(SF Bay Area Event) The Five Disciplines of Innovation

Open Forum
openparcforum@parc.com
PARC FORUM
Thursday, September 7th
4:00 - 5:00 p.m.


Title:
The Five Disciplines of Innovation


/The Exponential Economy and the Need for a Third Generation of
Innovation Best Practices// ///
Curtis R. Carlson, Ph.D., President and CEO of SRI International


Abstract:


Innovation is now the primary driver of growth, prosperity, and quality
of life. Fortunately it is a world of abundance and not scarcity ­ there
have never been more opportunities for innovation. Unlike the industrial
age there are no limits to growth in the knowledge age. But it is also
an increasingly competitive world with 100% price-performance
improvements required every 9 to 36 months in many markets ­ the
“exponential economy.” And yet, remarkably few individuals, teams, and
enterprises have the needed disciplined innovation skills to
systematically identify and develop these opportunities to stay ahead of
the competition.


Fortunately we have proven models for how to improve. In the early
1900s, Henry Ford’s innovation, the assembly line, enabled the
manufacture of low cost automobiles. Beginning in the 1950s, W. Edwards
Deming’s innovation, Total Quality Management (TQM), enabled the
production of both low-cost and high-quality products. Low cost ­ the
first generation of innovation best practices ­ and high quality ­ the
second ­ are now expected attributes of most manufactured products.


The focus of today enterprises is to rapidly provide superior /customer
value/ ­ that is, products and services with customer benefits that go
well beyond the basics of cost and quality. But our current performance
is unimpressive. Only one out of every 3 to 5 new start-up companies
experiences significant success. And only one out of every 5 to 20
consumer products lasts for more than a year. These meager success rates
are like the poor product quality that was accepted before Deming.
Clearly, even a small improvement in our ability to innovate would have
a profound impact on both companies and nations. But large improvements
seem possible.



In a new book, /Innovation: The Five Disciplines for Creating What
Customers Want,/ Curtis Carlson and William Wilmot describe why we need
to embrace a “third generation of innovation.” With a focus on knowledge
workers, these third generation innovation processes build on and go
beyond the ideas of Ford and Deming. The goal is to more rapidly and
successfully create new customer value by using a family of innovation
best practices ­ the five disciplines of /Innovation/. These five
disciplines can be learned and applied first to your teams and then
throughout your enterprise. Ultimately, if broadly applied across
enterprises and governments they could have a great impact on the
prosperity of nations.


Dr. Curtis R. Carlson is President and CEO of SRI International, a
company dedicated exclusively to the business of innovation. It is hard
to go through a day without experiencing an innovation from SRI. SRI’s
innovations include the computer mouse, robotic virtual surgery, those
square numbers at the bottom of your checks, .com, .org, and .gov,
cancer drugs, and thousands of other innovations from clean energy to
seminal contributions to national security.



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