Need for Structured R&D Roadmaps – Daimler Example

Source Daimler
It takes a long time to develop new technologies and integrate them into products. The wired article How Daimler Built the World’s First Self-Driving Semi has a great example:

Daimler, which owns Mercedes-Benz, has been working on autonomous driving for two decades.

As amazing as this thing is—it’s a fully autonomous 18-wheeler that works—company execs say it won’t can’t change lanes on its own, it won’t be market-ready for a decade, and could never replace human drivers.

Clearly, developing technologies takes a long time. So successful development needs intermediate productization of technologies.

Much of the technology in the Inspiration—the radars and cameras, the computing power and electrical architecture—has a long track record of commercial use in active safety features like lane departure warning and adaptive cruise control.

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Developing Product Platforms – Microsoft Example


Recent news suggests that a new version of Microsoft’s critically acclaimed Surface Book is entering mass production. It appears that Microsoft had to make significant changes to the original Surface Book to meet some of its business goals…

The sources believe Microsoft’s decision to lower the price range for its new Surface Book is because the existing Surface Book’s high price level has significantly limited demand, while the detachable design also created conflict with its Surface Pro product line in terms of product position. Because of the two factors, the sources estimate that Microsoft only shipped 500,000 Surface Books in 2016.With the Surface Book to be positioned as a traditional notebook product and feature a friendlier price level, the sources expect related shipments to reach 1.2-1.5 million units in 2017, while the Surface Pro, despite weakening demand for tablets, will enjoy on-year shipment growth of 20% to reach six million units in 2017.

New product platforms that are significantly different from existing product-lines are notoriously hard to develop. It appears that even a very successful product platform such as Surface Book may actually need updates.
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What is Research, Development and Engineering (RD&E) Management?

As we have discussed in the past, different organizations include different processes and disciplines in Research and Development. We at InspiRD have started using Research, Development and Engineering (RD&E) as a generic term that includes technology development, product development and sustaining engineering.

Integrated management of RD&E can provide immense benefits to organizations…
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R&D Management Best Practices

The article An Examination of New Product Development Best Practice from Journal of Product Innovation Management has great best practice AND benchmarking information for all R&D organizations.  The authors of the article conducted a survey of 286 companies across USA and Europe.  The objective was to understand what best practices are implemented, what best practices are not implemented and what practices are understood to be poor (Please note, the article uses NPD for New Product Development):

..it is unclear whether NPD practitioners as a group (not just researchers) are knowledgeable about what represents a NPD best practice. The importance of this is that it offers insight into how NPD practitioners are translating potential NPD knowledge into actual NPD practice. In other words, are practitioners aware of and able to implement NPD best practices designated by noteworthy studies? The answer to this question ascertains a current state of the field toward understanding NPD best practice and the maturity level of various practices. Answering this question further contributes to our understanding of the diffusion of NPD best practices knowledge by NPD professionals, possibly identifying gaps between prescribed and actual practice.

The article divides R&D into seven dimensions and looks into best practices for each.  Let us dig in:
1. Strategy: Strategic alignment for R&D was considered the most important dimension of the seven considered. The article defines strategy as everything from vision definition to prioritization of projects for resource allocation.

strategy involves the defining and planning of a vision and focus for research and development (R&D), technology management, and product development efforts at the SBU, division, product line, and/or individual project levels, including the identification, prioritization, selection, and resource support of preferred projects.

Within Strategy, most organizations aligned R&D to long-term company strategy and project goals seemed to be aligned well with the organization / mission.  Also, organizations were able to redirect projects as markets changed.  Here is the list of implemented best practices (again NPD=R&D):

  • Clearly defined and organizationally visible NPD goals 
  • The organization views NPD as a long-term strategy 
  • NPD goals are clearly aligned with organization mission and strategic plan 
  • NPD projects and programs are reviewed on a regular basis 
  • Opportunity identification is ongoing and can redirect the strategic plan real time to respond to market forces and new technologies
    R&D 

Some of the best practices that clearly did not get implemented deal with pet projects and managing R&D projects as portfolio.  Organizations did not have portfolio management processes implemented or they did not treat R&D projects as a portfolio (each was unique and not measured with respect to others.  We have quite a bit of information about R&D portfolio management here.

