In a January 2019 post titled Progress or Perfection – Pick One I speculated that Tesla was simply being expedient when it built the Model 3 out of what reverse engineering firm Munro and Associates described as a crazy patchwork of parts and assembly processes. My claim was that if haste makes waste, then in…
Failure is good We get a lot of mixed messages about failure. “Failure is good.” “Fail early so you can avoid failure later on, because failure is bad.” “If you manage to succeed without failing then you have failed because your reach should exceed your grasp.” We are sometimes told to leap because the net…
It’s all about the user Design Thinking is emphatically focused on the end user of the product or service. Sometimes when I present on the subject of Design Thinking someone will point out that products can fail for lots of reasons, not just a failure to appeal to the end user. It can fail because…
Where does the resistance lie? Design Thinking lists three conditions that must be met for a product to succeed: desirability – developing new, desirable products; feasibility – overcoming internal challenges to produce the product; and viability – engaging customers. Design Thinking relies on iteration – what project managers refer to as progressive elaboration – to…
It’s easier to come up with an improvement than an entirely new thing. Most innovation techniques emphasize this and rely on it. They avoid the intimidation of the blank page by riffing on something that already exists. In this post, I explore what would happen if we did the opposite. What would happen if instead…
The post where I talk about walls and Mexico without mentioning you-know-who Earlier this month, my girlfriend I visited San Miguel de Allende in the central highlands of Mexico. The AirBNB we stayed in north of the city centre was lovely, but I will admit some trepidation walking around the neighbourhood it was in. Many…
Spin class is paying to pedal a stationary bike while somebody yells at you Peloton is a company that will sell you a stationary bicycle and yell at you in your home. They recently ran an ad which caused many to bristle. In it, a man gives his wife a Peloton machine for Christmas. Let’s…
I had the honour of being interviewed by Entrepreneur Coach Bob Minhas. We talked about Design Thinking, SCAMPER and what entrepreneurs can learn from Elon Musk, Apple and minibars. Find Bob here: https://www.facebook.com/BobMinhasLife
Never be threatened with unemployment “The world is endless, the universe inexhaustible, and the human brain will never be threatened with unemployment.” Genrich Altshuller That’s why its called luggage It is a common worry among those who seek to invent something new. And yet, sometimes you realize that inventions, even recent ones, are so bloody…
Ignored, denied, and swept under the rug I talk a lot about the need for experimentation. All the management techniques intended to speed products to market involve some form of iteration, feedback and correction. Many suggest we should celebrate failure to counteract the unhealthy assumption that all failure can be avoided with planning, The Boeing…
Helping one another I’ve done enough presentations now to say I have a favourite pattern. It starts with an introduction of a subject, followed by some combination of the following: the participants doing a little reflection on their own, sharing with each other in small groups, some more reflection and finally the participants get to…
Under The Influence This post is inspired by the CBC Radio show turned podcast called Under The Influence. The episode titled Passport Revoked examines how brands can be dominant in one region but fail when expanding abroad. Large corporations have plenty of reasons to expand abroad. Often their executives are rewarded for growth and the…
Yogi Berra: The myth* I really didn’t say everything I said. Yogi Berra Yogi Berra was a Red Sox player who pitched a dozen no-hitters, was married to Marilyn Monroe and discovered penicillin. His bust appears on the other side of Mount Rushmore. He had a knack for memorable phrases that are just as relevant…
Heavy favourite Sumo matches are often over in seconds. The objective is to force your opponent out of the dohyo, an elevated ring. There are no weight classes and no second chances. Top division Sumo wrestlers can weigh anywhere from 300 to a staggering 600 pounds. How, then, can the smaller wrestlers hope to prevail?…
Are you Musk material? Or Muskoka material? Either way, growth can help you reach your definition of success. Elon Musk is worth $20 billion. He is building new companies in technology, transportation and energy that will change the fate of humanity. He works 80 hours a day. I’m only slightly exaggerating. Muskoka Mia (she’s never…
A surefire strategy Do everything better and your company, side hustle, creative project – whatever is your jam – will succeed. If you look into Growth Hacking you will find a dizzying variety of ways to improve the countless metrics you can focus on. There are the big ones (often the Pirate Metrics are used)…
When you can’t find another head Many of the great companies were started by multiple founders. The electronics company Hewlett-Packard was started in a garage in Palo Alto, California by Bill Hewlett and David Packard. The electronics company Apple was started in a garage in Los Altos, California by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. The…
A recent conversation led me to rethink the question of whether the world is really changing faster than ever, whether it matters, and what it even means. Check out the McKinsey report that says between 75 million and 375 million people will need to find new employment categories by 2030: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-ins… This video is based…
Nobody likes a lineup, but there are ways to make them less onerous. One way is to make the time spent waiting shorter. The other is often just to make it feel shorter. Above all, to avoid disgruntled customers, the line must feel fair. I have been to some truck stop McDonalds where there is…
It’s tough to make predictions “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” Yogi Berra There are three ways to predict future weather. The first is to assume tomorrow will be the same as today. The second is to assume tomorrow will be the historical average of weather on the same day in previous…
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital…
No such thing as a new idea? “There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations.” Mark Twain On the one hand this…
I recently ran a Growth Sprint which builds on the AJ&Smart model described here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Td0ap… The main difference was that the group I was facilitating was not from one single company. Everybody at the table had their own business or side hustle they were looking to grow. I adapted the model and the end result…
When “together alone” has two meanings The term “together alone” is used to refer to parts of group exercises where people will work quietly to prepare their own ideas or research to be shared with the rest of the group later. I recently held a growth sprint for small businesses owners. They were “together alone”…
The levers of growth In order to grow your company, you need to focus on the levers of growth: Acquisition, Activation, Revenue, Retention and Referrals. But how do you know where to focus? Which lever matters the most? It’s time to get analytical and laser focused on where your efforts can contribute the most growth.…
The Blue Ocean Strategy by authors W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne reminds companies to swim away from competition. Circque de Soleil, Nintendo and Casella Wines all use the SCAMPER principle Eliminate to great commercial success.
At the intersection of Design Sprints and Growth Hacking Design Sprints are repeatable and quick ways for teams to generate novel and useful ideas. Growth Hacking is the process of running experiments intended to improve the components of growth from acquisition to referrals. Put these techniques together and you have a repeatable growth recipe for…
Stay out of the red water The authors of the book The Blue Ocean Strategy are contrasting the wide open waters with the red ocean, the ocean seething with the blood of fierce competitors. They argue that instead of facing competition head on, you should strive to find new, uncharted opportunities. Their prescription has a…
Dot voting is a great technique for reaching a decision when a team has many options for solving a problem.
What is a dot vote? Dot voting has been used by meeting facilitators since the 1980s and is a big part of the design sprint method pioneered by Google Ventures. Dot voting is a quick and easy way for groups to settle on a consensus. The method is transparent and gives everybody on the team…
AARRR! In 2007, Dave McClure coined the term Pirate Metrics to describe the various growth levers available to companies: Attention, Acquisition, Retention, Revenue, Referrals. Together, these levers spell AARRR. Like a pirate, get it? Gotta get thatGotta get thatGotta get thatGotta get that that that The Black Eyed Peas Two years later, in 2009, The…
Add 2+2 Easy, right? You did it in your head. Now add 25+47. Still easy? How about 174713414+104571? Math teachers urge their students to “show their work” even when the students can find the answer in their head. They do this so that the student can show that the hidden process in their head and…
What is Maximum Plaid? Never one to shy away from his nerdy impulses, Elon Musk named the launch mode in performance model Teslas “ludicrous mode” in homage to the movie Spaceballs. Doubling down on this, he’s referring to the next more ludicrous than ludicrous mode as “maximum plaid” – another reference to Spaceballs. If you’ve…
What is the deal with jokes? Many jokes are about the surprise that comes from incongruity, the connecting of two ideas that don’t normally go together. And, many innovations are about connecting two ideas that haven’t previously gone together. Can we use the idea generating technique SCAMPER to come up with jokes? Let’s look at…
SCAMPER is a proven idea generating technique. In this video, I am going to examine ways we can apply SCAMPER to see patterns in the comedy genius of Seinfeld.
Which was the moonshot? The term moonshot is often used to refer to an overly risky and unproven endeavour. Ironically, the methodical approach taken to develop the technologies that safely brought men to the moon in 1969 was abandoned when the Space Shuttle was conceived. I examine the different approaches, the tragic results, and what…
The term moonshot is often used to refer to an overly risky and unproven endeavour. Ironically, the methodical approach taken to develop the technologies that safely brought men to the moon in 1969 was abandoned when the Space Shuttle was conceived. In this video I examine the different approaches, the tragic results, and what can…
SCAMPER is a proven idea generating technique. In this video, I am going to examine ways we can apply SCAMPER to come up with the kinds of innovation we see at SpaceX.
