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14 February 2008
Expert Discusses Innovation
Ask America webchat transcript, February 12
Richard B. Dasher, Ph.D., director of Stanford University’s U.S.-Asia Technology Management Center and its Center for Integrated Systems, answered questions in a February 12 webchat on innovation.
Following is the transcript:
(begin transcript)
U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Bureau of International Information Programs
Ask America Webchat Transcript
The Next New Thing--Innovation Trends
Guest: Richard B. Dasher
Date: February 12, 2008
Time: 1:00 p.m. EST (1800 GMT)
Moderator: Welcome to our webchat! Today is February 12, 2008. The webchat will begin at 13:00 EST / 18:00 GMT. We look forward to your questions.
Moderator: Welcome! We will begin the webchat shortly. You may begin asking your questions now.
Richard Dasher: First, I would like to thank everyone for your interest in the important topic of innovation. Thanks also to the U.S. State Department for inviting me to share my opinions and views in this way.
I do want to begin with the standard disclaimer that I am not part of the U.S. government, and so the opinions and views I express are my own, not necessarily those of the government. In our fast-moving world, innovation is critical in order to keep up with rapidly emerging business opportunities and also sudden challenges from competitors. On a national level, innovation helps to sustain the higher wage levels and standard of living that people want. That is because new products and services carry intrinsically higher profit margins.
Today, I would like to focus on the process of innovation. The innovation process begins with the discovery of something new and ends with the implementation of that 'something' in a real-world product or service. Early stages of innovation center around 'basic research,' and late stages around product development. Typically, different people and different institutions are engaged in those two activities, and they work under different motivations and constraints.
So, innovation almost always requires the transfer of knowledge from one group or institution to another. There are various ways how this happens, and one sees different patterns of university-industry cooperation in different countries and regions.
Silicon Valley is a famous open innovation system. In their strategies, companies focus on integrating their knowledge base with new technologies and business ideas from company-external sources, such as by cooperating with universities or by buying up start-up companies. Strength in this kind of innovation is crucial to the success of the entire Silicon Valley economy.
In contrast, innovation systems are more closed in other economies, such as Japan. The tradition of lifetime employment and patterns of government funding have led Japanese companies to develop great sophistication in transferring ideas and knowledge inside the company, but there is concern in that country now that the universities have become too isolated from innovation.
Closed and open systems each have their strong and weak points. That's probably more than enough for an opening comment. I'm looking forward to our discussion!
Richard
Moderator: If you are just joining us, welcome! We are experiencing a slight delay in getting the questions to our speaker. Please check back shortly as the answers will begin to appear on this screen.
Question [adolatkal]: Dear R. B .Dasher! How being fluent in Japanese, also understanding the very core of Japanese corporate culture assist/maintains/supports/directs/helps PhD on International Business Strategy to understand better the pros and cons of A versus J Business Philosophy, while spotting about “the next new things”? These A versus J contradictions are in constant evolving too. What are they like today? What are real milestones in this area for the next new things, while we plan our International Business Strategy, based on technology trends and finding new opportunities?
--An emeritus MBA professor on Strategic Management/Marketing issues, an Executive Board member of the International Educational NGO:” Strategy- civilization, gender, stability”.
Answer [Richard Dasher]: Thanks for your questions. Studying Japanese and studying about Japan opened an important door for me. I think that more than the specific knowledge of how things are done in Japan, the process of studying helped me expect differences, rather than assuming that everything is the same everywhere. People's objectives tend to be the same, but you use different techniques to achieve your goals.
I think that Japan is beginning a huge change in the structure and dynamics of how business is done -- bigger than anything in the last 100 years, even bigger than after World War II. So, you see a lot of layering of new ideas and institutions -- management of technology focus, etc., on top of old patters -- lifetime employment, distributed (consensus) decision-making, etc.
I think a huge milestone in university-industry relations will be when companies start to give individual department managers responsibility to hire employees. Right now, that's a centralized function of Personnel. Consequently, the universities just have to attach a good brand to their students. Once individual managers start to do hiring, the best universities will orient their education programs, so that they will produce graduates who have the specific knowledge and experience that companies want to hire.
Moderator: Today’s webchat is the final in our series of webchats tied to America.gov’s Innovation series. To learn more please visit our innovation homepage at http://amlife.america.gov/amlife/innovation/index.html.
Q: [Naimat Ullah Khan: LC Karachi]: Can you tell us about the innovations which are THE TURN OF THE CENTURY?
A [Richard Dasher]: Well, the ones that turned the last century upside down were the automobile, the personal computer, and the Internet. It's interesting that I once asked my 94-year old mom what was the biggest change that she had seen, and she went one step deeper: electrification.
Now, with regard to the next century, we would be looking for something that has an impact on just about everyone and how they live. If you look at where the painful points are in life now, the next huge new thing could have to do with some new energy source or system, or it could have to do with a radically new approach to health care and medicine. For example, completely personalized medicines that are based on an individual's specific genomic information. Of course, if I could make something like this happen right now, I wouldn't be here chatting....