2. Market Research: Understanding of customer/market needs and having them drive the R&D process was the second most dimension of R&D management.

describes the application of methodologies and techniques to sense, learn about, and understand customers, competitors, and macro-environmental forces in the marketplace (e.g., focus groups, mail surveys, electronic surveys, and ethnographic study).

Within market research, the best practices were pretty straight forward: Use customer research to drive product development.  Also involve customer in testing the products at multiple stages of product development.

  • Ongoing market research is used to anticipate/identify future customer needs and problems 
  • Concept, product, and market testing is consistently undertaken and expected with all NPD projects 
  • Customer/user is an integral part of the NPD process
    Results of testing (concept, product, and market) are formally evaluated

We have discussed customer driven R&D in the past. We have also discussed that over dependence on customer can actually be harmful to R&D.  We have also seen Steve Jobs talk about user centric design, he did not directly involve customers in many stages of R&D.  For revolutionary products, customers are unlikely to be a good driver for R&D.

3. Product Launch: Processes associated with product commercialization / launch were rated the third most important area for best practices.

Commercialization describes activities related to the marketing, launch, and postlaunch management of new products that stimulate customer adoption and market diffusion.

Bar was not very high relative to launch related processes.  Most involved having a process, following it and tracking / learning from results.

  • A launch process exists 
  • The launch team is cross-functional in nature 
  • A project postmortem meeting is held after the new product is launched 
  • Logistics and marketing work closely together on new product launch 
  • Customer service and support are part of the launch team 
Product launch processes are quite important and we have discussed the impact of corporate cultures on new product launches. The key poor practice identified was keeping product launches secret to prevent unauthorized public announcement.  Not sure if that can be helped.

4. Processes: The article refers to stage gate reviews and knowledge management as key processes for R&D:

Within this framework, NPD process is defined as the implementation of product development stages and gates for moving products from concept to launch, coupled with those activities and systems that facilitate knowledge management for product development projects and the product development process.

It appears that most organizations recognized the need to have common processes for R&D: Stage gates, clear go/no-go criteria and well documented processes existed.

  • A common NPD process cuts across organizational groups 
  • Go/no-go criteria are clear and predefined for each review gate 
  • The NPD process is flexible and adaptable to meet the needs, size, and risk of individual projects 
  • The NPD process is visible and well documented
    The NPD process can be circumvented without management approval 

The key poor practices seem to be about inadequate IT tool support, uneven access to R&D knowledge and poor implementation of project management practices.  May we suggest InspiRD?

5. Company Culture: The next highly rated dimension of R&D management was company culture, its acceptance of R&D management as an important constituent and ability for R&D teams to collaborate across disciplines and organizations/suppliers:

company culture is defined as the company management value system driving those means and ways that underlie and establish product development thinking and product development collaboration with external partners, including customers and suppliers. Characteristics of company culture include the level of managerial support for NPD, sources used for NPD ideas, and if creativity is rewarded and encouraged.

The key complaint about company culture was a rejection of external or disruptive ideas.  We have discussed this extensively.

6. R&D Climate: This dimension relates to R&D project organization (such as cross functional teams) including leadership and HR support.

Within this framework, project climate is defined as the means and ways that underlie and establish product development intra-company integration at the individual and team levels, including the leading, motivating, managing, and structuring of individual and team human resources.

The best practices are straight forward – cross functional teams and multiple means of inter/intra team communications.

  • Cross-functional teams underlie the NPD process 
  • NPD activities between functional areas are coordinated through formal and informal communication 

We have discussed project networks as a way to supplement cross-functional teams.  A key challenge seems to be the inability to gain support for ideas that cross functions. Also, knowledge transfer across disciplines is also a major challenge.

7. R&D Metrics: Although metrics was rated the least important area for R&D management, the authors rightly point out that it is because very few meaningful R&D-related metrics exist.

The metrics and performance measurement dimension of the framework includes the measurement, tracking, and reporting of product development project and product development program performance.

In fact, participants could not point out a single best practice for R&D metrics!  We have discussed plenty of interesting metrics.