Consulting engineering firms are a rich source of new product ideas This is the conclusion of a 2003 paper by SUNY Geneseo professor Ian Alam (citation below). In the paper, Prof Alam studied the efforts of a manufacturer of iron and steel components and materials. This company, given the fictitious name BILTI sold its products…
Applying Design Thinking Design Thinking can make sense on paper but it can be challenge to adopt it in an environment where it’s never been seen before. This quick 90 minute exercise takes pairs of participants through the steps of empathy and prototyping. What I’ve found is that not only do the participants come away…
It’s true Almost every washing machine has a block of cement which helps control vibration during the spin cycle. This blocks typically weighs more than 50 lbs and contributes a third of the weight of the machine. This increases shipping costs, not to mention the difficulty when delivering the machine and moving it later. A…
Can elephants dance? What do solopreneurs have that your company can’t compete with? Why are Youtube stars coming up with million dollar launches for products that would normally emerge from your design department? In this era of unprecedented change, it feels like all incumbents, big and small, are vulnerable to two college dropouts in a…
SCAMPER is a proven idea generating technique. In this video, I am going to examine ways we can apply SCAMPER to come up with the kinds of innovation we see at Tesla.
How would you improve the tablet desk? In your mind’s eye, think of a tablet desk. Below are a couple of very old examples, but for the most part they don’t look that different today. How would you improve its design? Make it lighter, more durable, more comfortable, ambidextrous? The Node Chair Steelcase is a…
SCAMPER In my last post I wrote about SCAMPER, a proven idea generating technique. In this post, I am going to examine ways we can apply SCAMPER to come up with the kinds of innovation we see at SpaceX. S is for SUBSTITUTE Substitute: Why send a brick when you can send a car? Test…
What matters is the pace of innovation. That is the fundamental determinant of competitiveness. Elon Musk – during Tesla Q1 2018 earnings call SCAMPER In a recent post I wrote about SCAMPER, a proven idea generating technique. In this post, I am going to examine ways we can apply SCAMPER to come up with the…
Catalyze your inventive thinking with SCAMPER Ideas are the building blocks of innovation. The key to generating your best ideas is to break the process into two steps. First there is divergence – coming up with a large number of ideas. Following that is convergence – narrowing those ideas down to something workable to try. This process works…
The more the better In previous posts I’ve talked about the importance of first assembling a large number – and more importantly a large variety – of ideas, comparing it to breathing or panning for gold. The central idea is that it is impossible to pick a winner and enter contestants at the same time.…
The design sprint begins by identifying a North Star. What is the direction we wish to go, regardless of how we get there? The goal is to get a result in less than 30 minutes! That is one characteristic of design sprints that is both exhilarating and terrifying – time boxing. There is no time…
On these pages I’ve talked a lot about Design Thinking and it’s two main characteristics. One, it involves the end user early and often to ensure that what is being created is actually going to be useful. Two, it calls for iteration – not assuming you have the complete picture at the start of a project,…
To be innovative means to venture into the unknown. Design Thinking is the ideal technique for this, because it doesn’t expect a perfect plan at the outset. In fact Design Thinking is in many ways a rejection of the project planning mindset. How can we reconcile planning with innovation? A great clue lies in the…
Repeated, varied attempts Trial and error is a fundamental method of problem solving. It is characterised by repeated, varied attempts which are continued until success, or until the agent stops trying. Wikipedia Flailing about? Using trial and error can sometimes be viewed as lacking in sophistication or rigour. This really depends on how one interprets…
Elon Musk’s electric car company Tesla is always in the news. Sometimes the company is being criticized for what on the surface looks like crazy moves. Examples include building cars in a tent, building cars like a jigsaw puzzle out of small pieces, and using cameras for self driving instead of the more typical LIDAR.…
Flush with excitement I just spent a week at a resort in Orlando. One thing I had never encountered before was a pressure assisted toilet. The thing flushed so forcefully I had to take a look in the tank, where I found a pressure vessel. This video explains how it works, and explores how a…
Another week, another departure Two long-serving manufacturing executives have just left Tesla, joining a steady stream of high level employees deciding to look elsewhere for work. I have written a lot about Elon Musk’s exploits in this blog and while I don’t agree with every move or tweet the man makes, it’s of little doubt…
Breathing in, breathing out I have compared the process of divergence (coming up with a large number of ideas) and convergence (narrowing those ideas down to something workable to try) to breathing. This is a useful simile because it drives home the point that you can’t breathe in and breathe out at the same time.…
Part-ly crazy Munro & Associates tears down cars to produce competitive analyses of how those cars are assembled. While they found many things to praise about the Tesla Model 3, they derided its heavy and complicated body structure. Among the reasons for this was apparently wasteful use of many parts where a single stamped component…
Don’t just sit there Chances are you have heard the term “management by walking around”. Tracing its roots to Hewlett Packard in the 1970s, management by walking around is a reminder of the value of leaving the office to see what the people on your team are doing and the challenges they face. The idea…
That’s a good idea, but… Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. You’ve been invited to a meeting to find a solution to a problem. The boss asks for ideas. You gamely offer one, but it’s been done before, or it’s too expensive, or it won’t work, or we don’t do that here, or…
Meet a human need A key characteristic of Design Thinking is to be human centred. In the end, everything we design and construct needs to meet a human need. Take for example a hypothetical situation where you are a maintenance manager at a hotel and you’ve been asked to install kick plates on the guest…
Does success breed success? Kaizen is a Japanese word for improvement. In manufacturing circles kaizen is used to describe continuous improvement – constantly refining processes to improve the quality of the outcome. In an earlier article I made the point that the small batches forced by limited manufacturing might created an opportunity for Japanese manufacturers…
Steve Jobs is one of the most idolized tech entrepreneurs of all time. He put Apple on its path to be the first trillion dollar company the world has ever seen. While many credit this success to Jobs’ product design prowess, in his book titled “The Way To Design“, Steve Vassallo offers another explanation: Steve…
Shockingly bad In June 2018, Bloomberg published an article describing Tesla’s latest controversial measure – producing Model 3 cars in a tent covering the area of two football fields, constructed in the parking lot of their existing Fremont, California production facility. (The tent is visible in the title image of this post, behind the Model…
My course is now live In my day job I support University faculty members. In part this means helping them get their courses online. It’s a fascinating endeavour and one I always wanted to try. Now at last I have created my own online course on using Design Thinking to increase project success. This is…
You and your significant other are sitting on the couch when you begin to feel a chill. You get up and adjust the thermostat. Congratulations. You have made a change. You have demonstrated agency. You are a change agent! Reactions One possible reaction (whether internal or overt) from your SO (significant other) is, “Knock yourself…
This Guy Edits “This Guy Edits” is a Youtube channel devoted to the art and science of editing video. In this video, “this guy” Sven Pape discusses on-screen drafting with Dr Karen Pearlman. Pearlman is a writer, director, editor and author of the book “Cutting Rhythms, Shaping the Film Edit”. A chapter in Cutting Rhythms describes…
That was easy This Youtube video shows a motor-controlled dartboard that uses sensors and a computer to move the dartboard so that you can throw a dart off target and still hit the bullseye. To me this is an excellent illustration of the power of Design Thinking. Design Thinking does two things – it focuses…
Presenting at York Earlier this week I had the pleasure of presenting my talk on Design Thinking to my York University colleagues in various IT departments. The best part of making these presentations is the immediate feedback I get. This time I got three questions I wanted to wrestle with here in greater depth. How…
In these pages I have been emphasizing the value of frequent iteration and gathering feedback on the smallest steps possible. These are the ingredients of Design Thinking. But, you ask, what if I don’t get to design the product? What if we are just making a procurement decision and rolling out an existing commercial product?…
System 1 and System 2 I recently read (actually listened to in the car) the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. In it Kahneman describes two modes of thought. What he calls “System 1” is fast, instinctive and emotional, whereas “System 2” is slower and more logical. For most of us, driving to a…
Lean Production inspired Lean Startup I’ve explored the similarities of Lean Startup to Design Thinking. Both approaches support innovation by maintaining a focus on actual user need and emphasize frequent iteration to ensure that the work being done meets that need. Lean Startup takes its inspiration from Lean Production which in turn has roots in…
