"Analogies should be avoided when we talk about disruptive innovations."
What changes were there in these years in technical knowledge?
At the beginning of the century efforts were focused on productivity, then in the middle of the century on Quality / Safety and these days on Innovation.
But also until 30 years ago, basic science and technology were quite separate fields.
Research in Basic Sciences, namely: Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics, were independent of the technological development applied to production in the first half of the 20th century.
However, in the last decades and with the new century, knowledge reached such economic importance that this situation changed dramatically.
Today much of the research in Basic Sciences nurtures technologists, and in order to innovate they need in-depth knowledge in these basic Sciences and in particular to develop efficient tools and strategies, of the type of Problem Solving theory known as TRIZ.
We will spend the next few years updating the Internet so that it can carry video, television, video conferencing, telephony, and product advertising and sales, using moving images.
These videos will be in every corner of the web and we will have to conveniently update the equipment and applications.
Sorry, what is TRIZ?
TRIZ comes from the Russian word “ТРИЗ”, an acronym for “Inventive Problem Solving Theory”.
TRIZ is a systematic method to increase creativity, based on the study of patent evolution models and the application of standard solutions of the method to various problems, be they technical, social, administrative, etc. This methodology began in the area of Engineering, product and process design, and service improvement, to spread to other Fields of Knowledge.
A problem is understood as a circumstance in which the current situation does not coincide with certain expectations. This broad definition indicates that technical creativity can be used for almost anything, although the main applications are in companies and in research, where it is used for solving problems of strategy, management or technology.
This theory seeks to obtain low-probability, novel and innovative ideas that would not be accessible otherwise.
TRIZ surprises with the speed and quality of the results obtained and thanks to them important advances have been made and problems of extreme difficulty have been solved in the Basic Sciences and Industries. No other creative method has the extensive number of applications in the Processes, Products and Services that TRIZ has, check it out by researching the files of the Triz journal at www.triz-journal.com.
This problem solving technique is different and unique in its conception since it arises from a different approach, which consists in using the maximum amount of knowledge available on a specific problem and reaching its solution by adapting patents with solutions previously applied to other problems.
TRIZ is the first technique that has been defined as “knowledge-based” and forms part of Knowledge Management, which is, together with Quality and continuous improvement, the basis of the Research, Development and Invention (R&D) departments. + I) of companies.
Altshuller, its creator, discovered that even though the thousands of inventions he analyzed solved different problems in also very different fields, the applied solutions could be obtained from a relatively very small set of invention principles, actually only 40, although finally it is known that there are about 50 inventive principles.
Each inventive principle has been proven in more than 300 world-class patents. TRIZ began being applied in solving technological and scientific problems, but after the immense number of these problems solved in an effective way, today it is the inventive and innovation technique most used by companies, research institutes and universities.
TRIZ is based on eliminating contradictions and it is precisely the contradictions that in all aspects of life reduce efficiency.
Because ultimately a contradiction, be it administrative, technical or physical, is a problem that affects the business, and consequently the company itself, since another company can occupy us part of the market if it finds, eliminates and works without contradictions.
To put it in a nutshell, an inventor is a person who discovers and solves the contradictions of the problem at hand.
Is innovation modified using the Internet?
Ram Charan says that innovation is turning an idea into something that generates money and obviously the Internet boosts the number of qualified users.
At the World Business Forum Buenos Aires 2009, Ram Charan, referred to open innovation through the Internet, where ideas can be bought or improved anywhere in the world.
It is Crowdsoursing, which consists of “proposing challenges and rewards to whoever solves a proposed problem. The term Crowd means "crowd" and source here refers to "project".
With Crowdsourcing powered by the Internet as a platform for interactions, we have at our disposal hundreds of qualified users, selected by our company, and connected to each other, who help us to be better.
For this, they have access to various platforms that allow them to participate in projects, challenges or novel proposals.
I myself collaborate with several international firms that have Creative Laboratories and other open innovation consulting firms such as ideaconnections, innovationlab or innocentive to solve specific innovation problems.
The Creative Laboratories consist of guiding a group of people internal and external to the company, through a collaborative thinking process with a defined objective.
While open innovation consultancies facilitate decision-making in complex cases and where an appropriate course of action must be defined.
What does the success of these creative labs depend on?
The efficiency of Creative Labs depends on many factors, but the critical factors are:
a-The ability of the company's facilitators to create the right climate so that people are encouraged to express themselves freely.
b-The creative capacity of the people who make up the laboratory. In this sense, it is recognized that the greater the diversity of specialties and experiences, the greater the ability to generate original ideas.
c-The quality of the tools used.
An appropriate guide is TRIZ to approach by inventive principles an area of high potential for solutions.
So you can buy, sell ideas or exchange solutions in real time, continuously and in the way that you agree. With this formula everyone wins: the companies, the consultants and the future user.
But always the Internet and English are the languages to use.
Could you elaborate on this further?