Courier: R&D Planning & Portfolio Management at Microsoft

I have been meaning to write about development and cancellation of Courier, an innovative tablet concept from  Microsoft.  The c|net article on the subject provides quite a bit of useful information – both about innovation management best practices and some opportunities for improvement.  Courier was developed at Microsoft’s Skunkworks (Pioneer Studios).  They invested quite a bit of resources in the concept (130 employees and $25M in funding).  The concept was very well received (See Courier: First Details of Microsoft’s Secret Tablet in Gizmodo):

It feels like the whole world is holding its breath for the Apple tablet. But maybe we’ve all been dreaming about the wrong device. This is Courier, Microsoft’s astonishing take on the tablet.

However, they had to cancel the product because it did not fit into Microsoft’s product portfolio (See Microsoft confirms, kills Courier in one fell swoop — Engadget):

Well this is depressing. Word has just gone fluttering out of Redmond that work on the Courier project — a heretofore rumored dual-screen tablet which rightfully set the tech world ablaze — has been spun down by the company.

It is unclear which, if any, technologies developed as part of the innovation project ever got transitioned into the rest of the portfolio.  The cancellation led to significant organizational strife and hard feelings.  I think R&D managers can learn a lot from this event.

Courier’s death also offers a detailed look into Microsoft’s Darwinian approach to product development and the balancing act between protecting its old product franchises and creating new ones. The company, with 90,000 employees, has plenty of brilliant minds that can come up with revolutionary approaches to computing. But sometimes, their creativity is stalled by process, subsumed in other products, or even sacrificed to protect the company’s Windows and Office empires.

So lets dig in…
As we have discussed in the past (here and here), Microsoft’s portfolio process seems to be driven by senior executive champions. In case of tablets, there were two competing groups led by two senior executives working on competing products.

One group, led by Xbox godfather J Allard, was pushing for a sleek, two-screen tablet called the Courier that users controlled with their finger or a pen. But it had a problem: It was running a modified version of Windows.
That ran headlong into the vision of tablet computing laid out by Steven Sinofsky, the head of Microsoft’s Windows division. Sinofsky was wary of any product–let alone one from inside Microsoft’s walls–that threatened the foundation of Microsoft’s flagship operating system. But Sinofsky’s tablet-friendly version of Windows was more than two years away.

The senior executive ownership has some benefits: They get to ensure the product received the right kind of focus and resources to get it to market.  The approach may help overcome the valley of death in innovation maturation.  However, it also a key disadvantage: disconnected and conflicting projects in the R&D portfolio:

The Courier group wasn’t interested in replicating Windows on a tablet. The team wanted to create a new approach to computing.

The two lines of R&D were somewhat incompatible and underlying culture of executive champions prevented  integrated portfolio management.  Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, had to call in Bill Gates to determine the path forward.  Gates did a product review and did not come out in favor of the new innovation (because of how far it was from the traditional Windows/Office business model):

“This is where Bill had an allergic reaction,” said one Courier worker who talked with an attendee of the meeting. As is his style in product reviews, Gates pressed Allard, challenging the logic of the approach.

Within a few weeks, Courier was cancelled because the product didn’t clearly align with the company’s Windows and Office franchises, according to sources.

The cancellation had a significant immediate impact on Microsoft’s business:

Rather than creating a touch computing device that might well have launched within a few months of Apple’s iPad, which debuted in April 2010, Microsoft management chose a strategy that’s forcing it to come from behind. The company cancelled Courier within a few weeks of the iPad’s launch.

Furthermore, the move away from innovation had a long-term impact on the product development cycle and the product portfolio at Microsoft:

But using Windows as the operating system for tablets also implies that Microsoft will update the devices’ operating systems on the Windows time frame, typically every three years. Compare that to Apple, which seems likely to continue to update the iPad annually, a tactic that drives a raft of new sales each time a new generation hits the market. By the time Windows 8 rolls out, Apple will likely have introduced its iPad 3. Moreover, Amazon’s much anticipated Kindle Fire tablet, which goes on sale November 15, will have nearly a year head start on the Windows-powered tablet offerings.

So what if anything could have been done differently and what can we learn from this?  First, many companies try to overcome the bureaucracy of a large organization by creating skunkworks (See Nokia).  The idea was similar at Microsoft:

The gadget was the creation of Allard’s skunkworks design operation Pioneer Studios and Alchemie Ventures, a research lab that also reported to Allard. (The lab took the German spelling of “alchemy” to highlight the stereotypical Teutonic traits of structure and regiment it hoped to bring to its innovation process.)