South of Fortinos I live in Maple south of Fortinos, the “Italian” version of the Canadian grocery company Loblaws. (I’m still trying to make “SoFo” – South of Fortinos – a thing.) It’s a scandalously short drive and I sometimes walk to get small loads of groceries. As a consequence I’m in the store four…
My favorite subject Long ago I met a woman in a bar. True story. So far. She told me that she worked on a stud farm and that her job was to help horses mate. Still a true story. I was excited to be talking to a woman in a bar about my favorite subject…
One on top of the other Solitaire is a game played with a clear objective. “The first objective is to release and play into position certain cards to build up each foundation, in sequence and in suit, from the ace through the king. The ultimate objective is to build the whole pack onto the foundations,…
Old wine in new bottles d.school describes the Design Thinking process as five steps: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. IDEO has a shorter three step process: Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation. Nevertheless, the two process definitions are very similar. Both d.school and IDEO were founded by David Kelley and many individuals have worked for both…
On and off The typical home in Canada has a thermostat to control a furnace. Each thermostat has a gap between how cold it can get before the furnace turns on and how warm it can get before the furnace turns off. The wider the gap the longer the furnace will run and the longer…
Design Thinking – when somebody else designed it While every organization is unique, those differences do not always justify the investment and upkeep of customized software development and localized computer services. Often it makes much more financial sense to adopt existing software and services and adapt them to the organization’s needs. In these pages I…
What matters is the pace of innovation “I think moats are lame. They are like nice in a sort of quaint, vestigial way. If your only defense against invading armies is a moat, you will not last long. What matters is the pace of innovation, that is the fundamental determinant of competitiveness.” Elon Musk –…
Is Design Thinking a fad? If you have been employed in a large organization you have seen management trends come and go. First we centralize, then decentralize. First we organize functionally, then divisionally – ooh, then in a matrix with dotted lines! You could be forgiven, then, if you thought all this hype around Design…
Complete transformation “We have been undergoing a complete transformation into a design-like culture.” Lorna Feeney, Co-Chief Creative Officer at IBM Interactive Experience IBM made Design Thinking central to its culture in 2013. Since then IBM has assembled more than 1,600 formally trained designers globally. They claim this is the largest corporate design team in the…
Two examples of automation Google recently demonstrated their virtual assistant called Duplex. Complete with ums and ahs, the system was able to make a stylist appointment and a restaurant reservation, convincingly human in mannerism and ability to navigate the twists and turns of the unstructured conversation. This automated warehouse by Ocado has countless battery-powered shuttles…
The death of brands? NYU professor and author Scott Galloway sees several trends that threaten consumer brands. Walmart and Amazon are in a never-ending struggle to lower prices, which means squeezing suppliers’ profits to the point where they can no longer afford the advertising needed to build a brand. Google search volumes for non-branded search…
Being an Olympian is hard Being an Olympic athlete is surely one of the most gruelling forms of competition in existence. You are competing with the best of the world, all of whom have trained from a tender age and sacrificed time, tears, blood, relationships and even long term health. The difference between gold and…
Only one wire Back in grade school, one of the smartest guys I ever met surprised me when I realized he didn’t understand that electricity had to flow in a circuit. His assumption seemed to be that electricity poured in, did its job and left, like air and fuel through an engine. It turns out…
Big changes for big automakers Automakers have been making vehicles for the same markets in the same way for generations. The vast majority of cars they produce are powered by a combustion engine and driven by its owner. Three key innovations are challenging this tried-and-true approach to mobility – electrification, ride sharing and autonomy. Successful incumbent…
Freed up for new opportunities? There are plenty of headlines predicting millions of jobs being destroyed by robots and artificial intelligence. Our experience with improving technology impacting jobs has, so far in human history, been a net positive, with new jobs emerging as fast as old ones are rendered obsolete. “Historically, technological advances have not…
A little validation We could all use a little validation. Lean startup and design thinking seek to validate ideas on their way to becoming innovations as early and often as possible by focusing on a paying customer. The lean startup strategy explicitly views paying customers as the litmus test of success. This makes sense for…
Innovation is a mindset Carol Dweck shares an important insight from her research in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. People with a fixed mindset – those who believe that abilities are fixed – are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset – those who believe that abilities can be…
They reject ideas that won’t work As a leader, one of your functions is to protect the organization from bad ideas. Make the distinction between idea and innovation – innovation happens when an idea is implemented, its assumptions are tested, and lessons are learned. If the idea can’t be implemented in its current form, it…
1. How much can you afford to lose? Turning any idea into an innovation will cost some combination of time and money. Even if the resources and time are free or already paid for, consuming them in pursuit of any idea represents an opportunity cost. Could those same investments be made elsewhere for greater benefit?…
Project management Earlier on this site I described project management as an unceasing parade of details. Others describe project management in more glowing terms: “Project management is the practice of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria at the specified time.” From…
Buying time Design thinking calls for involving stakeholders early and often so that the resulting product or service accurately reflects their desires, capabilities and commitment. In practice this means imposing on their time. Often the majority of these stakeholders are on company time and they will be coaxed to attend with some combination of fat,…
In my study of innovation, I find it useful to look to a variety of sources. It occurred to me that innovation is no more important anywhere than in the military, where competition can be lethal. This article titled Staff Colonels Are Army’s Innovation Engines has some fascinating insights that are relevant to civilian organizations…
Rifle vs guided missile Design thinking emphasizes early feedback and constant course corrections. Whereas traditional planning methods produce extremely detailed plans for an entire project (aim, fire – like a rifle), these more modern approaches only plan a little bit in advance and use feedback to zero in on their target (fire, aim, aim, aim…
Innovation is creativity that produces positive results Feedback is the mechanism to measure those results. Both design thinking and lean startup innovation strategies emphasize the importance of building in feedback early and often so that positive results can be maximized and negative results can be minimized. Getting feedback Your team has sweated the details to…
Best of both worlds The University of Wisconsin has been working on what they call a Reactivity Controlled Compression Ignition engine. This system uses a port injector and a direct injector two introduce two fuels into the combustion chamber, such as gasoline and diesel (port and direct, respectively). Both SCAMPER – Combine and Principle 5…
Set the table Approximately 10 minutes You have your creative team assembled. Let them know the goal of the meeting, which is to define the problem within the design thinking framework. Emphasize that the goal is improvement to product and service and the problems should be defined in these terms. This is not about finding…
Pot-ae-to, Pot-ah-to? Design thinking and lean startup are innovation strategies. The paper titled “Design Thinking Vs. Lean Startup: A Comparison of Two User-Driven Innovation Strategies” examines these two innovation strategies, their common traits, their differences, and how the two strategies might inform one another or produce a third strategy. Design thinking Design thinking is an…
Point “My definition of ‘innovative’ is providing value to the customer.” Mary Barra Mary Barra has been CEO of General Motors since 2014. Her quote above both resonated with me and troubled me. It is a widely used quote and has a reasonable air to it. On the other hand it struck me as a…
Work ethic Elon Musk is a phenomenon. He founded SpaceX with a $100 million dollar investment from the funds he received when Paypal, the company he co-founded, was sold. He has been CEO of electric car maker Tesla since 2008. In 2006 Musk financed SolarCity. Musk works grueling hours running SpaceX and Tesla simultaneously. He…
Machine learning Google’s introduction to machine learning (ML) course begins with a brief video with Peter Norvig describing what he learned about ML since joining Google in 2001 as their Director of Machine Learning. Norvig describes the important benefits of ML and its ability to simplify tasks for programmers. No longer do they need to…
Unsolicited ideas are unsolicited Innovation means doing something different. Different from what was done before. Different from what you were asked for. Different from your job description. Imagine you are sitting at your desk, feeling comfortable. Somebody walks in and turns the thermostat up a degree. Or down a degree. Different from the current temperature.…
“Your life, reimagined” That’s how the team at Storebound describe their jack-of-all-trades side table. Certainly it captured the imagination of crowdfunders at Indiegogo. 2472 backers have already contributed $1,093,451 USD to this project which originally only sought $50,000 in funding – and there are 20 days left! Innovations SCAMPER – Combine The Sobro side table combines…
