20 Tips For LEAN Design Innovation

20 Tips For LEAN Design Innovation by Bart Huthwaite and The Huthwaite Innovation Institute
Thank you for your interest in the rapidly growing field of LEAN Design Innovation! The tips you see in this booklet have been developed from my 30+ years of experience working with Global LEAN Leaders. The importance of LEAN during the design phase of a product or process is being rapdily realized as the main contributor to a projects success. Indeed, 80% of downstream waste may be prevented by applying my LEAN methodology to the design phase.

The Huthwaite Innovation Institutes LEAN Design methodology allows you to: Accelerate your teams innovation engine to make it faste and more productive. Apply an architecture for making innovation understandable, doable and repeatable. The LEAN Design InnovationCUBE takes the fuzziness out of innovation. Measure which of your ideas are best and why. Tap you into a pipeline of new techniques through your access to the FREE material available at barthuthwaite.com.

For more insights, please visit www.barthuthwaite.com or contact me directly at bart@barthuthwaite.com. Best of success! Bart Huthwaite, Sr. Founder, Huthwaite Innovation Institute Mackinac Island, Michigan

TIP

#1

Involve all Stakeholders

Stakeholders include anyone who may have an impact on your projects success. Involve all of those who must implement your project right from the start. They will understand the problem, own the project, and help you deliver solutions later. Remember: A stakeholder who is not part of the solution can later become part of the problem.

T IP #2

Climb Your Mountain Backwards

Innovation requires reverse thinking. This is opposite to the way we normally think. We most often use deductive thinking, starting from the current state and moving forward. We look at the resources presently available and think only within our means. Innovative thinking reverses this. You start with your end-in-view goal and bring that future to the present. Working backwards helps you to find new paths outside the ruts of your experience. Innovation thinking is not the conventional cause-toeffect. It is effect-to-cause. You imagine the mountain top you want to reach and then work backwards to find the best way.

T IP #3

Search for Green Bananas

You must spot new opportunities while they are still green bananas These are unmet wants that have yet to ripen. Green bananas are opportunities the marketplace may not even know it will want. By spotting them first, you will have an advantage. You will be able to shape your business model and products to dominate them. Yellow bananas are already ripe. The voice of the customer has spoken. Brown bananas are beyond their prime. They may be good for banana bread but little more.

T IP #4

The Rule of the Three Sharks

We cannot predict the future. However, we can predict the three forces of change that will shape the future. I call these the Three Sharks. All products, services, strategies begin to decay the day they are introduced to the market. They are attacked by the Three Sharks of Change. Marketplace Shark - No market ever stands still. Technology Shark - Technology advancements never stop Competitor Shark - This is the most vicious shark of all. You must know where these sharks are lurking today as well as know where they will be tomorrow.

T IP #5

Grind Yourself a New Set of Glasses

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change. Camouflage was created in World War I when someone looked at a Picasso cubist painting. Noteworthy: Creative thinking involves looking at the same thing as everyone else and seeing something different. The idea for Henry Fords assembly line came from a beef moving disassembly line at a meat packing plant in Chicago.

T IP #6

Look Below the Iceberg

There are two kinds of customer Wants. The first are the Spoken Wants. These are the visible part of an iceberg. Spoken Wants can be seen and heard by all, especially your competitors. Unspoken Wants, however, are the unseen part of the iceberg. They are hidden. Your greatest opportunity is to discover these before your competitors do. Detecting these means going back to the fundamental Wants all customers seek in anything. You start by looking for open spaces, or cracks, between Wants that are already being served. These are the unmet Wants.

T IP #7

The Three Paths of Knowledge

Innovations happen at the intersection of three paths of knowledge. Wants - A spoken, or unspoken, value that is desirable. Needs are subsets of Wants. Most of the things we desire are not needs. Things - Things are solutions for Wants. A Thing may be something physical, like a product, or it can be a policy, process, strategy or new business model. Insights - This is the unique human experience of seeing an unmet Want, or an underdeveloped Thing (solution) and connecting them to create something new. This is sometimes called the Eureka! Moment, the spark that ignites all innovation success.

