Conference presentations reveal benefits and challenges of “Open Innovation”

John Schober, Director of Innovation, MAGNET

Last week, I attended the CoDev 2012 Conference in San Diego–which had as its focus the topics of Co-Development and Open Innovation. This was the eleventh annual such gathering, sponsored by The Management Roundtable and the Product Development Management Association. The conference’s tagline is: “Achieving Higher Open Innovation Returns While Managing Risk, Cost & Uncertainty.”

Open innovation is the practice of looking outside your organization for expertise and/or ideas that can help you pursue new products or new business models.

I expected to hear about a long history of success stories from many of the companies presenting case studies which included large firms such as Corning, Avery Dennison, and Kraft Foods.

What I actually heard was that a disciplined, systemic approach to open innovation that has full backing of the organization is more of an aspiration than a reality right now, as these firms are still working on how to make it work for them.

It should not surprise me that these firms don’t quite have it right because open innovation is difficult, even for large firms.  Getting your organization to make innovation a key element of your business strategy is difficult enough in its own right, and figuring out how to systemically involve others from outside your organization only adds another level of complexity.

The principles of open innovation are definitely worth incorporating into your growth strategies, notwithstanding the challenges described above.

You don’t have to have a formal open innovation program to benefit from outside expertise and exposure to alternate ways of thinking. These benefits include potential new pathways to growth and in many cases a lower total cost of your innovation initiative.

Send me an email if you’d like to learn more about open innovation, as I can share with you some of the presentations from the CoDev 2012 conference.

Wanted: Manufacturers seeking double-digit growth

Robert Schmidt, Senior Consultant, MAGNET

Are you a manufacturer that:

• Has ideas for new products or innovative processes that could deliver double-digit growth?
• Needs help in developing and realizing your growth potential?
• Is ready to work closely with experts through the entire commercialization process, from vetting to launch?
• Wants to be “Meaningfully Unique” in a commodity world?

If your answer to all these questions is “Yes,” we at MAGNET want to reach out to you.

This year, MAGNET is formally launching a comprehensive new program called Partnership for Regional Innovation Services to Manufacturers (PRISM). This is a long name for a program with a simple purpose: help small- to medium-size manufacturers in Northeast Ohio thrive in today’s global marketplace.

PRISM is a new business model and natural evolution of MAGNET’s original mandate. The concept is simple: Help manufacturers realize their growth plans faster, cheaper, and with less risk while creating a continuous flow from innovation thru launch. With PRISM, participating manufacturers will be able to leverage all Northeast Ohio’s many regional assets to create sustained manufacturing growth for Ohio.

PRISM clients will have easy access to MAGNET’s well-documented 4-D innovation process, an entire network of partners, including economic development organizations, government agencies, universities, service providers — and perhaps most significantly, to their peers: other collaborating manufacturers.

To become one of a few selected manufacturers in the inaugural PRISM program, call my colleague contact MAGNET to confidentially discuss your growth ideas and business plans. Call us toll free at (800) 669-2267.

Submitted by Bob Schmidt, Senior Consultant, MAGNET; voice: (216) 432-5346

MAGNET Engineer leads sustainability class at Kent State University

Aaron Marshall, Product Development Manager, MAGNET Product Design & Development

MAGNET’s Product Development Manager, Aaron Marshall, has been instructing a graduate level class that runs this semester at Kent State University, located in Kent, Ohio.  The goal of the class is to teach students how to come up with ways to make products more sustainable, while using a program called Sustainable Minds.

“Sustainable Minds is a software that allows you to create a baseline of your products,” Marshall says. “It helps the students analyze how sustainable products are.”

This Life Cycle Design II class allows the students to think critically in order for them to come up with unique ideas to improve, redesign and modify components in order to make a product achieve certain standards.

“I’m teaching them how to think differently and how to evaluate a product from the sustainable design standpoint,” says Marshall.

Their final project of the semester will require the students to come up with corporate sustainability goals and then redesign a product to achieve those goals.

Find out more about the MAGNET Product Design & Development group at www.magnetpdd.org

SMART Center’s Chris Mathers Visits The Incubator at MAGNET

Chris Mather, Managing Director, SMART Center

On Tuesday, January 24, tenants of The Incubator at MAGNET had a networking meeting here in the MAGNET Seminar Room.

For this month’s event, they welcomed Chris Mather, Managing Director of the SMART Commercialization Center for Microsystems, located at Lorain County Community College (LCCC).

In 2010, LCCC received a $5.5 million grant from the Wright Center for Sensor Systems Engineering administered by Cleveland State University to grow new jobs, businesses and educational programs in the high growth industry of sensor technologies.

Mather introduced our tenants to the capabilities of the SMART Center. The SMART Center offers back-end packaging solutions for companies who manufacture sensors, micro-electrical mechanical systems (MEMS) and other silicon-fabbed devices. This morning, our Incubator tenants learned about how the Center can help them with chip packaging, surface mounting, reliability testing, and inspection issues.

Mather also shared that, while the center is currently housed in around a 3500 sq.ft. space, ground was recently broken for a brand new 35,000 sq.ft. facility attached to the LCCC’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center.

Mather noted that the SMART Center has been recognized by a national expert as “one of the top centers of it’s kind in the country.” And he emphasized that the SMART Center is “open for business” to all area manufacturers, not just startups.

