To accelerate, you pressed the gas pedal, which pulled a cable attached to a mechanical throttle. Assuming the shift had been manually placed into gear – the car moved.

Today, electronics and computers have replaced many of the mechanical parts that once made cars move. To start many cars or place them in gear, buttons are pushed. To accelerate, the gas pedal is connected not to a cable, but to a computer – via electronic circuitry.

In light of Toyota’s massive recall of 10 million of Camry, Tercel, Prius hybrid and luxury Lexus models (and that’s a shortened list), one has to wonder: At what point does “innovation” encourage failure ?

In other words, has Toyota gone too far? In the interest of fairness, these issues potentially affect any modern automobile. Already, GM is facing recalls related to steering.

The costs – in terms of finances and consumer confidence – can be great. As Toyota mechanics are correcting millions of cars and consumer confidence lags, rival automakers have reported double-digit sales growth.

But the question of innovation for innovation’s sake – or for the sake of “technological evolution” – begs to be asked. Sure, innovation of the vehicle and the way it’s manufactured cuts costs, including labor and benefits. We continually innovate to cost reduce. But now, cars don’t just turn on with the turn of a key. And when they don’t roar to life as expected, the corner mechanic must be trained not only in auto repair, but in computers technology (assuming he or she owns the equipment).

This reminds me of a story. It was the 1970s. Two adventurers once were traveling by pick-up truck in northern Mexico when their vehicle broke down. The local mechanic took a look under the hood, grabbed a coffee can of old parts, and fashioned a fix.

How does this all relate to the innovation imperatives? In Robert’s Rules of Innovation, it mentions two key imperatives that seem to have gone awry here. First, Toyota sought the imperative of value creation in pursuit of innovation. Yet, any value created through their innovation-gone-awry is more than lost through the recall and labor costs and lost sales and good will.

Second, who has been held accountable? After first declining to do so, Toyota President Akio Toyoda made a very public appearance on Capitol Hill. He apologized and promised to “do everything in my power” to ensure the malfunctions and tragedies don’t happen again. Do Americans buy it? Can Toyota afford to wait and wonder?

To that end, the complexity of the conundrum facing Toyota at one point was belied by the simplicity of their first apparent fix. After spending days in conference over how to remedy the stuck throttle, high-paid engineers came up with a simple solution: Shorten the gas pedal.

To be sure, in the end, the issues facing the automaker were far more complex than nipping an inch off a too-long pedal. But could the issues have been remedied in the designer’s or accountant’s office years ago – when the company believed innovation would save money?

We – and Toyota – may never know. But we’ve learned that innovation poorly planned can have the greatest expectations, but the worst outcomes.

By Robert Brands with Jeff Zbar

Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com, and the author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation”: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, with Martin Kleinman and which will be published in March by Wiley (www.robertsrulesofinnovation.com).

But what happens once the company opens its doors or the product hits the market? Whose responsibility is it to spot the next trend or opportunity? More important, who should be charged with shepherding the behavior of trend-spotting across the organization?

Everybody is responsible for trend spotting. This isn’t some cliquey club; limit your people’s involvement at your own peril. From the Marketing and New Product Development Departments, to sales representatives in the field, from the CEO to the receptionist or CSRs – trends happen and are spotted everywhere. Therefore, everyone needs sharp eyes and piqued ears for emerging trends.

But trend spotting doesn’t just happen. Part mandate, part innate behavior, people have to want to be on the look out for new opportunities. Just as many organizations seek to break down silos that traditionally have separated teams or departments, the same sense of unified, yet independent thinking must permeate any organization that hopes to spot and capture the Next Big Thing.

This cannot be an idle mandate – a sort of set-it-and-forget-it statement from on high. Trend spotting is learned by example, and encouraged or shepherded by senior managers who also focus on innovation. This can be the CEO of a smaller organization, or the Chief Innovation Officer at a larger one.

This kind of lead-by-example encouragement transforms employees across the enterprise into Idea Generators – trend spotters who become champions of their space and sources of new ideas that touch every part of the organization. One who submits an idea is more likely to take ownership of it – and help shepherd it in kind through the research and discovery process

(Whether a trend that is explored and later travels the path to New Product Development is another topic. To be sure, not all trends spotted and submitted to the Idea Hopper for further discovery will blossom – at least right away. Some will, and some must wait for market or company conditions to blossom in kind. And that’s fine.)

How can you improve and become more creative in organizational trend spotting?

- Create a Trend / Idea War Room. Like lighting company Sylvania “War Room” for trend spotting. Yours can be a permanent place where white and dry erase boards, competitive products, and ads clipped from magazines line the walls (see more below).

- Solicit outside involvement. Do you have field reps, distributors, retailers who are on the front lines of customer interaction? They can help target opportunities by specific geographies or market segments.