However, Skunkworks like environments are hard to integrate into the overall culture.  They tend to become quite segregated causing many of the innovations wither on the vine:

Allard created a fantasyland inside Microsoft where Apple fanboys could tinker on stylish products that would never see the light of day. They point to the opulent 36,000-square foot office of Pioneer Studios, headquartered in Seattle’s Pioneer Square, that featured huge open spaces, dotted with cushy Eames lounge chairs, angular white desks, blond wood floors, and exposed brick walls. It may have been 16 miles from Microsoft’s far more corporate Redmond, Wash., campus, but it was a galaxy away in terms of workplace design.

Clearly, Pioneer studios had envisaged this scenario and tried to form project networks that brought innovation cultures to the rest of the company:

He encouraged employees to seek out new colleagues with diverse backgrounds who could challenge Microsoft’s conventions and push the company to approach new opportunities in different ways.

Microsoft made an effort to implement a structured innovation management process:

Allard created Alchemie to focus on innovation process to make sure that the efforts of Pioneer were not scattershot. It studied best practices, both within and outside Microsoft, to “design a repeatable, predictable and measurable approach for building new business” 

Additionally, they integrated some cutting-edge innovation management practices such as clear timeline for technology insertion and a stage gate process to ensure the innovation projects do not spin to far from reality:

In fact, one of the mandates of Alchemie was to look only at product ideas and business concepts that were no farther than three years into the future. The Alchemie book includes something of an innovation process road map that lays out four “gates” that ideas needed to pass through to move from incubation to product development. And a source said that Courier had made it through all four gates.

Another interesting concept they implemented was clearly defined purpose and freedom to explore new solutions:

“Infuse them with our purpose,” Allard wrote. “Give them the tools. Give them lots of rope. Learn from them. Support where they take you. Invite them to redefine The Tribe.”

The Courier team also had a well defined mission – Free Create – that further focus development:

The phrase at the core of the Courier mission was “Free Create.” It was meant to describe the notion of eliminating the processes and protocols that productivity software often imposes on workers.

The idea of Free Create was imbued into the entire development process – which is a great idea.  Not sure of the business case for traveling to Milan to understand Moleskine…

The metaphor they used was “digital Moleskine,” a nod to the leather-bound notebooks favored in the design world. In fact, according to a few team members, a small group led by Petschnigg flew to Milan, Italy, to pick the brains of the designers at Moleskine to understand how they’ve been able to create such loyal customers.

One more interesting concept about Innovation Management was implemented: Disconnected prototypes allowing different subsystems to mature separately. This approach is advantageous in that it allows more experimentation and we have seen that experiments boost productivity.  Steve Jobs followed a similar approach when developing the iPhone.

When Courier died, there was not a single prototype that contained all of the attributes of the vision: the industrial design, the screen performance, the software experience, the correct weight, and the battery life. Those existed individually, created in parallel to keep the development process moving quickly. Those prototypes wouldn’t have come together into a single unit until very late in the development process, perhaps weeks before manufacturing, which is common for cutting-edge consumer electronics design. But on the team, there was little doubt that they were moving quickly toward that final prototype.

It appears that the Courier team made significant progress (and used significant resources along the way):

Courier was much more than a clever vision. The team, which had more than 130 Microsoft employees contributing to it, had created several prototypes that gave a clear sense about the type of experience users would get.
It’s clear there were substantial resources behind the effort. The commemorative book, designed to resemble the journal-like look of the Courier, lists the 134 employees who contributed to the gadget’s creation. Moreover, Petschnigg writes on his LinkedIn profile page that he “managed $3.5 (million) seed funding, (and) secured $20 (million) to develop this new product category.”

However, there was a clear lack of coordination at the product portfolio level and there were no processes to align development plans across different product lines or R&D projects:

Early on, the group opted to use Windows for Courier’s operating system. But it wasn’t a version of Windows that any consumer would recognize. The Courier team tweaked the operating system to make sure it could perform at high levels with touch- and pen-based computing. What’s more, the graphical shell of Windows–the interface that computer users associate with the operating system–was entirely removed. So while it was Windows under the hood, the home screens bore zero resemblance to the familiar PC desktop.

