Head-to-Head: Are Customers a Good Source of Innovative Ideas?
"Usually the most innovative products are the things people don't think they need when they come to the marketplace."
--Phil Egan, CEO, Tensar Earth Technologies
Centuries ago in China, workers buried adobe blocks to shore up buildings. In the 1960s steel became the standard. Then, in the 1980s, Tensar Earth Technologies created something new in the world of soil-reinforcement: a polymeric grid as strong as steel and elastic enough to go where no steel had gone before. It was, says CEO Phil Egan, the birth of an industry.
But Tensar's customers didn't know that. "It was like when DuPont came up with nylon," says Egan. "People didn't know what to do with it, so DuPont had to come up with applications -- like hosiery."
For the past two decades, Tensar has been busy dreaming up applications for its "geogrids": in retaining walls, for building on top of closed landfills, and for holding up the roofs of underground mines. Many ideas emerge from twice-a-year off-sites where leaders "totally blue-sky for two days," says Egan. "In our last session we had 43 ideas. We culled that down to 18. Of the 18 I'm hoping to get 5 or 6 gold nuggets."
Tensar also has an applications group that "identifies the applications before customers come to us," says Egan. "Then we have to demonstrate for the customers the value these new technologies create."
"Our new ideas come from sending our engineers out to customers and letting them roll around in the mud together."
--George Calhoun, chairman, Isco International
George Calhoun sums up the source of his company's great ideas in one word: customers. Isco International makes front-end systems and filters for wireless communications. The company has customers worldwide, and Calhoun, the chairman and former CEO, makes sure they get face-to-face attention from engineers. "One of our best people is in China now," says Calhoun. "He'll come back with observations that will stimulate new thoughts about how to design our systems." Ideas that are captured during customer visits are submitted in a "trip report," so nothing slips into the cracks.
Calhoun says that customer input produced one of Isco's most important new products: a filter that eliminates in-band interference on wireless transmissions. It's not something that would likely have come straight from the lab. "Not to demean pure research," says Calhoun, "but pure research is a very small part of what we do."
Product Development: If You Come, They Will Build It
Foster-Miller Inc. develops products and production equipment for private- and public-sector customers. Its creations range from a robot that labors in nuclear facilities to a net that's used by police to trap fleeing perps. Inc asked president and chief operating officer William Ribich about the challenges of inventing in so many different areas.
What questions do you ask yourselves when you're starting a project?
We start with the question, What are we really trying to do? That means we must stand back and define the objective in the broadest terms. For example, instead of saying "We need a new syringe," it may be better to say "We need a means for introducing a drug below the skin."
What kinds of problems and technical challenges do you find the most intriguing?
When you're involved with both product design and production-machinery design, there are many more avenues for really innovative solutions.
How do you know whether a project demands genuine innovation?
We look at the state of the art. In the case of manufacturing equipment, we search for standard or modified standard equipment. In product development we want to know what existing components or known technology we can use. Because we work in many industries, we can transfer technology from one to another. For example, we used metallurgical heat-treating technology to develop a candy-manufacturing process.
If you hit a wall, how do you shake things up to get at new possibilities?
We bring in more or different people to work on it. We have 202 degreed engineers, so we have a lot to draw on. In addition, we have a worldwide network of university professors, independent consultants, and other companies with whom we have confidentiality and patent-rights agreements. So if we're faced with a temporary blank wall, we shake our tree of resources.
Leigh Buchanan is a senior editor at Inc. Thea Singer is an associate editor. Christopher Caggiano, Ilan Mochari, Kate O'Sullivan, and Tahl Raz also contributed to this story.
The Innovation Factor
Built to Invent
Inside the Idea Mill
A Field Guide to Innovation
Time Travelers
The Innovation 50
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