- Tap tradeshows. I’ve always encouraged aggressive trend spotting at tradeshows. As your people walk the floor, encourage them to envision and cross apply. At Kohler, we would attend design and household appliance shows, and come up with better and trend fitting kitchen product designs for faucets and sinks.

- Read (with a trend-spotting eye) trade and consumer magazines. See something cool? Tear it out and stick it to the wall. Let the Innovation Team mull them over. Ideas may crystallize.

- Buy new and competitive products. Tinker with them in a War Room. It’s amazing what will emerge.

- Buy your own service. Experience the process. Where does it shine? More importantly, where is it frustrating? What can be made easier and better?

- Ask your customers. For customer-facing organizations, customers often are your best trend spotters. When I was at Airspray we convened with multitude of disciplines. But most came from customers via sales, rife with bias and lacking filter.

- Set an agenda for trend management. Along with feeding the Idea Hopper, plan to manage ideas and attack the opportunities they present.

Trend spotting in the innovative workplace is by necessity a persistent activity. Opportunities emerge for competitive advantage. Competitive forces constantly emerge that require reaction. It’s a natural part of a corporate evolution, whether related to new product or services development, or the establishment of new internal processes meant to improve the organization itself.

Aristotle is thought to have said, “Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” Replace “Excellence” with “trend spotting.” And embrace the mandate.

By Robert Brands (with Jeff Zbar)

Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com, and the author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation”: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, with Martin Kleinman and which will be published in March by Wiley (www.robertsrulesofinnovation.com).

Click here to see the list

By Josh Cable

Like many manufacturers, Eaton, Ohio-based Henny Penny Corp. was founded on innovation. Seeking a better way to cook chicken, restaurant owner Chester Wagner developed a deep-fat pressure fryer and filed for a patent in 1954. Three years later (patent in hand), Wagner formed Henny Penny to market his invention, which the company claims was the world’s first commercial pressure fryer.

The ‘I’ in ‘Innovation’

When Robert Brands was CEO of Airspray NV, a Dutch manufacturer credited with developing the first non-aerosol instant-foam dispensers now used by consumer product companies, his monthly visits to the company’s headquarters in the Netherlands always included an afternoon set aside for discussing new product development.

While the meetings helped establish priorities and “marching orders” for everyone involved in the R&D process, Brands believes they served a larger purpose: His presence at the meetings showed how important innovation was to the company.

Click to read full article

Does that encourage value-added thought process? In my mind, it encourages work, which should need no encouragement at all.

Now, what if that same company put a reward system in place whose reward system was based on innovation and results, not hours or labor? It aligned reward to patents granted, products launched, or sales achieved? And its reward process was integrated along side its Vision, Mission, Strategy, and Resources / Budget?

I would argue that that organization has asked itself a key question: What motivates your team to excel in innovation? The answer is Net Rewards for Net Results.

Many companies see cash as the ideal motivational perk. This might not be the case. A recent survey from McKinsey found that three non-cash motivators rise above all other forms of incentive: Praise from managers; the attention of leadership that takes place in one-on-one conversations; and the chance to lead projects, teams or task forces.

Such nods and recognition topped even cash bonuses, increased base pay, and stock or stock options – the three top-ranked financial incentives, McKinsey found.

“The survey’s top three non-financial motivators play critical roles in making employees feel that their companies value them, take their well-being seriously, and strive to create opportunities for career growth,” the McKinsey report noted. “These themes recur constantly in most studies on ways to motivate and engage employees.”

Though being discussed last in the list of the 10 Imperatives to Innovation, “Net Rewards and Net Results” arguably holds equally high a position as any other imperative. There’s a fundamental connection between the two. Rewards must be in alignment with the expectations of the organization and its people. Some organizations seek to innovate, but try rewarding people based on R&D spend. It’s is a worthy financial metric, but is no guarantee for success.

Incentives should not be about output or spend. It’s about “thought-put,” and the creativity, ideation and esprit de corps brought to the effort.

Done right, rewards the organization in search of inspiration, motivation, ideation – all the imperatives that drive innovation. It rewards the individual for performing at a high level, and the team for working effectively as a Unit of One.

For the organization that seeks results, incentive is a kind of Reward ROI. By investing in employee rewards as a carrot, think of innovation as ROI derived from the alchemy of ideas-to-money. As we’ve written before, innovation leads to improved performance, heightened sales, more black on the bottom line. This profit – whether in actual product on the street or improved organizational performance – brings benefit to all stakeholders: shareholders, executive leadership, employees, customers and consumers.

Various perks can drive incentive. Incentives must be earmarked for all participants at the table. This may include the development team itself, to the marketing, finance, R&D, sales, customer service or people from other departments who helped with ideation, market research, justification or any other process that went into creating the new initiative.

