Tips For Generating Innovations in Electronic Product Development

Successful organizations, world-wide, realize how important it is to their success to nourish creativity and innovation. Innovation is after all, the vanguard to increased competitiveness. Yes, competitiveness, that all important factor, for companies to be able to weather storms like current economy, globalization as well as rapidly evolving and disruptive technologies. My years of experience in the development of innovative electronic products, innovation challenges have necessitated the gathering and practice of techniques from many arenas.

Here are a few ideas that we have developed in my company. I hope you enjoy the following suggestions, and that they help expand and enable innovation in your organization, too.

Environment for Innovation

To build an environment good for innovation there must be an organizational climate that encourages, supports and rewards innovative effort. Executives must say and show, through incentives, rewards and recognition that the organization needs and will listen to the ideas of every one of its people.

Add Urgency

Capturing markets is urgent for companies - pass it on. Adding a sense of urgency to and making innovation a key to the company's security and growth can generate great new ideas.

Embrace the Obstacles.

It could mean your ideas aren't yet groundbreaking enough to invigorate the organization, let alone capture a market if there is nothing in the way of a new idea. Keep pushing; it is frequently a new approach to major obstacles that ends up resulting in real innovation.

Create Your Own Evaluation Tools.

Create simple tools such as a list of 10 questions of factors to vet your innovations. Have everyone one on the team participate. This lets everyone get in on the action and have buy-in while keeping evaluation costs down. Chances are you're making the evaluation process too easy if more than 1 or 2 out of 20 ideas make it through the gamut.

Find Ways to Nurture Volunteerism.

Many people are willing to give up some of their time for great ideas. Find ways to nurture willingness, it is a powerful asset. Sometimes that means giving volunteers a project they have been interested in, or re-delegating tasks in order to free-up their time so they can help a project that could use their expertise and other times it is as simple as giving them kudos in the company news letter.

Promote it

Within the organization, keep it out in the open instead of a secret project or "skunk works". Secret projects run counter to the idea that everyone can have great ideas. Innovation rarely happens behind closed doors.

Innovation Pipeline

Innovation is not magic. Peter Drucker has called it "hard, focused, purposeful work." Make innovation a permanent part of the everyday process. Build it in to checklists for everyday efforts and carve out time in strategic planning specifically for it. Use tools like an intranet to keep people current on what's new and exciting so that they can contribute too. The company that competes through innovation is one that has made the process of innovation a part of its daily operation.

Begin With Self-Appraisal

It's not enough to wait for others to act; individual initiative is must to initiate the process of innovation. Gather data on what must be changed in order to stimulate innovation and establish priorities, outline actions to build the innovative process in your organization and start! Re-evaluate your innovation outline every year.

Get Outside Help if Necessary

There are plenty of professional groups whose main business, like Advantage Electronic Product Development, is the development of new and innovative products.

Look Right Underneath Your Nose

Every time a team or company believes that its device is about as good as possible, someone else comes out with a better idea or product. Many overlooked discoveries were right beneath their noses. Key discoveries that are frequently overlooked are not necessarily difficult, so question every assumption and look again with a fresh pair of eyes.

Simplify

Keep in mind that technological elegance is simplicity, not complexity. Review ideas and innovations specifically for ways to simplify. Then, consider this simplification idea throughout the full life cycle of the product, manufacturing, upgrades and so forth.

Set Goals For It

People accomplish more when they're trying for goals which are challenging, (even "impossible") and clear, than they do when trying for any other type of goal. Goals drive action directly by affecting what people pay attention to, how hard they work, and how long they work at something. Assigning creativity goals is as effective as other types of goals, such as productivity goals.

"Re Package" Borrowed Ideas

The insufferable cocklebur inspired the idea for Velcro for the space program. Pringles Potato Chips were conceived after seeing wet leaves, which stack compactly without being damaged

Questions like these should be part of any innovation process:

"Where can I find an idea?"

"What ideas can I modify to fit my problem?"

"How is something similar done in nature"

"What else is like this?"

"What have others done?"