The SMART Center is just one of Northeast Ohio’s many great resources for our technology-focused Incubator clients. One of our goals at MAGNET is to help our Incubator clients learn about all the resources available to them.

–Contributed by Dave Crain, Director Entrepreneurial Services, MAGNET

New Innovation Program for Smaller Manufacturers Offers NASA Expertise, Low-Interest Loans

If you’re a manufacturer with less than $50 million in annual revenue, AND you are located in Cleveland or Cuyahoga County, you are eligible to apply for an exciting new program MAGNET announced on January 3, 2012.

Subject matter experts from NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland can be made available for free to help you solve a technical challenge you may have with a new or existing product. To help with any other costs that might arise in solving the problem, Cuyahoga County and the City of Cleveland have allocated  $450,000 in low interest loans that companies selected for this program can utilize.

A FREE briefing session explaining all the details will be held at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday, January 25 at MAGNET headquarters in downtown Cleveland. Register online or contact Linda Barita at (216) 391-7766. For complete details, visit www.magnetwork.org/nasa.

Media Coverage: NASA Glenn teams up with Cleveland, Cuyahoga County for small-business loan program, by Robert Schoenberger, Cleveland Plain Dealer, January 3, 2012

Continuous Improvement Part 5: Methods and Tools for Healthcare in Northeast Ohio

Mike O'Donnell is a Senior Consultant for MAGNET Client Services

For a continuous improvement project to be effective and sustainable, it requires a systems approach involving the entire organization. Management should guide the organization in four fundamental areas to ensure success:

1. Purpose: Maximizing customer value;
2. Process: Continually improving speed and defects for factory and office;
3. People: Involving people in improving the process, providing knowledge, and tools;  and
4. Sustainable Culture: Encouraging change, communicating success, and results.

Here’s an example of how this systems approach to continuous improvement can yield great results, even in industries seemingly unrelated to manufacturing:

During the past several years, MAGNET has worked with healthcare institutions in Northeast Ohio to refine best practice techniques for implementing Lean and other continuous improvement tools in the healthcare environment. The Lean approach’s effectiveness has long been proved in many other industries, including manufacturing, services, business/office processes, and information technology.

For example, in 2009 and 2010, MAGNET partnered with the Humility of Mary Health Partners (HMHP) in Youngstown, Ohio, to pilot a Lean continuous improvement project for HHMP’s three facilities that employ more than 5,000 workers. As a result, in 2010 alone, HMHP realized $1.7 million in savings from reduced overtime.

The HMHP project clearly demonstrated that a Lean and continuous improvement approach is effective in the healthcare environment and delivers significant return on investment.

The method that MAGNET consultants have utilized at HMHP and other healthcare providers in the region is based on acknowledged Lean principles. Key elements include:

• Strategy development with senior management;
• Chartering teams to analyze and execute improvements in areas identified by management; and
• Developing a plan with management to sustain improvements and results in their businesses.

MAGNET’s method includes 10 essential steps:

1. Education on Lean tools, their applications, and barriers to success;
2. Identify critical processes, Lean methods, and metrics for improvement;
3. Prioritize and select key processes for improvement;
4. Develop the case for change, and communicate to the organization;
5. Develop team charters, establish, and facilitate teams for analyzing and implementing solutions in their designated processes;
6. Use Lean tools analyze the current state and develop a future state plan, typically using value stream mapping;
7. Develop an action plan and manage the plan with regular status reviews to implement the improvements;
8. Implemented tracking/reporting tools and education for managers to enable real-time monitoring of process metrics;
9. Ensure public recognition of each team’s success; and
10. Maintain management support for the change process and continuous improvement efforts.

“HMHP is proud of the fiscal responsibility we have displayed in this unprecedented effort and we thank our many employees for working together, with support from MAGNET, to reduce our overtime costs while simultaneously maintaining the excellence in patient care and service that we are known for,” said Robert Shroder, HMHP President and Chief Executive Officer in an HHMP press release dated May 10, 2010.

We at MAGNET are interested in hearing about you and your organization’s continuous improvement results, and the effectiveness of the  methods and tools you use. Comment below or email me at michael.odonnell@magnetwork.org. Let us know what is working and what is not.

Lead by Example!

MAGNET Executive Vice President Fatima Weathers

As a growth strategy, innovation is not a buzzword that will pass with time.

Successful companies have systems for harvesting and vetting ideas that can lead to growth and competitive advantage. Such systems produce a steady flow of ideas that result in innovative products, processes, or services.

Everything from new products to talent recruitment requires a culture of innovation that permeates every aspect of the firm. Innovation is what differentiates winners from those struggling to keep their heads above water.

High quality and lean operations are not a competitive advantage. They are sine qua non business fundamentals that must be maintained just to stay in the game. Managing the fundamentals won’t move you to the head of the class. Smart manufacturers know this.

So, how does a company establish an innovative culture?

Start by implementing a system for gathering ideas from all corners of the organization and from other organizations.Set goals and establish a process to measure what happens from idea generation to idea implementation. If you can’t figure it out, get help! Invest in capital and talent that will position your organization to accelerate innovations.

It’s time for bold and deliberate steps that lead to double-digit growth.  That is, unless you’re just trying to keep the doors open and the seat warm until you can get the gold watch and sail into the sunset.

Lead By Example!