For example, in the NPD process, the team or division should be rewarded with a compensation package that includes a percentage of sales derived from new products delivered. The neat thing about NP sales is that success is rewarded and people stay engaged and involved they care post development or launch.

Simply put, the fruits of your team’s labor benefit all – and rewards must reflect that. Moreover, this type of validation acknowledges individuals’ ability to envision new concepts, help shepherd them through the R&D process (even if the individual is not part of R&D, per se), and play a key role in bringing product to market.

Rewards can enhance valued employees’ commitment to the organization, boost morale, motivate future efforts, reinforce positive outcomes, encourage repeat performances and help keep employees’ “eye on the ball” vis a vis innovation and ideation. It also strengthens the connection between strategy and results.

In sum, when Net Rewards are based on Net Returns in the innovation process, everybody – the organization, the innovators, the stakeholders and the consumers – wins.

By Robert Brands with Jeff Zbar

Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com, and the author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation”: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, with Martin Kleinman and which will be published in March by Wiley (www.robertsrulesofinnovation.com).

Often individual imperatives are missing or in place but lack or miss others.

What are your barriers to Innovation, what is missing, lacking or weakest area?

Click to participate: http://innovationcoach.brightidea.com/ideas

But how costly is ineffective innovation? That is, if a company sets out on a new product or service development initiative – and that effort fails along the way for whatever reason – what has been lost? Investments in time, effort, capital – even reputation?

What if the company set in place a practice of observing and measuring innovation at select or pre-set milestones along the way? Roadblocks, sticking points or issue that otherwise might have doomed a project to failure would have been identified, reported and measured – even corrected – along the way.

Success might not have been assured. But there would have been a higher likelihood of averting failure, or at least identifying troublesome issues early on.

Innovation is meaningless without attaching measurable goals to an initiative. Yet, many organizations fail to give meaning and measurability to their programs. They don’t measure the percentage of income that comes from products younger than five years old, or new product sales, or metrics that serve as innovation dashboard to track innovation activities, or R&D spending or headcount.

The importance of having measurable goals in the innovation process cannot be overlooked – or overstated. Yet, it often is both overlooked and understated. Many organizations go through all the right motions – they plan a new product, service or internal initiative launch. They gather the team, provide the specs, and let them loose with an imperative.

But no metrics have been set out to track their success. And without the ability to measure, how can you know whether the initiative is successful?

That’s where observation and measurement come in. Observation means tracking or watching how the team advances on the path of innovation. Measurability requires that accomplishments are weighed against milestones. Done well, the end result is an initiative that adheres to the intended vision, mission or strategy.

Simply put, without goals – which then are observed and measured (and supported by associated rewards), things won’t happen. Observation, measurement and tracking of NPD results are essential to helping ensure optimal ROI.

How is this done? First, create your baselines, with initial observations and measurements. Then capture the time to each gate, the time spent inside each gate, etc. Look for improvements in terms of reduction of time spent within each gate.

Once a product is launched, a key metric is the ratio of new product sales to overall sales. One method would be to track historical new product sales for the first three years after launch versus total sales. This is your baseline. Next, set a target goal for this ratio, based on your needs and taking into consideration your competitive environment and the competition’s baseline. This would be further calibrated to account for the product lifestyle in a particular industry, but in any case, new product sales is measured as a percentage of the total.

Observation and measurement also can be fascinating to watch as headway is made. You see your margins grow, as the right mix of new products come on-stream.

This is part of an overall process of continuous improvement. Plan. Do. Check. Act. Repeat – or revise. Things won’t always go as planned, so take corrective actions and make ongoing course corrections.

Product lifecycles keep getting shorter and shorter, which mandates accelerated NPD cycles.  In the personal care arena, for example, lifecycles are only two to three years.  So each big idea has tremendous potential value and it’s important not to kill a potential success too early.

Some believe investment into R&D can help ensure success. Actually, R&D spend is no guarantee for Innovation success. In its simplest terms, what gets measured gets done.

By Robert Brands with Jeff Zbar

Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com, and the author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation”: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, with Martin Kleinman and which will be published in March by Wiley (www.robertsrulesofinnovation.com).

Why innovate?

Some would argue that companies innovate to achieve a heightened competitive advantage, streamline the organization, or create intellectual property – including patents, trademarks and other protected property – that create value in the portfolio.

Many reason and rationales can be argued for the pursuit of innovation. Yet no purpose for or result from innovation can be more compelling than Value Creation. This metric is the ultimate measure of return on investment when measuring innovation’s role in creating value.

Simply put: Innovation done well drives value creation – for the organization, its customers, its internal stakeholders and its external shareholders.