$1 billion twist “You don’t need to have an amazing idea or innovation to succeed. You just need to improve or “twist” something that already exists…in a big market.” Bernie Schroeder One can debate whether Instagram was an amazing idea of innovation, but you can’t argue with the results. In less than two years after…
Why do I want to fit Principles into SCAMPER approaches? In a recent post (check it here first) I explore how SCAMPER can embrace the 40 Principles of Inventive Problem Solving. The goal is to wrap the complexity of the Principles in the approachability of SCAMPER. Rearrange defined in Applied Imagination Under the category of…
Why do I want to fit Principles into SCAMPER approaches? In a recent post (check it here first) I explore how SCAMPER can embrace the 40 Principles of Inventive Problem Solving. The goal is to wrap the complexity of the Principles in the approachability of SCAMPER. Eliminate defined in Applied Imagination Under the category of…
Many autonomous car efforts use lidar (light detecting and ranging) to “see” the world. Combining a laser transmitter and receiver, lidar detects the tiny but measurable time it takes for the laser to bounce off an object to determine how far away it is. By steering the laser, the lidar can produce a 3D scan…
Electric car manufacturer SF Motors has announced a flexible motor strategy that will allow vehicles to be designed with one, two, three, or four motor configurations. Their high end vehicle will have four motors with over 1000 horsepower combined, propelling the vehicle to 60 miles an hour in under 3 seconds, making it a worthy Tesla…
“Some years ago the head of the Industrial Engineering Department of Yale University said, ‘If I had only one hour to solve a problem, I would spend up to two-thirds of that hour in attempting to define what the problem is.’” From the 1966 book titled “The Manufacturing Man and His Job” by Robert E.…
Bull! This cow is not watching you – he has eyes painted on his butt. This is a kind of artificial automimicry, which the Oxford dictionary defines as: “The mimicking or accentuation of some characteristic of one’s own species as an adaptive response.“ This is a great use of Principle 26 – Copying, since it…
Why do I want to fit Principles into SCAMPER approaches? In a recent post (check it here first) I explore how SCAMPER can embrace the 40 Principles of Inventive Problem Solving. The goal is to wrap the complexity of the Principles in the approachability of SCAMPER. Put To Another Use defined in Applied Imagination Under…
An effective brainstorming team has what Harvard Business Review calls “cognitive diversity,” which they define as “differences in perspective or information processing styles.” This diversity in thinking, more than gender, ethnicity and age diversity, was found to contribute to better problem solving in teams. The unsurprising conclusion is that more heads are better than one…
“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.” G. K. Chesterton Living abroad When I was 12 years old my family moved to Singapore, where my dad worked for UNESCO. We moved back two years…
Why do I want to fit Principles into SCAMPER approaches? In a recent post (check it here first) I explore how SCAMPER can embrace the 40 Principles of Inventive Problem Solving. The goal is to wrap the complexity of the Principles in the approachability of SCAMPER. Modify defined in Applied Imagination Under the category of…
Why do I want to fit Principles into SCAMPER approaches? In a recent post (check it here first) I explore how SCAMPER can embrace the 40 Principles of Inventive Problem Solving. The goal is to wrap the complexity of the Principles in the approachability of SCAMPER. Adapt defined in Applied Imagination Under the category of…
Too many bricks Les Terrasses de la Chaudière is a complex of government office buildings built in 1978 on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river across from Canada’s capital. One of my favourite engineering courses at Carleton University was taught by a project manager on the Chaudière project. Unfortunately I don’t remember his name,…
Most fundamental truths In his interview with Kevin Rose, Elon Musk described the importance of reasoning from first principles. He contrasts this with what he observes the normal way of thinking which is by analogy, wherein we look at something new as an iteration of something already in existence, and so overlook entirely new ways…
This anecdote comes courtesy of the CBC Radio show Under The Influence, the podcast of which my son and I listened to in the car during our road trip to Ottawa. Unless you’ve been living under the proverbial rock you have heard the McDonald’s jingle that ends, “I’m Lovin’ It”. I am as close as…
I spent Easter weekend in Ottawa and just returned to Toronto. My mother, being British, is a fan of the The Great British Baking Show. One trick piece of kitchen hardware jumped out at me: the oven they were using had a retractable door. I did a little research and found a video on it…
Why do I want to fit Principles into SCAMPER approaches? In a recent post (check it here first) I explore how SCAMPER can embrace the 40 Principles of Inventive Problem Solving. The goal is to wrap the complexity of the Principles in the approachability of SCAMPER. Combine defined in Applied Imagination Under the category of…
Why do I want to fit Principles into SCAMPER approaches? In a recent post (check it here first) I explore how SCAMPER can embrace the 40 Principles of Inventive Problem Solving. The goal is to wrap the complexity of the Principles in the approachability of SCAMPER. Substitute defined in Applied Imagination Under the category of…
Your problem has already been solved “Every problem has a solution.” The Cigarette Smoking Man, X-Files Both SCAMPER and the 40 Principles begin with the premise that with sufficient abstraction the problem you face can be described in a way that parallels another problem that has already been solved, making the solution evident. This post attempts…
Alan Mulally was a leader at aircraft manufacturer Boeing before he joined Ford as CEO in 2006. While at Boeing, Mulally was involved in the development of several aircraft. He lead the design of the 757/767 cockpit which was one of the first “all glass” aircraft, meaning it relied on screens rather than physical gauges.…
Safe The American National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that air bags saved 8,369 lives between 1987 and 2001. Unfortunately, the same technology is having a negative impact on hearing. Seventeen percent of car occupants adjacent to airbag deployments suffer hearing loss, according to a study by Richard Price, a hearing specialist and consultant. And sound To…
Amazon is a dominant player now, but its birth was plagued with doubt and financial weakness, reveals the book The Everything Store by Brad Stone. Amazon started as an online book seller, and this was a canny move by Jeff Bezos, the company’s founder. Books were true commodities – all the same, no question of whether…
Ivan Chermayeff (1932-2017) designed some of the most widely recognized and admired logos in corporate America. including Mobil, PBS and National Geographic. This 2015 interview offers a rare glimpse into Mr. Chermayeff’s design process. I make collages. I have many many collages. I do them almost every day. I work on them in between my…
I recently had lunch with a former colleague. In the past, her work had required our services and so we had frequent contact. I recall some on my team bristling at her ambitions which frequently meant outsized demands on my department. “Who does she think she is?” was the tone of the complaints. Now her…
Analogy leads to innovation “Almost all innovation happens by making connections between fields that other people don’t realize.” Robert Lang Robert Lang is a physicist who developed software to create intricate origami. Analogous techniques are being used for other purposes like improving airbag design. Thinking about something that works under one context and how to…
Divide and conquer? Saturn was a division of car manufacturer General Motors (then alongside today’s survivors like Chevrolet, Buick, GMC, Cadillac) that was started in 1985 as a semi-autonomous company with its own models, designs, dealer network and manufacturing plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee. This was a bold move, because at the time GM was…
Silverado frame rails General Motors uses hydroforming to produce frame rails for its vehicles including the Silverado pickup and the aluminum pieces found in the Corvette. This process makes stronger, lighter and to more accurate dimensions than typical welded multi-piece components. In tube hydroforming, pressure is applied with hydraulic fluid inside a tube that is…
Top Gun “That’s right, Iceman. I am dangerous.” Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell Some parts of the 1986 movie Top Gun starring Tom Cruise as Maverick are downright cringe worthy, but the flight sequences and lingering pans over the gorgeous F-14 more than make up for it. In this Youtube video, former Northrop Grumman VP Mike…
Innovation, critical to organizational health A recent McKinsey’s report identifies the organizational outcomes that make the greatest contributions to organizational health. The second highest score goes to innovation and learning. “We think of organizational health as … the organization’s ability to align around a common vision, execute against that vision effectively, and renew itself through innovation…
If it is your responsibility to call people together to solve a problem, then whether this is presented as a brainstorming session, just part of a meeting, or an ad hoc discussion at your office door, you need to set a tone and guide the group to a useful conclusion. There’s a lot of cross…
Proven reusability “For a long time people were using the space shuttle as an example of why reusability is dumb. You can’t take a single case example and make an entire theory out of it.” Elon Musk Musk has frequently made the case that discarding a rocket is like flying a jumbo jet across the…
Problems are invitations for your best work If problems are threatening to give you an ulcer, consider that these problems and your ability to solve them give you purpose. It’s also a lot more fun to solve problems than do the same old same old every day. They didn’t make a movie about Apollo 12…