In 1995, mathematician Robert Logan argued that the Internet constitutes a sixth language.
In an evolutionary chain that begins with speech, writing, mathematics, science, the computer revolution and finally the Internet.
The Internet has its own semantics and syntax (hypertexts and hyperlinks) and the five essential characteristics of the Internet language can be defined: round-trip communication, easy access to information, continuous learning, alignment, integration into the community.
In 2002, the Russian professor Lev Manovich developed the first theory of new media, and defined the computer and emerging networks as a meta-medium.
To analyze it, Manovich prefers to depart from the categories known as interactivity and hypermedia.
Manovich focuses on the fact that binary code allows a technological convergence never seen before in humanity, since it enables the conversion of texts, images, videos, films, audio, etc. to numerical data, which is easily accessed, free from your computer and online.
This sixth language of the Internet means that by the integration of communications, if you do not adapt to the same speed, you will be out of the professional market and what is worse, isolated from your peers.
It is no longer that you choose to learn a language for pleasure or a family mandate, but that you manage the Internet or are relegated to the past.
Now you must be multilingual, that is, manage your own language, English and the Internet.
Is it necessary to change our educational institutions?
The only thing that is going to change the educational system are its institutions and that is where it is necessary to work, in each of them and in their leaders, so that they acquire an institutional commitment to change.
Users will communicate with each other, using the digital school as a platform, and the integration being the Internet.
Increasingly, selecting the right people and maintaining a passion for doing new things is what will make a difference in the companies of the future.
Educational institutions are now very far apart in content and in the flexibility of the subjects. If you think that giving computers to all school-age children will magically improve the quality of education, I don't think so.
The contents themselves and a good teacher are worth much more than a computer. Do not forget that the contents are more important than the computer itself.
We must even learn from nature. There are specialties such as Biomimetics that provide interesting strategies and results.
Think that if we accommodate the entire history of the Earth to a calendar year, bacteria appeared in the month of March, and man would only appear at 11:50 p.m. on the last day of the year.
So much can be learned from how different spices evolved, adapted and innovated before challenges and problems.
Companies are obliged to innovate because otherwise they are out of the market. Even knowing that you can fail, it is necessary to risk the launch of a new product on the market.
Could you explain more about this?
See it this way.
You may have seen tennis matches with Roger Federer or Del Potro, and observed that they always commit 3 to 4 double faults in matches.
Why?
Federer could serve the ball less quickly and make sure he doesn't foul.
But always the first serve is at high speed because he knows that his opponent is difficult to return, and then in the second serve he only makes sure to have a lower speed and greater precision.
It is a winning strategy, first take risks and if it goes well, you take the point and then change speed for precision.
Similarly, companies first take risks with a product and after the product is accepted by the market, minor changes are assured.
There is a lot of free content on the Internet, can this last?
Chris Anderson, editor of Wired, the magazine that won the 2009 National Magazine Award, wrote "Free" where he examines the pricing models in which products and services are offered at low or free prices. Economists swear that such a thing cannot subsist because someone always pays.
This may be true of the "atoms" of the physical world, but Chris Anderson explains why this does not apply to the "bits" of the Internet world, where free is a ruling paradigm.
The idea of giving free stuff as a promotion is not new, but Anderson's refreshing thought is that free is becoming a business imperative, and that companies are going to have to accept and know how to use.
And today, all companies can become very profitable by offering products or services at a low price or free to attract customers, and create a need for an accessory product. In other words, we give you the printer for almost free but you must use the ink that we tell you from here on.
This strategy is explained in Free and how to make money, offering some of your products almost free and charging for others where the user is captive.
Another strategy, in my opinion very interesting, is to use the "scholar google"
You select the author and the book that someone recommended or saw in a specialized newsletter, and there you begin to read a part of the content.
If you find it interesting, then buy it, being able to choose between the electronic version, the print on demand version or the paper version.
I would tell you that since the Internet is a new language, it has different strategies, but I don't think that totally free is an imperative of business on the web. May friend Anderson forgive me.
There are still no immutable laws on these issues, despite the fact that some opinions are more publicized than others.
Is it to say that you learn only from the past?
Do not believe it, there are so-called Emerging Futures and there is also TRIZ.
Otto Scharmer argues in emerging futures, that there are two sources of learning: the first, the most used and known, and that is incorporated in our educational models resulting from the western and mechanistic worldview, is the one in which we learn through past experiences. This process leads us to observe what we have previously done; reflect on it and draw conclusions; which allows us to plan what we will do in the future in similar situations; and from there to act again.
Scharmer proposes another way of learning, which is complementary to the previous one, through the presence in emerging futures. This through the practice of being present, intensifying the here and now in a space of stillness and openness, and thus the arrival of the so-called insight is made possible.
Many of the great discoveries in history have been the fruit of insight. Einstein's theory of relativity, Handel's Messiah, or Archimedes' Eureka, are examples of a vision of the future. After the finding comes great clarity on what to do, of course this occurs in geniuses.