Successful innovation turns ideas into money. All the processes, creativity, time, sweat, research, dreaming, refining, modeling and retesting transform effort into tangible, valuable results.

This includes innovation that touches all sectors in the company or organization – not just in the creation of a new product or service. Enhancing the business model or networking, enabling a new core process, creating a new channel, brand or customer experience delivery model, or offering a new product system, boosting product performance, or providing a new service each creates value.

Nowhere is this more relevant and apparent than in the acquisition process. If one were to look at acquisitions with and without a patent portfolio, I would argue that a well-created and -managed patent or IP portfolio can double company value. My former company, Airspray, created of the novel packaging and dispensing process that turned liquid soap into foam. It was a company with a typical value of 7-8x EBIT. Yet, the addition of this patent to its portfolio resulted in 15x EBIT paid when the company was acquired in 2006.

This is especially important in today’s market. Current economics continue to hold down already devalued corporate stock prices. Companies are challenged to find ways to boost their value to stakeholders – as well as to keep customers and prospects engaged and purchasing goods. Value creation borne from innovation can be critical indeed. As evident in the Airspray example, one item in our patent portfolio almost doubled the EBIT paid at acquisition. This example is not unique, but was the result of painstaking and thoughtful focus on value created by innovation.

Moreover, value creation and innovation done well can immeasurable enhance the corporate brand. Between adding new products, reviving the corporate dress, even launching new marketing creative or advertising campaigns, customer value can be created through the value-added components and enhanced public face of these endeavors.

Of course, it’s essential to find that delicate balance between cost, price, and return. Balance is found, in part, by seeking stakeholder input and customer feedback during development of any innovation process.

The arguments for innovation are, frankly, inarguable. Value, brand enhancement, share price and perception among various stakeholders can be elevated by innovation done well. Add to the equation the inclusion of intellectual property derived during the process, and the overall ROI can be well worth the investment.

###

By Robert Brands with Jeff Zbar

Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com, and the author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation”: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, with Martin Kleinman and which will be published in March by Wiley (www.robertsrulesofinnovation.com).

If someone asked members of your Innovation Team about “ownership” of a current initiative, would individuals reply, “Yes”?

Or would the people involved point to the team leader, the CEO or someone else – someone other than themselves? Would they reply, “No, that’s his”?

I spoke recently with a CEO of a consumer products company who expressed disappointment that an idea for an exciting new wrinkle in sunglasses technology had faltered. In doing so, others had beaten the company to market.

Why did this happen? The “Leader” admitted he’d failed to sell the idea. “Others just didn’t get it,” he said. “Their hearts weren’t in it. They were moving forward out of duty, not out of passion. And we dropped the ball.”

In the world of Innovation, it’s the Chief Innovation Officer’s job to marshal forces, to empower, to inspire, and to transform team members into stakeholders of the process or project. In short, it’s to create and encourage a spirit of Ownership.

As one of the 10 key Innovation Imperatives “Ownership” ranks up there in importance (http://www.robertsrulesofinnovation.com/category/blogs ) with Ideation, Risk, Results, Idea Management and all the others.

Put as a business equation, Ownership Equals Accountability Equals the Foundation of Innovation. Without accountability, ideas stall. Progress dies on the vine of best intentions. Any real chance at success is lost.

Without ownership, positive results are almost impossible to achieve. A team member cannot point to the Chief Innovation Officer or team leader as a project’s or initiative’s owner. Every participant along the innovation process’s chain must embrace accountability as a champion of the idea, the development process, the success – and the failure – that may come in tow.

To be sure, Champions at the highest level – like a CIO – have the authority and (and should have the passion) to garner organizational respect needed to push Innovation from the idea stage to development and ultimately to fruition. Champions build consensus, convince others to take calculated risks and to work outside their comfort zone.

But Ownership must extend beyond one single Champion. To be sure, a champion at the highest level ultimately drives projects forward. But “ownership” must be claimed by all involved, encouraged by the senior project manager, but wholeheartedly embraced across the organization.

How will you know a project has been welcomed into the hearts of its team? Ask one question:

“Excuse me, is this yours?”

The response will give you your answer.

By Robert Brands with Jeff Zbar

Robert Brands is the founder of InnovationCoach.com, and the author of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation”: A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival, with Martin Kleinman and which will be published in March by Wiley (www.robertsrulesofinnovation.com).

By Robert Brands

See: www.businessweek.com/innovation

When Apple (AAPL) unveils its iSlate in late January, the tablet computer will be just the latest wowing of the world by the pioneering computer company. With its iPhone, iPod, and MacBook laptops, plus the original Macintosh computer itself (and the “1984″ TV commercial that pitched it), Apple’s innovation has changed technology—and the people who use it.

http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/jan2010/id2010017_541888.htm