Patent Championships 2009

Last year IBM won the most number of patents. That is a championship the big Blue has won for the 17th time in a row! IBM has this image of being a very conservative company. That has changed a lot in the recent past. It has gone through couple of transformations. While it was previously synonymous with big iron, it earns a large part of its revenues through software services now! So, looks can be really misleading. Somehow the innovations must run pretty well if they have to manage this for 17 years consecutively! I am sure IBM is still not as casual as a Google or one of the start ups. Yet, this is running the innovation machine so well. There are a couple of really interesting things about the roll of honors. The second in line, Samsung managed to get significantly less number of patents. IBM received 4914 patents while Samsung received 3611 patents.

The other interesting aspect of the list is that out of the top 10 spots, IBM, Microsoft, Intel and HP are the only American companies. The others are from outside the US: the likes of Samsung, Canon, Panasonic Toshiba, Sony and Seiko Epson. A couple of trends become obvious. Things are going global without a doubt! And companies think that patents are an important tool in the global playing field.

More on Innovation

As I was writing the last post the weekly newsletter "Working Knowledge" rom Harvard business school arrived. It had an item about how every generation of managers learns about importance of innovation over again. Item was appropriately titled "Lessons not learned about Innovation". Why does this happen! Tom Peter's book appeared almost a decade back and was such a rage. One would think managers would have learnt the lessons and importance of innovation would become a tenet of management and be part of the standard curriculum! Not so apparently!! See earlier post to get an inkling of why that happens.

This article had several references to back publications. My interest was at a peak anyway, so I dug around. Some of the findings are as follows.

1. Mar 19, 2001, Stefan Thomke, The Essentials for Enlightened Experimentation
This appeared exactly 5 years ago. Quick innovation requires change in technological as well as managerial ways. Author comes up with four rules.
a. Organize for rapid experimentation- This is kind of obvious, if we have to find quick solution, we have to experiment and arrive at conclusions fast.
b. Fail early and often but avoid mistakes- Again necessary to avoid wastage of time in following wrong tracks.
c.Anticipate and exploit early information- Any early conclusion about direction that can be taken, should be take.
d. Combine old and new technology- Newest technology is not necessarily the last word.
New technology has made experimentation easier and hence the urgency/velocity required also has increased.
2.Aug 5, 2002, Loren Grey, Understanding The Process Of Innovation
Work of Clayton Christiansen is analysed here. He says the process is important, the "process of innovation and value creation," How to generate sufficient amount of innovative ideas and the ability to choose what to back for the next product. The nalytic approach, the MBA way may uncover niches/gaps in existing product lines in the market. But it takes intuitive leps of faith to create disruptive technology. Unfortunately in most organizations "There's usually some process by which a potentially great idea gets prostituted into something lackluster"(Clayton Christensen)
3.Sep 29, 2003, Rob Austin, Lee Devin,Why Managing Innovation is Like Theater
Rapid experimentation and frequent reconfiguration of the process are essential components of innovation. Team that works towards this ia a lot like a theater troupe. Each individual with unique talent working together towards making the overall play a successful one. In this regard authors feel, "A company of exceptionally talented big stars can ... create a less effective play than one made up of ordinarily talented artists who have, through hard work,learned how to collaborate." Certainly collaboration is the key alright!

Copyright:2006 Debasis Das

Innovation is all!!!

In a recent post on the older "Blogger" blog I had talked about Tom Peter's book "The circle of Innovation". He went on to recommend a process of going about becoming innovation focused. Given that in this era of the internet, distance is dead as well as intermediary is no more useful, businesses need to be really, truly customer focused. Service becomes very important. It becomes necessary to encourage everybody to become a business person. He then virtually owns a piece of the business, logically independent. Since he is able to think as a business person he is required/encouraged to innovate to provide even better service. By extension he is able to focus on innovation that extends the business beyond other "me too" competitors. Supervisors, next level managers then are coordinators for a collection of businesses! Whole concept of business, management needs to be revised.

What triggered this thought processes again was an article that was featured in the Harvard news letter that I get once a week. What's surprising is an article " lessons not learned about Innovation" that appeared on Harvard Business Review on No16,2006. Almost 10 years after the book under discussion! Contention of the author Roberta Moss Kanter is that every generation of managers( a time span of average 6 years) forgets and relearns how to encourage innovation!!! She finds "grand declarations about innovation are followed by mediocre execution that produces anemic results, and innovation groups are quietly disbanded in quiet cost-cutting drives." That really is a mystery! Why do we have to collectively forget and rediscover that innovation is the essence for organizational growth!

Copyright:2006 Debasis Das