Brainstorm

Brainstorming is considered a group technique, but an individual can brainstorm alone. A small group, with 10 or 12 members is recommended. The most effective way to brainstorm is to have everyone leave any though of criticism at the door. Even preposterous ideas have later been groomed into fabulous innovations.

Substitution

Identify the key characteristics, or attributes, of the product. Then think up ways to change, or improve each of these, (called the "Substitution Method" in design engineering). "Disassemble" a product into its various characteristics for example, it functions, physical characteristics size, shape, color. Make a game out of inventing alterations for each of these characteristics and carefully address obstacles.

Innovation doesn't have to be complicated or expensive. Care needs to be taken to ensure your creative strategy evolves in a way that will fit your organization. Then your organization can achieve its creativity objectives. Developing and improving good ideas can net breakthrough advances and the reward these efforts.

Jody Singleton
Advantage Electronic Product Development, Inc
303-410-0292
34 Garden Center
Broomfield, CO 80020

http://Advantage-Dev.com

Electronic Arts's Plan to Get Your Last Gaming Dollar

A scene from EA's Battlefield 3 video game, due out later this year

By Ashlee Vance

A trailer for Battlefield 3, the latest installment of the hit video game franchise, fills the giant screen at a theater used by Electronic Arts (ERTS) to show off its movie-like wares. "You can fly F-18s, Cobra attack choppers, and drive tanks in the same space at the same time!" says EA executive Frank Gibeau over the noise, as realistic-looking soldiers grunt, curse, and shoot their way through a ravaged city. "It's all-out war!" Battlefield 3, due out later this year, is what big-time games aimed at PlayStation 3s (SNE), Xbox 360s (MSFT), and Wiis are supposed to be: engaging, high-production-value spectaculars.

A few minutes later, Gibeau, who oversees EA's nonsports games, enthuses just as much about Battlefield Heroes, which has none of that cinematic stopping power. It's a stripped-down, cartoonish version of the game that EA lets people play for free on a dedicated website. About 7 million people have signed up so far, and many end up spending money on add-ons that spruce up their characters—the same characters they use on their Battlefield console game. During one recent limited-time offer, EA sold 20,000 virtual parrots, at $10 each, that sit on soldiers' shoulders. Over the past year, the company sold $48 million worth of digital goods and services tied to the Battlefield franchise. "In the past, that figure would have been zero dollars," says Gibeau.

EA Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello has been talking up the digital gaming shift for a decade. It wasn't an easy sell. Investors punished the company's stock as they watched EA lose money and talk big without much to show for it. Shares took a dive in late 2008 and have been stuck near $20 a share ever since. Now the strategy seems to be paying off. On May 4, EA reported $833 million in sales of digital goods for the 12 months ending in March, up 46 percent from the year-earlier period. That figure blew away analysts' estimates of about $750 million, with the company now tracing 22 percent of its $3.8 billion in revenue to virtual wares. It expects digital sales to pass $1 billion this year. "Ten years ago, I thought he was a complete idiot," says Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities. "Now he looks like a visionary."

The console business could use a little vision just now. During the 12 months ended in March, Nintendo's profits fell to their lowest level since 2004; Activision Blizzard's (ATVI) once-booming Guitar Hero franchise has been put "on hiatus," according to Activision. Hackers recently turned Sony into the laughingstock of the Internet by breaking into the PlayStation network and forcing its shutdown. Much of the pizazz these days comes from companies that make games for Facebook and smartphones, such as Zynga (maker of FarmVille and CityVille) and Rovio (Angry Birds).

EA's Riccitiello says FarmVille, Angry Birds, and other such games have helped expand the world's population of gamers from about 200million 10 years ago to more than 1 billion today. Gamers aren't just males aged 18 to 34 anymore: Families now discuss tending their virtual farms at the dinner table; middle-aged women while away their free time by hurling birds at pigs. As a result, the console games that used to account for about 80 percent of industry sales now make up 50 percent. "It's not that the console is getting tarred and feathered," Riccitiello says. "These other things are just rising so damned fast."

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