Mercedes-AMG new F1 engine In 2014, Formula 1 introduced a new set of rules requiring all participating cars have engines with turbos and some form of electric hybridization. The approach taken by some teams uses what they call MGU-K (motor generator unit – kinetic) which is the same process used in most road going hybrids…
Crowd sourcing I’m as fashionable as the selection at Costco allows, but studying innovation as I do, Zara, the Spanish fast fashion retailer, comes up frequently. Zara has over two thousand stores world wide, each gathering vital feedback from customers. Whereas many retail outlets will respond to customer purchase data, Zara goes a step further…
I asked for ideas, but… So you’ve encouraged your staff to come up with innovative ideas. You hate those ideas. Now what? In a previous post I wrote about what it’s like to have your boss get all excited about innovation and how to muster your own excitement. This looks at it from the boss’…
Making running shoes faster Not necessarily making faster running shoes. Adidas brings together components from around the world to make its shoes. Each component may have been around the world having separate steps of manufacturing to it before ending up the final assembly of a running shoe. This process can take up to two months…
In her book, Creative Change, social psychologist Jennifer Mueller asks why we resist change, and how we can embrace it. It is a cliché that individuals and organizations must innovate to thrive in today’s environment of fast change, and yet we often reflexively resist new ideas when presented with them, to our detriment. “The irony…
MultiPro Tailgate I’ve had occasion to talk about a tailgate once before, with the unique flip or turn tailgate on the Honda Ridgeline. GMC’s exclusive MultiPro Tailgate is another innovation aimed at increasing the functionality of a pickup. The operator can fold the primary tailgate, the inner tailgate, and the load stop into a total…
Levels of driving automation The Society of Automotive Engineers identifies five levels of driving autonomy. Level 0, which is now common in even economy cars, issues warnings or take action if a collision is imminent. At the other end of the spectrum is Level 5, in which the car could be fully functional without a…
Big appetite As your team’s innovation abilities develop, your appetite for risk will likely increase, but the total amount of risk being undertaken needs to be understood at all times. Carefully chosen innovations will provide average returns to the upside. It’s like gambling, but in this case you are the house. They say the house…
Delegation is not abdication A common refrain in innovation literature is that failure should be expected, celebrated and even rewarded. How, then, can good work be distinguished from bad? How can team members making strong contributions be identified Delegation is not abdication. Set limits on the consequences of experimentation that those on your team can…
Segmentation When gravity is absent and the fuel doesn’t naturally stay at the bottom of the bank, other schemes must be used to keep the propellant adjacent to the pickup. I’ve previously examined this issue here and here. What I love about this blog is it kindles my curiosity. I was inspired to look again…
“The refrigeration system makes one end cold and and one end warm.” Dave Pearson, Star Refrigeration This Youtube interview reveals some innovative thinking going into more renewable heating options for Scottish homes. The air conditioning systems we are familiar with in North America typically pump heat out of the building into the ambient air, so…
Incredible response This Kickstarter project received $1,330,293 in pledges and 6,480 backers, far exceeding its original goal of $100,000. The product The primary innovations here are the merging (Principle 5 – Merging) of a down jacket with a battery-operated heating system. Principle 6 – Universality is also at play, as the same battery can be…
What is risk? “Risk is the potential of gaining or losing something of value.” Wikipedia This definition speaks to me because it highlights that risk can be to the upside or the downside. Innovation is the path to change. Change can be for good or ill. And thus all innovation involves risk. Dealing with risk,…
Good news, everyone! Your boss announced a workshop on creative thinking. Creative thinking about your job. The end result of this creative thinking will be innovation! What will this innovation achieve? Only one of three outcomes is possible: More work. Yay? The same work. So what’s the point? Less work. So you might get laid…
The challenge As I described in the first post in this series, some elementary students in Ontario were recently suspended for incomplete immunization records. I wrote this series of posts in an effort to come up with ideas using each of the 40 Principles. Principles 1-10, Part 1 Principles 11-20, Part 2 Principles 21-30, Part…
Lunar lifeboat An electrical short in an oxygen tank caused an explosion in Apollo 13’s service module. This cylindrical module was tipped with the command module, the bell-shaped capsule that plunged through the atmosphere to return astronauts to earth. Docked to the top of the command module was the lunar module with its spindly landing…
Machine competition Machines of our own creation have already rid the world of enormous amounts of physical labour. Our newest machines are poised to rid the world of enormous amounts of work that, until now, required human skill. As recently as 1790, 90% of the US labour force worked the farm. Imagine if food had…
All In All You’re Just Another Brick Laying System Bricky is a system that makes accurate DIY construction of walls easy. A template lets you put down a consistent layer of mortar for each course of bricks as well as the vertical strip of mortar between each brick. By investing in the creation of a…
The right tool for the job A minimalist set of tools wielded by an expert is always a joy to see. Whether it is the electrician, the bricklayer or the chef, they dispense with all but the most efficient methods. This article is an ode to Principle 6 – Universality, the use of the same…
Distinguishing between creativity and innovation For the purposes of this blog I define creativity as the production of ideas. Innovation is deliberate introduction and application of new and improved processes and products. Innovation thus relies on creativity. Emphasis on new? If creativity is idea generation and innovation is idea implementation, then what is an idea?…
Like buttah! This 2014 Kickstarter project raised AU$ 360,286 (the Canadian and Australian dollars are very close to parity), dwarfing its original AU$ 38,000 goal with 15,251 backers. The Stupendous Splendiferous ButterUp butter knife has small built in grater holes that cuts the butter into thin curls. This makes the butter easier to spread and because it has a…
Early aerodynamic testing Before the advent of the wind tunnel, experimenters would use a whirling arm to measure drag and lift on models. The weakness of this approach was that the model would be travelling in its own wake. In 1901, the Wright brothers tested their aircraft design in a rudimentary wooden tunnel with a…
David Burkus is an author, keynote speaker and associate professor of leadership and innovation at Oral Roberts University. I recently listened to the audio version of his book “The Myths of Creativity”. Here are some of my key take aways. Breed myth We are all capable of creativity. This is not ability limited to a…
When you look into the abyss Vantablack, short for “vertically aligned nanotube arrays”, is the darkest artificial substance known, absorbing up to 99.965% of visible light. The company Surrey NanoSystems Limited “grows” this forest of vertical tubes on a substrate using chemical vapour deposition. Its light absorbing properties make it ideal for preventing light from bouncing around…
Regal bearing That beauty pictured above is a Buick Regal similar to the 2002 model I had back in the day. One of its features, which GM has continued on other cars to this day, is courtesy perimeter lighting. If you used the remote to open the doors, or locked the car after exiting it,…
The problem As I described in an earlier post, some elementary students in Ontario were suspended for incomplete immunization records. This series of posts is an effort to come up with ideas using each of the 40 Principles. Remember the cardinal rule: there are no stupid ideas, only ideas that may serve to inspire the…
The Rutan VariEze I first saw this unique and ground breaking airplane announced in a Popular Mechanics magazine when I was a kid. It’s most striking feature is its canard, the stubby wing at the front. Whereas most airplanes use a tailplane (horizontal fins at the rear of the plane) a canard airplane has a…
One. Billion. Dollars! Smart doorbell maker Ring just got acquired by Amazon for over $1 billion. This is after Shark Tank turned down the deal on their show in 2013. “Why cry over spilled milk when you know there’s another great idea coming through the Shark Tank?” Kevin O’Leary. Amazon’s new milk run Amazon is…
Better denim through chemistry Levi Strauss has announced that it will soon use lasers to give its jeans that lived in look that makes jeans look so good. Denim makers the world over currently use potassium permanganate to distress jeans. This acts like bleach but has a shorter effective life, making it easier to control.…
Sell on Amazon I think most buyers who select items on Amazon are scarcely aware that most of the product listed there is not owned by Amazon, but rather by third parties. Amazon has built an entire ecosystem around listing third party products and even storing and shipping third party products under its Fulfilled by…
Disposable Montreal’s “Big O” stadium built for the 1976 Olympic games stands as an object lesson for cities that are contemplating spending billions of dollars on their Olympic dreams. The Montreal stadium costs taxpayers over $30 million to maintain every year and yet the cost to tear it down would be prohibitive, no less than…
Lee-Anne McAlear is Program Director at The Centre of Excellence in Innovation Management at Schulich School of Business at York University. In her presentation at IdeaCity 2017, she made a compelling case for innovation in the workplace. High priority, low satisfaction McAlear quotes the McKinsey Global Innovation Survey which reveals that while 84% of leaders…