Q: [Naimat Ullah Khan: LC Karachi]: In the past, Media boom was not there as it is nowadays, People come to know about any innovations in years, which was also helpful for innovator to become known. In today’s fast paced Media, information flood lost the significance of the innovators? Is it true?
A [Richard Dasher]: You've got a really good insight. We're flooded with information. The problem now is not so much getting access to information, it's being able to distinguish good information from "noise" and also understanding how the information is relevant -- what its impact will be. People who are good at that kind of analysis have unprecedented opportunities to start new ventures or develop other new things.
But, to be a real innovator, you have to be able to execute, too. Execution is *hard.* More companies fail because of execution than because of the quality of the basic idea. So, real innovators will always be around. Now, they need a few new skills as well as the old ones, especially the ability to distinguish important information from "noise" and also to hit exactly the right market at the right time.
Q [adolatkal]: Dear expert with a Phd degree! Can you comment the previous web chat about the same issue? Online seminars or webchats are unfortunately like this: the webchat on the 29-th of January. Me, asking via my sreename:
Q [adolatkal]: Dear professor on marketing! The old marketing words as product, place, prise, promotion are today in the globalized economy totally new words, beginning with C letter. How would you comment this innovation in marketing on Innovations?
A [Rajesh Chandy]: Nice to hear from a fellow student of marketing…..Each of the 4Cs - customers, competitors, companies, and collaborators - can be a source of innovation. (I suppose that is from the well known M. Porter's Brilliant Theorie).
Comment [adolatkal]: Dear professor! …guess this C-word finally! And only Communication is the buzzword in today's marketing.
So kind of knowledge can be not enough today, therefore we are seeking for relevant places for being educated/trained! Where to go, where to find the relevant place for reliable knowledge?
Best wishes and respects from the heart of Central Asia.
Halima Ozimova, the International educational
NGO: "Strategy-civilisation, gender, stability".
A [Richard Dasher:] Hey, thanks for the question. We used to say that "Ph.D." stood for "piled higher and deeper."
Anyway, if you look at the difference between the older terms and the "4Cs", I see a pattern. The common thread looks like a shift from looking at business as being internally-focused and supply-driven to being externally-focused and demand-driven. Customers, competitors, and collaborators, for sure are. I think that this is the challenge of our fast-moving age. You can't just manage your company, you have to be really quick on your feet to keep up with what's going on in the outside.
Q [Naimat Ullah Khan: LC Karachi]: American Society remained ahead in the 21st Century in innovation, but now other regions are also joined as a major player, But in 3rd world countries, there is a lot to be done to encourage innovations & innovators?
A [Richard Dasher]: Innovation is very situation-specific. Advanced economies have different demands and constraints on innovation than do developing economies. You can include truly 3rd world economies in the universe of innovation when you define innovation broadly as "keeping up with the external changes that are always happening everywhere." In that sense, people do need to learn about innovation everywhere: it's a different way of looking at a problem -- so as to find a solution, even if no one has found a solution before. You may even find a solution that then helps other people, too. I wonder if the advanced countries will learn from developing countries when it comes to major breakthroughs in low-cost clean energy, for example.
Q: [Naimat Ullah Khan: LC Karachi]: We are interested to know innovations in business industry; can you kindly brief or refer us some valuable resources on web?
A [Richard Dasher]: That's tough, because I don't know of one website that serves as some sort of "innovation portal." With regard to technologies -- once something is patented it becomes public information, and many countries make information about their new patents available online. Many universties, such as Stanford, have online lists of all of their technologies that are available for licensing.
As you note, business industry innnovation is broader than just new technologies. This means that keeping up with online business news is probably the best way to find out about innovations in business processes or about new innovative business models. Pick an industry or business line of your interest and follow as many different industry associations and newsletters as you can -- preferably worldwide.
It's theoretically true that, as soon as you announce something new on the Internet, your competitors all over the world know it. But, there are still many business ideas that start in one region and then need special knowledge in order to be transplanted to other regions -- how to localize the product/business process/business model to the preferences of people in your region becomes an important competitive edge.
A [Richard Dasher]: I'd like to close by emphasizing that innovation is something that everyone faces, not just inventors or scientists. Most innovation in business just adds one or two new features to an existing base. But, one has to select the right features and also apply them to what the market really wants.
The challenge of innovation is thus to observe the world around us, recognize how what is *not* there can be turned into an opportunity, and be able to imagine how people will react to a particular new solution to one of those problems. Creativity and the ability to execute are extremely important to all innovation, but understanding people may be the most important thing. The challenges of always looking for "the next new thing" are also a real joy.
Thanks for the great questions, and good hunting.
Richard
Moderator: We wish to thank Richard Dasher for joining us today. The webchat is now closed.
A full transcript of today's webchat will be available on our Ask America Homepage (http://www.america.gov/multimedia/askamerica.html) usually within one business day.
(Guests are chosen for their expertise. The views expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of State.)
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(Distributed by the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)