Insight is a learning process to turn the finding into an innovation. This process is based on the fact that the educational and general models of the society in which we live educated us for analysis, minimizing the capacity for intuition and vision that are part of the natural capacity of being human.
You can also achieve extraordinary results with TRIZ, which is a systematic guide to innovate. There is within TRIZ the so-called laws of the evolution of technology.
The importance of the laws of evolution is that they can be used to estimate what the evolution phases of our product will be.
Then it is possible to predict what the product design will change and it is useful to develop a strategic plan for the development of new products or improvements of the current product.
The most important trend in technological evolution is the trend of growth towards the ideality of our system or product.
It is stated that during evolution over time, any technical system always tends to increase the ratio between the degree of performance of the system and the expenses required to provide that necessary degree of performance.
A system to be designed must be able to deliver each desired function with the highest degree of performance while the expenses necessary for the product life cycle must be as low as possible.
Expenses are all types of energy, materials, resources, and information necessary to deliver the given functionality.
But in addition to the trend of ideality growth, there are eight other laws.
There you have two very different ways of forecasting the future, by emerging futures or with TRIZ.
I use TRIZ, but if you like to apply imagination, intuition and a vision of the future, you should use what works for you.
But in reality what modifies the evolution of products is the appearance of a disruptive technology such as the Internet.
Could you explain the latter a bit more?
A third of humanity has unrestricted access to more capacity to process information than large corporations had in their data centers just a few decades ago, and two-thirds carry a minicomputer in their pocket.
Anyone who can read and write has access to a potential audience of 1.8 billion readers / viewers / viewers / customers for just a few pennies.
This changes everything forever. Before the invention of the computer, nobody imagined the Internet, much less online advertising or blogs.
The Web is breaking down barriers between cultures; the inhabitants of any country can find out on their screens what is happening in other places. The Internet is changing the world in ways that no one had anticipated. The same is true of biological evolution; we cannot predict adaptations or mutations.
This simply means that we do not know for sure what is going to happen.
We can design cars and products for the next few years based on TRIZ, but we cannot anticipate in detail what vehicles will look like 50 years from now if new disruptive technologies emerge, such as information technology.
For this reason, TRIZ includes all known patents in its database, and TRIZ should include those future technologies.
What is certain is that innovation will not stop and products and goods will tend towards Ideality following the laws of evolution, that is, maximum performance of the system with minimum expenses and resources.
Although you do not believe that the Internet has brought only benefits, it also brings its disadvantages.
What is the biggest disadvantage of the Internet?
One is that it is copied from there and creates the illusion of generating something. Another is to generate a certain degree of anxiety, and the worst thing in my opinion is that it does not favor effort.
You don't wonder why there are so many educational or commercial rushes? Be a bachelor in six months, buy this product now or lose weight in two days!
I think it is because of the desire for immediate reward that we all have. Nobody likes to wait and even less in the times of the Internet. We all want to reap, even without having sown. We want a "copy and paste".
Many of us resist reading long novels and it is because of this same anxiety that short novels, unit tele-theaters, university intermediate degrees, cafes, condensed books, coffee machines, blending machines, etc. are successful. and everything that saves the wait and allows us to receive a lot by delivering little and if possible nothing.
There will always be a number of subjects who would like to be engineers, but do not support trigonometric functions. Or that they die to play an instrument but are not willing to waste time on music theory.
What you want is to enjoy the benefits without paying or making an effort in return. Everything important is achieved with effort.
I think those are the disadvantages of the Internet that can coincide with the traps of junk television or self-help books, in the sense of not giving much thought and just entertaining.
But analogies should be avoided when it comes to disruptive innovations.
Why?
Analogies should be avoided, for example in the new media.
If you think that email is like a letter but faster or blogs are like newspapers but without paper, you are totally wrong.
They are disruptive phenomena and with their own logic and dynamics. If you try to extrapolate, you will generally fail.
Microsoft believed that the evolution of encyclopedias was about transferring the contents of paper to DVD and the Web with Encarta.
But the real evolution is that the encyclopedias were to be written by the readers.
What did Microsoft not see and what led Encarta to its closure just seven years after its inception?
That when information flows without barriers, training an expert costs little money; therefore, not only can you no longer charge for knowledge, but you can count on someone somewhere to know more about a topic than all the experts put together.
That's Wikipedia, about 15 million articles in 240 languages at zero cost, for any reader and updated in real time.
Can't make short-term predictions?
In the short term, much can be learned from what is already happening in other industrialized countries.
Already the Internet is dethroning the novel and there is more place for the story and poetry.
Likewise, the teacher who is not didactic and captures the attention continuously in a short term will not have many students in his classes, because there are already few students who fulfill the mandates of their parents, and the chairs have already begun to compete within them. universities
And efficiency happens by doing the right things in a timely manner, hence I told you that TRIZ complies with these two watchwords of our times.
In other words, innovate in a systematic and continuous way.
