Peter A. Koen

Providing Clarity and A Common Language to the “Fuzzy Front End”

OVERVIEW: Eight companies that were Process Effectiveness Network members of the Industrial Research Institute attempted to collectively determine the best practices of the Fuzzy Front End (FFE) of innovation. Comparing one companys processes to those of another proved insurmountable because there was neither a common language nor clear and consistent definition of the key elements of the front end. As a result, the group developed a theoretical construct, defined as the New Concept Development (NCD) model, in order to provide a common language and insights on the front end activities. The model consists of three key parts: five front end elements, the engine that powers the elements, and external influencing factors. Proficiency of the FFE was evaluated at 19 companies by using the NCD model. Highly innovative companies were found to be more proficient in the FFE and in several elements of the NCD model.

Idea Generation: Who Has The Most Profitable Ideas

AbstractIdea generation has been recognized as an important part of the front end of the innovation process. Few studies have empirically examined where the most profitable ideas come from or the linkages between the degree and sources of innovation. Data on 34 projects suggests that the sources of ideas depend on the degree of innovativeness. Interaction between the customer and the engineer/scientist is the most important source of radical innovations. Senior R&D management plays a crucial role for generating platform innovations, though the ideas for such innovations can also originate from immediate customers like distributors.

Emerging biomedical and advanced applications of time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy.

Time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy is presently regarded as a research tool in biochemistry, biophysics, and chemical physics. Advances in laser technology, the development of long-wavelength probes, and the use of lifetime-based methods, are resulting in the rapid migration of timeresolved fluorescence to the clinical chemistry lab, the patients bedside, and even to the doctors office and home health care. Additionally, time-resolved imaging is now a reality in fluorescence microscopy and will provide chemical imaging of a variety of intracellular analytes and/or cellular phenomena. Future horizons of state-of-the-art spectroscopy are also described. Two photon-induced fluorescence provides an increased information content to time-resolved data. Two photoninduced fluorescence, combined with fluorescence microscopy and time-resolved imaging, promises to provide detailed three-dimensional chemical imaging of cells. Additionally, it has recently been demonstrated that the pulses from modern picosecond lasers can be used to quench and/or modify the excited-state population by stimulated emission since the stimulated photons are directed along the quenching beam and are not observed. The phenomenon of light quenching should allow a new class of multipulse time-resolved fluorescence experiments, in which the excited-state population is modified by additional pulses to provide highly oriented systems.

Technology Maps: Choosing the Right Path

ABSTRACTTechnology maps, in a similar way to road maps, provide the technologist with a pathway to guide them around the obstacles of competitors, the rapid pace of technological change and the constant trade-off between ever increasing customer expectations. This paper introduces two new maps: an enabling technology and a source of technology map. The first provides the technologist with a planning tool which can be used to simultaneously evaluate the companys required technology skill level, its relative competitive position over time and the maturity of the technology. This map provides key insight into future hiring decisions and allows the company to visualize the strengths and weaknesses relative to competition. The second map is useful for evaluating simultaneously the source of the technology, whether it is internal or external to the company, and the technology maturity level. This map provides key insights so that the technologist may focus on technologies which provide competitive advantage to...

Emerging biomedical applications of time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy

Time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy is presently regarded as a research tool in biochemistry, biophysics, and chemical physics. Advances in laser technology, the development of long-wavelength probes, and the use of lifetime-based methods are resulting in the rapid migration of time-resolved fluorescence to the clinical chemistry lab, to the patients bedside, to flow cytometers, to the doctors office, and even to home health care. Additionally, time-resolved imaging is now a reality in fluorescence microscopy, and will provide chemical imaging of a variety of intracellular analytes and/or cellular phenomena. In this overview paper we attempt to describe some of the opportunities available using chemical sensing based on fluorescence lifetimes, and to predict those applications of lifetime-based sensing which are most likely in the near future.

Managing the Front End of Innovation—Part I: Results From a Three-Year Study

OVERVIEW: An IRI Research-on-Research project looked at effective practices in the front end of innovation through a study of practices in 197 large US-based companies over a three-year period. The research team used a holistic framework that evaluated front-end activities through the lens of the New Concept Development (NCD) model. Analysis of the data revealed that organizational attributes—senior management commitment, vision, strategy, resources, and culture—were of most importance to front-end performance, explaining 53 percent of the variance in performance among participating companies. All of the organizational attributes had correlations ranging from 15 percent for senior management commitment to 24 percent for vision, which suggests that all of the organizational attributes are important to a companys front-end performance.

Business models outside the core

OVERVIEW: Leaders at incumbent firms increasingly recognize that in order to sustain growth and protect their companies from disruption, they must innovate “outside the core”—beyond the familiar markets and competencies on which the company has built its existing business. Outside-the-core innovation projects, which target new customers or non-consumers in new markets, can lead to high growth. However, they are also very risky: the odds of success for outside-the-core projects rapidly drop with each step outside the core. In a study of six outside-the-core projects using a business model perspective, we found that, contradictory to common wisdom, the likelihood of failure is not related to how many steps the project is outside the core. Instead, the risk of failure is influenced by false assumptions about the distribution channels, cost structure, unit margins, and velocity elements of the innovation, which are often carried over from the incumbent business model.

Lean Startup in Large Enterprises Using Human-Centered Design Thinking: A New Approach for Developing Transformational and Disruptive Innovations

Large companies are innovative along the sustaining trajectory, but fail in the development of transformational and disruptive innovation. Two of the reasons for this failure are that transformational and disruptive innovations require a new business model and lack a unifying development process comparable to stage gate. The lean startup process represents a new paradigm which allows companies to dramatically shorten the time needed to 1) create transformational and disruptive innovation: 2) pivot to a new business model or 3) stop the project. However, most of the published examples are from small start-ups. Large companies, based on implementation experiences from over 30 large companies, typically make the following mistakes: 1) incorrect problem definition; 2) confuse solution attributes and the solution; 3) use the business model canvas; 4) focus on the wrong customers; and 5) fail to embrace early prototyping. Best practices to avoid these implementation mistakes will be discussed in this paper.