The musket: “Brown Bess” The British Army’s Land Pattern Musket, nicknamed the “Brown Bess” was a smoothbore muzzle-loader. Smoothbore Smoothbore refers to the finish of the inside of the barrel of the musket. A smooth bore does not impart any rotational forces to the fired projectile. Muzzle-loader Loading a musket was an involved process. First,…
A simple idea This project merges (Principle 5 – Merging) the do-anything screen (Principle 6 – Universality) with a watch band, making a smartwatch the year before the release of the Apple Watch. It’s another example of a Kickstarter project that met with great success with $942,578, pledged of $15,000 goal and 13,512 backers. What else? One of the…
Patent application Apple has applied for a patent for a vital signs monitoring system that is likely to provide sensor data to the company’s HealthKit and ResearchKit products that reside on iPhones. Principle 23 – Feedback Whereas typical vital signs monitoring involves attaching sensors directly to a patient and only being able to monitor that…
E-Fan X All-electric airplanes are already in service in limited applications like trainers and for towing gliders. These small planes boast low energy use and low maintenance, but battery capacity and weight remain limiting factors for longer range aircraft. Airbus, Rolls Royce and Siemens are thus employing the same strategy used by automobile manufacturers before…
Mo valves, mo power In a typical car engine, valves in the head open and close to allow air in and out of the combustion chamber. In their original iteration, such engines had one valve for intake and one for exhaust. Most newer engines have four valves, two for intake and two for exhaust. This…
This is another smack-your-head, why-didn’t-I-think-of-it innovation. It’s a table made up of segments (Principle 1 – Segmentation) that converts to a shelf unit (Principle 15 – Dynamics) easily by turning on a pivot (Principle 12 – Equipotentiality). Check out the video: What can we learn? Like the Youtube video says, there are some bits of…
The problem As I described in an earlier post, some elementary students in Ontario were suspended for incomplete immunization records. This series of posts is an effort to come up with ideas using each of the 40 Principles. Remember the cardinal rule: there are no stupid ideas, only ideas that may serve to inspire the…
In a conventional engine design, coolant first enters the block and then the head. The result is that the coolant is already quite hot by the time it reaches the head. In 1992, Chevrolet introduced the C4 Corvette along with its then revolutionary V8 engine that featured a “reverse cooling” system. This routed coolant first…
I actually owned one of the little iPod Shuffles and was struck at the time by the cleverness of using the headphone jack as a charging port using this little adapter. The principle at work All previous devices of this ilk would use one jack for charging and another for the headphones. So what Principle…
Does it matter? In many of my posts I reveal my efforts to determine which Principle is at play in a given innovation. You may think that quibbling over what Principle is at play is unnecessary. To a large extent I agree. If you arrive at a good idea using any of the 40 Principles…
What are the little scallops for? Look carefully at the exhaust of the turbofan engine on the Boeing 787 pictured and you will see it has a scalloped edge, what Boeing calls chevrons. Turbofans vs turbojets A turbojet engine has a compressor section which draws air in. Fuel is added and burned which expands toward…
“With enough butter, anything is good.” Julia Child Pictured is a butter bell, a French crock which originated in the 19th century which keeps butter fresh at room temperature and spreadable. The crock (in the foreground) is packed with a stick of butter and then inverted (Principle 13 – The Other Way Round) into the…
The problem As I described in an earlier post, some elementary students in Ontario were suspended for incomplete immunization records. This series of posts is an effort to come up with ideas using each of the 40 Principles. Remember the cardinal rule: there are no stupid ideas, only ideas that may serve to inspire the…
The sliding compound-miter saw is an orgy of Principle 15 – Dynamics. It can be adjusted for both vertical and horizontal angle and run along a slide to handle wide boards. Many have extensions to support long boards and adjustable stops for repetitive cuts at a specific length. This is compounded (yes!) by the use…
The problem I live in the fashionable SoFo (south of Fortinos) neighborhood of Maple, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto. Prominent in the local news is the Toronto School Board’s decision to suspend over 5,000 elementary students with incomplete immunization records. For as long as I have been a parent (13 years) the standard method for…
Alexa, what’s Amazon up to now? “Much of what we do with machine learning happens beneath the surface . . . quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.” Jeff Bezos Core operation: Web Services I explored this briefly before when looking at Amazon Web Services. Here, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is applying Principle 6 – Universality,…
Fishing kayak This kayak is a model of Principle 15 – Dynamics, serving as both a streamlined kayak and a stable fishing platform. It’s got stabilization pods that swing out from the hull, a handlebar that rises to help the occupant stand, and a little battery operated motor underneath. Why it caught my eye We…
Smoke alarms save lives “An estimated 890 lives could be saved each year if all homes had working smoke alarms.” National Fire Protection Association Working. And that means with a working battery. Wi-fi battery for smoke and CO alarms Roost, a household electronics company, sells a “smart battery” that occupies the 9V battery compartment that…
Diesel Diesel engines are renowned for fuel efficiency and torque. They use compression ignition, which means that as the piston squeezes the fuel and air mixture, it ignites without the need for a spark plug. Their advantages stem from the ability to burn with a very lean air-fuel mixture, and their large expansion ratio (valve…
Don’t you give up on me now! I’m not a doctor. I get woozy when I hear the theme from Scrubs. But this was too good an innovation not to share. Gravity fed intravenous (IV) dip is an important method of administering medications and fluids to patients. IV infusions are one of the most common…
In 2016, Amazon.com made more money from AWS, Amazon Web Services than from retail sales. Jeff Bezos approved the idea of experimenting with Amazon infrastructure in 2004, but AWS only became commercially available in 2006. In many ways, AWS is a refinement of the infrastructure that Amazon built for its own operations. Principle 6 –…
There’s a starman waiting in the sky SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon Heavy with the now-famous payload of Starman (a mannequin in a SpaceX-designed spacesuit) in Elon Musk’s personal Tesla Roadster. Test flights usually are sent up with payloads of negligible value like concrete or steel blocks, since there is the high likelihood of the…
So many batteries Tesla cars are renowned for their huge lithium ion batteries under their floor. Less well known is the fact that they also have a 12-volt lead acid battery, too. Why 12 volts? 12 volt electrical systems have been used in cars since the 1950s. Headlights, turn signals, seat adjustment motors and heaters,…
Design Thinking I am currently listening to the audiobook “Designing Your Life: How to Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life” by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. I’m only at the beginning but already it has provoked some thought. They argue that “design thinking” can be applied to one’s life just as it can be applied to…
Ups and downs Elevators typically move in one of two ways; electric motors or hydraulics. Traction elevators Tall buildings typically use an electric drive motor to move a cable attached to the elevator car at one end and a counterweight at the other. The cable is suspended over a pulley which attaches to the motor…
W. Edwards Deming is a giant figure in the realm of quality management. In the aftermath of the second world war, Japanese companies turned to Deming, an industrial expert, for his input on creating top quality products. These same companies, including Toyota and Sony, rebuilt the Japanese economy and became global competitors, besting many American…
“There is no such thing as fun for the whole family.” Jerry Seinfeld …but if forced to watch something with the whole family, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee isn’t the worst thing. I’ve googled and can’t figure out if Jerry said that CICGC is “the talk show that comes to you” or if it just…
Reflecting on symmetry In researching a recent article on the mirror-swirl intake on the EcoBlue Ford diesel engine, I came across this patent by Ford. The logic of this patent has a lot in common with the EcoBlue mirror-image inlet manifold. Not as symmetrical as I imagined When thinking of a V8 engine, in my…
Kickstarter project We can safely say this Kickstarter project is a success, with $115,000 pledged on an original goal of $11,000. Can the 40 Principles help us identify any innovations here? The Duo Glass is a hand blown 10 oz drinking glass that has double walls for insulation and a matching ice mold. Integrated 1oz…
Ford recently announced its new follow up to its EcoBoost petrol engines, the EcoBlue diesel engine. It contains some 40 Principles thinking. Offset crank By moving the crank 10mm off the center line, the connecting rod is closer to vertical throughout the power stroke, resulting in reduced friction and wear due to side loads on…
This is an inspiring example of Principle 26 – Copying. I saw a young woman at York University on one of these hands free knee crutches making great time walking down the sidewalk. This kind of hands free knee crutch appears to be inspired by prosthetics. While taking the weight off the lower leg, it acts…
Announced in September, 2017, revamped versions of this Komatsu dumper truck will be the largest electric vehicle in the world, with a whopping 45 ton empty weight and a battery pack with 700 kWh capacity. Toiling in a Swiss cement quarry, the truck will transport material down from a mountain ridge into a valley. Every…