T IP #8

Study Nature

Nature has already solved many of the problems that confront you today. Improved wind turbine design and safer helicopters came from the elm trees seed wing structure. Bionics is the study of borrowing ideas from nature and adapting them for human use. The idea for velcro came from a cockle burr. The two phase structure of bamboo stalks inspired fiberglass reinforced plastics.

T IP #9

Iterate!

Never go for the 100% solution immediately. Leave room to revisit the problem. You will never get it exactly right the first time. Remember: First solutions are typically sub-optimal solutions. First problem statements are also simply starting points. Smart innovation is moving back and forth between problem statement and solution. Remember: Innovation is never an event. It is a constant journey.

T IP #10

Dont Design a Mousetrap

There are more than 2,400 patents for mousetraps in the US patent office and more than a dozen are applied for each year. Yet the best selling mousetrap is the snap-spring device invented more than 100 years ago. Important: Save your innovation energy for an unmet want, not a want that is already met.

T IP #11

See the Big Picture Before Going to Work on the Parts

Innovation starts with big picture thinking. It is seeing the whole before working on the parts. Important: You have got to think about the big things, while doing the small things, so that all of the small things go in the right direction. Contributed by Willie Fischer, Siemens Company

T IP #12

Seek Simplicity

Henry Ford once said his constant effort was in the direction of simplicity. Complexity is the enemy. Nearly everything we do is more complex than it needs to be. Fact: Innovation success always arrives on the wings of simplicity. Contributed by Chuck Graham, Ford Motor Company

T IP #13

Dig Out of Your Ruts

Your greatest enemy for tomorrows success can be todays success. Contributed by Phil Ratliff, Siemens Company

T IP #14

Always Use System Thinking

The Tip of systems says that a project solution depends on how each sub-solution interacts with other subsolutions, rather than how these sub-solutions act dependently. When one project solution is improved independent of another, the total project can begin to loose its overall efficiency. Example: A project team did a suburb job of designing a product for manufacturability, only to find out later that their manufacturability solution later defeated the marketability of the product.

T IP #15

Think Step, Stretch, and Leap

Think about your project in three time dimensions. Step: Solutions for the present Stretch: Solutions for the midterm or next generation Leap: Solutions for the long term or distant future. This kind of three diminutional thinking can prevent you from having to reinvent the wheel in the future. It will also prevent you from going down blind alleys.

T IP #16

Direction First, Precision Second

Measure only to the precision required. Make sure you are headed in the right direction before you begin tracking precise degrees. Make sure you are directionally correct. Important: Relevancy is always more important than accuracy. Rough indicators are acceptable if precise data is not available. Measure all key metrics concurrently. Take a systems view. All metrics are interrelated.

T IP #17

Measure In Real Time

Measure in real time so you will have time for corrective actions. Never adopt a measurement system, metric or goal without first attempting to make sure all stakeholders agree it is the correct one. Use highly visual metrics. These can be grasped quickly and can be easily remembered for maximum impact.

T IP #18

Use The Innovation Cube

The Huthwaite Innovation Institutes LEAN Design Innovation cube makes innovation a systematic repeatable process. The cube helps your team to discover untapped opportunities and identify gaps in your current processes. Hundreds of companies world wide have used the cube to help achieve LEAN Design Success. For more information, please visit www.barthuthwaite.com

T IP #19

Take Advantage Of Our FREE Material

Our website provides a vast library of LEAN Design information, including our LEAN Design Certification Program, all for FREE!

For more information, please visit www.barthuthwaite.com

T IP #20

Speak With Bart Huthwaite

Bart Huthwaite is a world renowned expert in LEAN Design Innovation. He is the founder of the Huthwaite Innovation Institute and the author of The LEAN Design Solution and The Tips of Innovation. He is an Adjuct Faculty Member at Notre Dame. Bart has mentored managers and teams in corporate LEAN Design Innovation worldwide at more than 1000 companies over the past 30 years. Bart is happy to share with you his experiences implementing LEAN Design Innovation at no charge. bart@barthuthwaite.com