It requires systems and cultures designed with innovation expertise, not just a quick fix and temporary effort to imitate others. Innovation leaders need the support and attention of management at the very top, and systems tailored to enhance the innovation culture across the company. Innovation success is far more difficult that it looks when we are imitating someone who makes it look easy. It rarely is. Real knowledge and real patience are required.

Review: Prisoners of Hope: How engineers and Others Get Lift for Innovating

Prisoners of Hope: How Engineers and Others Get Lift for Innovating by Larry Vincent is an unusual book on innovation that I found to be a refreshing guide to strengthening innovation with great practical value. Part of what makes this book unusual and, for some, perhaps highly challenging, is that it is written from the perspective of a preacher turned innovation champion, filled with references to biblical material, including frequent passages cited from scripture and analogies, sometimes extensive and detailed, drawn from the Bible. Although I treasure the Bible, initially this approach caught me off guard. In fact, at first I felt the attempt to find practical secular lessons for innovators from Bible stories was strained, even to the point that I initially disliked the book after the first chapter or two. But after a few more pages, I began encountering many valuable insights and modern case studies that revealed the author really did understand the practical challenges of bringing innovation to life, especially in a corporate environment. Once I got past my initial challenges with the unique angle of the book, I found it well worth my time, even inspiring. I still struggle with some of the passages using scripture to explain innovation and its challenges, but others may enjoy that. On the other hand, I was impressed by his application of Ezekiel’s “dry bones” vision in the Old Testament, where the prophet Ezekiel saw a valley of dried bones that became living humans again. His treatment made it a very apt and interesting analogy for the challenges inventors face in breathing life and commercial success into their inventions.

Author and innovation expert Lanny Vincent understands the life and challenges of innovators, especially those in corporations. Inventors and innovators are the “prisoners of hope” of the title, people driven and even held captive by their vision of changing the world with their innovation. It is their faith and hope that drives them forward, and this faith and hope allows for many biblical insights to be relevant. Whatever their feelings about scripture, this book can be valuable for them and for those who guide or influence them. Vincent understands how they can be more successful.

Aspects I especially enjoy are the numerous case studies and examples. While many come from the consumer products industry, especially from Kimberly-Clark Corp. where Lanny Vincent had a great deal of industrial experience, the lessons and practical guidance from the author will help engineers, scientists, and other inventors in many disciplines, and may be especially helpful to leaders responsible for innovation and business development.  In these case studies, Vincent draws out key lessons to guide and inspire innovators today.

One of my favorite sections is in the middle of Chapter 6, “Inspiration and Appreciation,” where Vincent recounts how we worked with a team of automotive engineers in Michigan to help them innovate in the area of automotive suspensions. As he observed their responses and discerned that they were there because they had to be, not because they wanted to be, he departed from his normal process. He sought a way to help those jaded survivors of extensive downsizing become more inspired about the innovation task before them. He asked them to tell him the basics of the suspension system, including the history of its development. Admitting his naiveté and asking the engineers to share their knowledge seemed to engage them. They were then asked to draw a timeline of the development of related systems and then to characterize major epochs of the timeline as if they were historians. Then, in light of the past, how would they characterize the next era of development? They energetically and swiftly responded, and then Vincent simply explained that that was the area where they needed to invent. The invention workshop turned out to be highly productive.

One of the interesting insights regarding corporate barriers to innovation is the tendency for companies to promote successful innovators in their ranks to new positions where their rich innovation experience may be unused or essentially lost. The wheels of innovation are constantly being reinvented in companies as those who succeed are moved away from the field where they were able to create success.

Vincent also calls for corporations keep inventors and innovators close to projects as they become commercialized. There is a tendency in large corporations to hand off new products to others and leave those with the original vision and passion out of the picture by the time consumer feedback is being obtained, but Vincent identifies this as a huge missed opportunity. The inventors and innovators may have exactly the insights and knowledge needed to interpret and apply the feedback from the market, and they should play a pivotal role in refining and adapting the product as it moves forward.

Conducting Innovation Sessions to Generate IP: Preparation is the Key

At Innovationedge, one of my favorite activities is working with a team in what we call an "Edge Session" to create new intellectual assets. It's not not brain storming, where a flood of bad ideas are welcome, but an iterative process in which the goal is enabled, good concepts that are fleshed out enough to support drafting of a meaningful invention disclosures. A key part of the Edge Session is refining problem statements, moving from broad, vague questions to more specific problem statements that guide inventors on what is needed. We introduce stimulus elements that are coupled with the problem statements to stimulate thinking. The stimulus elements can be used in addressing a problem directly or as associative thinking tools to change the way people look at the problem--all part of the steps along the way to creating records of an enabled invention that, in turn, can readily support IP generation such as drafting a patent application, documenting a trade secret, or preparing a defensive publication.

Preparation has been the key for success. A big part of the preparation is ours as we dig into the literature, patents, and competitive intelligence. Sometimes we conduct pre-workshop interviews to get a landscape of what the client already knows so that we can better begin with that starting point as we help them create and document more.

The preparation by the client is also critical. One key part of their preparation is the selection of team members. Groups of about 5 to 25 people work well, with maybe 7 to 15 being the preferred range. The group works well if there is sufficient diversity in experience and background. For example, even in dealing with highly technical problems, I like to have at least one marketer in the team, someone with great hands-on experience dealing with consumer insights or other sources of marketing information. The perspective a good marketing person can bring is often vital for the success of an IP-generation project.

Teams also can be more effective when the prepare by reading the materials we provide on the prior art, competitive efforts, etc. We recognize, though, that many times team members won't have had adequate time or motivation to prepare other than showing up. We can still squeeze good information from the unprepared, for much of what they have to contribute creatively is already in their heads. It just may take a little more effort to get it out and documented,