In a 2014 press release, Daimler AG, the maker of Mercedes-Benz cars, announced that its employees were free to have their email automatically deleted when they were on vacation. Said a Daimler representative, “Our employees should relax on holiday and not read work-related emails.” The sender will receive an alert saying that their email will…
Yesterday’s Falcon Heavy launch was an amazing (if not unblemished) success. In the glow of this event it is possible to forget that SpaceX was at risk of failing as a venture as recently as 2008. At that time, Wired interviewed Musk after its third high profile failure, when a Falcon 1 second stage failed…
So bridge and tunnel The Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel connects the city of Hampton on the Virginia Peninsula with the City of Norfolk. Its 3.5 mile length is divided into two lengths of bridge and a tunnel in the middle. The middle tunnel section is to open up a vital shipping lane which includes traffic from…
Getting the creative juices flowing In this blog I have so far focused on the use of the 40 Principles as a systematic method of inspiring inventive problem solutions. There are many, including Marily Oppezzo, is a postdoctoral research fellow in cardiovascular disease at the Stanford Prevention Research Center, who has examined the issue from another…
Paging Dr. Spaceman Elon Musk isn’t setting out to change the world. He has bigger ambitions. He wants to change the destiny of the human race by making it interplanetary. First step, prove that Mars can be colonized. To that end, Musk’s company SpaceX took a bold step forward with the test flight of its…
The Owens-Corning Company produced the first fibreglass insulation in 1938. While fibreglass fibres are naturally transparent, fibreglass batts are held together with a binder that can be dyed. In 1979, Owens-Corning licensed the Pink Panther character from the United Artists movie as its marketing mascot and coloured its product to match. The company trademarked the unique…
Malcolm Gladwell’s TED talk “Choice, Happiness and Spaghetti Sauce” is a quick summary of psychophysicist Howard Moskowitz’s experiments on food and happiness. In his spaghetti experiments in the 1980s, Mowskowitz found that the data clearly divided American’s preferences into three groups, which Gladwell described as “people who like their sauce plain, people who like their sauce…
All wet One of the main complaints about umbrellas is that when you close them the water runs down the handle. Take getting into a car for an example. You duck in, holding the umbrella aloft and try to close it, so you have to open the car door and pull the umbrella closed. Now…
A dish best served cold SpaceX uses supercooled, “deep cryogenic” liquid oxygen, or LOX, to propel its Falcon 9 rockets. This is colder than more commonly used liquid oxygen which is chilled only to its condensation temperature. Principle 35 – Parameter Change The advantage is that the oxidizer is more dense, allowing SpaceX to cram more onto their rocket.…
In an earlier post I speculated about alternatives to ancillary propellant systems for main propellant ullage (ensuring that fuel and oxidizer are available at the pickups in the main tanks). Another alternative has been identified by the Aerospace Club of the Vanderbilt School of Engineering. In this article they describe the use of baffles within the…
Tweel nice Conventional pneumatic tires use air pressure to maintain their shape and resistance to weight and driving forces yet also cushion the vehicle from road imperfections. Principle 29 – Pneumatics and Hydraulics Michelin has developed an airless tire called the Tweel. This is a merging of tire and wheel into an integrated unit. Principle 5…
A girl walks into a bar (of chocolate) If you have ever used a rotary phone you probably remember this Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup commercial featuring a girl walking down the street with an open jar of peanut butter, as one did in 1981. If not you probably imagined The Family Guy made it up. Now…
In this video, Rick Spina, the executive chief engineer of crossovers at GM discusses how his team shaved 300 pounds from the Buick Enclave. Challenge your engineers Put money on it. For example, set a metric that says saving x weight is worth y dollars. That lets engineers pursue strategies that may be more expensive…
Boulevard Fransisco Medina Ascencio Puerta Vallarta’s main road is called the Boulevard Fransisco Medina Ascencio. It runs from the airport through the Hotel Zone and ends before downtown in the south. Northbound and southbound lanes are divided by a strip of grass with palm trees. On either side run four lanes of traffic, which are…
Ah, the glamour of international travel. I thought this was cool. This is a package of toilet paper we picked up at the nearby Walmart on our vacation in Puerto Vallarta. Notice that the inner rolls are flattened to reduce the overall packaging size. I’d never seen this before. Since toilet paper is lightweight it’s…
Walking the Malecon boardwalk in Puerto Vallarta, Carmela and I saw these amazing birds diving into the water, beak first, hunting for food. It was amazing to see how well they could tuck in their wings and plunge into the water with nary a splash. This gives the birds the advantage of surprise against the…
Canada has summer too, eh I talked about how air conditioners worked in a previous post. Living in Canada, if houses have air conditioning they are usually tied into a central forced air heating system. Principle 5 – Merging The same fan, thermostat, and set of ducts and vents can be used for cooling or heating. Principle…
Rejecting heat Typical air conditioners use a pump to compress refrigerant. This compression makes the refrigerant very hot, making it easier to reject the heat in a heat exchanger to the outside air. As the hot gas is cooled it becomes a liquid. The compressor and this heat exchanger are the condensing unit. The now…
As I lay idly by the pool of my La Marina condo in Puerto Vallarta, I ask myself why the trunks of the palm trees are painted white. My research found that although palm trees are common in Mexico they benefit from a little help defending themselves against the blistering sun. Principle 32 – Colour Changes It…
“Did you ever notice that the first piece of luggage on the carousel never belongs to anyone?” Erma Bombeck Miss you already, Puerto Vallarta Carmela and I just returned from a romantic vacation in Mexico’s Puerto Vallarta. While we went all carry-on for the flight from Toronto there, we checked a bag for the return…
Rite Press, The ‘No Mess’ French Press, is a Kickstarter project with $122,000 USD pledged of $20,000 USD goal, so clearly the team behind it on are onto something. Patented innovation Standard French presses can be difficult to clean as the grounds get pushed to the bottom of the press. Rite Press promises to make…
Electric fuel pump New Zealand’s company Rocket Lab has an Electron rocket that uses a similar layout to SpaceX’s Falcon rocket. Both have a nine engine first stage and a single engine second stage. Both use liquid oxygen and RP-1, a refined form of kerosene. The most notable difference is scale – the Falcon is…
When the M178 AMG V8 biturbo engine came out, it was a dramatic improvement over its predecessor. Its features showcase Inventive Principles. Lower displacement The new engine is 4.0 litres in displacement, compared with its 6.2-liter M156/159 predecessor, a whopping 35% reduction. Principle 35 – Parameter Change With improvements listed below, the new engine is…
Dodge’s SRT Demon Challenger makes fast lap times the old fashioned way: big displacement, big supercharger, big tires. But it has some 21st century tricks up its bulging fender flares, too. The SRT Power Chiller A common problem with high powered engines is the enormous demands for cooling. Some cars can’t keep up and the…
Prompted by the aggressive moves of Tesla Motors, the news is full of full-line car manufacturers announcing electric vehicles in the near future. One could easily conclude that the electric future is already written and that the internal combustion engine (ICE) will soon be put out to pasture. Even so, companies are still labouring to…
“With the avalanche of new products, new technologies and new ways of working, employees are going to have to become more creative in order to benefit from these changes. “Robots may help us get to where we want to be faster, but they can’t be as creative as humans (yet).” World Economic Forum senior writer,…
Audi is working with Noonee, a Swiss startup which produces the “Chairless Chair” – pictured above. It allows the worker to lower herself to the right height for the job without strain on her legs. Meanwhile, Ford is testing a shoulder supporting vest (pictured above) by Ekso Bionics that makes it easier for workers who…
Elon Musk named his car company Tesla in honour of Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American best known for his contributions to the design of modern alternating current electric systems. Tesla (the man) developed the AC induction motor design that Tesla (the company) used in their first roadster, their current (pun!) Model S and Model X. It…
The Chevy introduced the next generation Silverado last week and it comes with some interesting innovations. Composite leaf springs The 2019 Silverado will include a second-stage composite (Principle 40 – Composite Materials) leaf spring for a smoother ride that adjusts better to changes in load. Power tailgate The vehicle boats a pickup-truck first, a powered…
This post examines some of Steve Jobs’s application of Principles to building the Apple company. It draws background from this Harvard Business Review article, The Real Leadership Lessons of Steve Jobs. Minimizing clutter Steve Jobs was focused on minimizing clutter. This means removing extraneous elements (Principle 2 – Taking Out). When the iPhone was being developed…
The majority of Principles seem to have a vector, e.g. Segmentation says break it into segments while Merging says put bits together. Some Principles don’t have an opposite among other Principles. This includes Cheap Short-Living Objects which suggests changing something reusable into something disposable, not the other way round. TRIZ Journal wrestled with this phenomenon in…
As I write this the Toronto area is enjoying a brief winter warm spell – it’s only freezing! Two weeks ago we saw temperatures around 20 degrees celsius below freezing. My house, like most newer homes in Canada, is heated with a high-efficiency, or condensing furnace. High-efficiency furnaces can achieve from 89% to 98% fuel efficiency.…
“To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels. Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight and won’t fall on your head.” The Boring Company FAQ The Boring Company intends to fix traffic congestion by boring beneath cities. Unlike roads, a network of tunnels…
Multiple light bulb moments The light bulb is often used as a symbol of inspiration, perhaps because of so many ideas that went into creating the light bulb and its impact on modern life. The light bulb wasn’t so much invented as much as improved over time by various people and organizations. Thomas Edison wasn’t…
“The cure for Apple is not cost-cutting. The cure for Apple is to innovate its way out of its current predicament.” Steve Jobs The innovation already exists Steve Jobs was a strong advocate for innovation and the contribution a broad set of life experiences could make to creativity. Jobs’s view is supported by Genrich Altshuller‘s…
Never be threatened with unemployment Take some comfort from the man who developed the 40 Inventive Principles: “The world is endless, the universe inexhaustible, and the human brain will never be threatened with unemployment.” Genrich Altshuller That’s why its called luggage It is a common worry among those who seek to invent something new. And…
One motor per wheel The notion of having one motor per wheel in an electric vehicle like a Tesla has been mooted and debated. The consensus seems to be that the pros (electronic authority over torque vectoring – no mechanical bits required, eliminating the weight of a differential) are outweighed by the cons (additional cost…
In Bill Hammack’s Youtube video, the ingenious design of the aluminum beverage can is revealed. It’s amazing how many Inventive Principles are applied in such a humble, everyday object. The can The aluminum can begins life as a round disc which is repeatedly pressed into a successively narrower cylindrical cup shape. This cup is deliberately made…
Belted alternator starter (BAS) hybrid systems first appeared on GM’s 2007 Saturn Vue Green Line. BAS systems combine the roles of starts and alternators into a single motor like conventional hybrid systems, but instead of linking directly to the crankshaft, they are linked to the engine by a belt. This makes it possible to integrate…
In this TEDx talk, Michael Rubenstein, a research scientist, introduces the “motion microscope,” a video-processing tool that amplifies changes in motion and colour. This technique makes subtle motions visible such as the change of colour of a person’s skin as blood is pumped by the heart. Using a high speed camera, the technique can even…
Using a neural net to detect rain using cameras (no dedicated rain or sun sensors). Computers are very patient. https://t.co/YM0tQ6vLOV — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 3, 2018 Using systems already in the car New, well-optioned cars often include a dedicated rain sensor to turn on the wipers automatically. Tesla has held off adding that feature,…
In his YouTube video Grady Hillhouse explains “Dirt is probably the cheapest and simplest construction material out there, but it’s not very strong compared to other choices. Luckily geotechnical engineers have developed a way to strengthen earthen materials with almost no additional effort…” The secret is Principle 1 – Segmentation. To prevent a soil structure from…
The 2018 Audi A8 features an active suspension that will lift its wheels over road imperfections, and dynamically resist sway, dive and squat. The A8’s magic trick is that its sensors can detect imminent side impacts and quickly lift the side of the car that will be hit. This raises the floor to meet the…
The Whirlpool washer shown includes a built-in faucet to permit spot cleaning of clothes by hand. This is clever because it applies Principle 5 – Merging to encompass one of the main functions of a laundry tub in a washing machine and because it applies Principle 6 – Universality by taking advantage of the fact…
“When I finish with my cereal, I put the bowl away with the spoon in it. Why go to a separate drawer to get a spoon every morning? I’m going to need it, leave it there. How often am I going to use that bowl and not need the spoon that goes with it? I’ll…
On February 19, 2018, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched without supervision from a Air Force Mission Flight Control Officer. Instead, an on-board automated system monitored the rocket to ensure it stayed within its intended trajectory, ready to issue a self-destruct order if it veered off course. This is a first in US space launch…
“Engine failure modes are minimized by eliminating separate subsystems where appropriate. For example, the first-stage thrust vector control system pulls from the high-pressure rocket-grade kerosene system, rather than using a separate hydraulic fluid and pressurization system. Using fuel as the hydraulic fluid eliminates potential failures associated with a separate hydraulic system and with the depletion…
“The wiring harness on Model S is about 3 kilometers in length. The wire harness on Model 3 is 1.5 kilometers in length. The wiring harness on Model Y will be 100 meters. And that’s a redundant wiring harness.” Elon Musk, Q1 2017 earnings call While Tesla is still struggling to ramp up production of…
In one of his Practical Engineering YouTube videos, Grady Hillhouse describes the phenomenon of water hammer. When the inertia of moving water is dissipated as the flow of water is interrupted suddenly, it can cause a severe shock. In some homes this manifests itself as banging pipes when water flow is stopped quickly by closing…
Any any parent knows, the baby will always fall asleep in the car and then stay up all night when you get home. Some parents will even resort to going for a drive with their infant just to rock them to sleep. There’s a nap for that Back in 2017 Ford developed a baby bassinet…
“Each year in the U.S. there are over 1,500 incidents of surgical sponges being left inside patients after surgery resulting in deterioration of the health of the patients or even their deaths.” Zinovy Royzen In his article “Solving a Hundred Year Old Problem“, Zinovy Royzen outlines efforts that have been made to ensure that surgical…
Despite being abandoned in favour of semi-automatic pistols by almost all military and paramilitary outfits around the world, revolvers have their adherents, usually because they are compact and very nearly foolproof, requiring no complicated safety mechanisms yet are always ready to fire with the pull of the trigger. Under a barrel One issue with revolvers…
Continental is working on a new disc brake design for electric vehicles. Getting rusty If electric vehicles are driven moderately, they can rely almost entirely on electrical regeneration (using the motor to slow the car and charging the battery in the process – turning a Blessing into a Disguise). This means that there is a…
Alec Watson is the creator of the YouTube channel “Technology Creations”. His videos are all worth a watch, as they get into the fascinating details of how technology, and sometimes quite old technology, really works. Today I watched his video on how roller coaster design balances the economic need to have a high throughput of…
In his book “The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future” Kevin Kelly makes this provocative prediction of hindsight to come in 2050: Can you imagine how awesome it would have been to be an entrepreneur in 2016? It was a wide-open frontier! You could pick almost any category X and add…
Keeping things in perspective Two point perspective drawing uses lines to create the illusion of space on a flat surface. It’s a fascinating process well described in this YouTube video. The technique involves imposing a horizon line with two vanishing points on it. When drawing horizontal elements, either the left or the right vanishing point…
“Cup Vault is a patented insulating sleeve which utilizes a cutting-edge material that locks in your coffee’s temperature for up to 2 times longer.” Cup Vault This clever idea is an excellent example of Principle 6 – Universality, making a component of a product or service perform multiple functions. In this case, the Cup Vault can hold…
Unilid is a set of silicone lids that are said to form a secure airtight seal on multiple sizes and shapes of bottles, containers – even the open end of cut produce. It is an excellent example of Inventive Principle 6 – Universality, to make a component of a product or service perform multiple functions.…
I recently caught this Scott Galloway interview with the founder of Charity: Water, Scott Harrison. As the name implies, Charity: Water is dedicated to helping people in developing countries get access to clean water. The cause is vital, as they say on their site: 663 million people in the world live without clean water. In the interview,…
Applying “other way round” thinking to architecture Number 13 of the 40 Inventive Principles of Problem Solving is “the other way round”. Amidst much eye-rolling, Google has introduced the concept of the “landscraper”, a skyscraper turned on its side so that rather than being tall, it is wide, a building turned “the other way round.”…
1 or 0 Menu Items Using the Netflix menus with nothing but a TV remote could be a frustrating process, but Netflix has done a great job of keeping clicks to a minimum while making things intuitively obvious. One example of this is adding or removing shows from your watch list. When at the show…
Is that an 8 pin charge port on the Tesla Semi? Many sites, including this one, have speculated on the unusual configuration of the charge port visible on the Tesla Semi at the recent reveal event. It may be that this approach is being used to charge four electrically separate battery packs simultaneously, multiplying the…
Foldable Windshield Confirmed The rumours are true and the new 2018 Jeep Wrangler comes with a foldable windshield. All it takes is the removal of the wipers (a plastic cap and a bolt each side) and four bolts holding the windshield into its frame. This compares favourably to the hour or more it would take…