This is a key problem with the Skunkworks innovation concept.  A separate culture quickly becomes insular and product lines divergences can not be reconciled:

“A big lesson is that it may be easier to go into your quiet space and incubate. But when you want to get bigger and get more resources, you want to make sure you’re aligned,” a Courier team member said. “If you get Sinofsky on board from the start, you’re probably going to market.”

So the challenge again appears to be with Microsoft’s R&D planning and portfolio management process.  It is relatively easy to become innovative (may be not $25M, but at least to some level), however, it is not easy to align product portfolios to bring innovation to market:

For Courier to come to life, the team creating it would have to convince the Microsoft brass that the device would offer the company substantial opportunities that Windows 8 could not. In the end, that proved to be too large a hurdle for J Allard, Courier’s leader and Microsoft’s chief consumer technology visionary. 

One way to address this challenge is to have more detailed R&D plans that can be shared and linked across different product lines.  These plans could have allowed teams to decide how they can bring different development paths together over time without an outright cancellation of Courier.  Well communicated plans and roadmaps could have facilitated collaboration between Courier and Windows 8 teams.  This collaboration could have ensured that more of the technologies developed under courier could have been integrated into Windows 8.  This unfortunately did not happen.

It’s unclear what, if any, pieces of the Courier technology are finding their way into other Microsoft products.

The only way any new innovation got introduced to Microsoft was through unmanaged diffusion:

Courier team members scattered. Many moved on to other products at Microsoft, such as Xbox, Windows Phone, and Bing.Others are involved with different incubation efforts at the company. 

A final lesson could be better portfolio management processes such as more frequent portfolio reviews where executives could have either reconciled development plans or eliminated the project before significant resources and emotions were invested:

And a few employees who contributed to the product’s development have left the company altogether, joining other tech firms such as Amazon, Zynga, and Facebook.


CEO says Ford won’t back off R&D spending

I have been gathering data about corporate response to difficult market conditions, especially the impact on R&D spending.  Tough times impact every aspect of an organization’s operations and they have changed R&D spending as well (reduce focus on long-term R&D).  Even so, organizations tend to fight to maintain R&D spending levels.  We have seen that CEO of companies such as 3M have maintained R&D spending despite the downturn. Here is another data point from the Marketwatch post CEO says Ford won’t back off R&D spending:

Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally said Tuesday at the Geneva Motor Show that the auto maker will focus not on forging further alliances in Europe to help drive growth but on continuing to invest heavily in new products. “We have never backed off, even through this entire recession,” he said. “We actually have increased investment in our new vehicles during the toughest of times.

As a background, the European slowdown is likely to lead to a $0.6B loss in Ford’s European operations (Ford launches B-Max subcompact – seattlepi.com):

Ford will focus on cost containment to return to profitability until demand is restored, but he declined to speculate on possible measures. Booth said Ford Europe could lose $500 to $600 million dollars this year, after recording losses of $190 million in the last quarter of 2011.

Interestingly, the cost cuts are going to be in manufacturing operations rather than R&D – especially since R&D has probably more flexibility.  Even more importantly, we have discussed many times that how you spend on R&D is far more important than how much.  In fact, many leaders such as CTOs of Texas Instruments and Pfizer have found that R&D cost cuts actually improved results!
The effort to maintain budgets is even more surprising in light of the fact that surveys show most R&D executives do not see R&D as driver of innovation.  May be some of these CxO statements are for public relations perspective, but still important to understand.

The second important point Mr. Mullaly makes is that Ford will not form R&D alliances.  Sharing R&D across multiple companies is a simple way to reduce R&D costs near-term.  Here is another article from MarketWatch discussion R&D alliances (BMW, GM still talking over technology cooperation):

BMW AG Chief Executive Norbert Reithofer confirmed Tuesday that the German car maker’s cooperation projects with PSA Peugeot Citroen remain unaffected after the French peer last week forged an alliance with General Motors Co.. He added that cooperation talks between BMW and GM over “future technologies” such as fuel cells are still ongoing, but declined to elaborate.

As we have discussed in the past, automotive companies make a complex web of alliances.  May be the Ford approach has some value considering the difficulty and cost of managing these alliances and maintaining IP rights across them.


Apple’s R&D portfolio strategy – “Get Rid of the Crappy Stuff” (Continued)

I had been meaning to write about the article For the good of the company? Five Apple products Steve Jobs killed from Ars Technica:

When Steven P. Jobs returned to Apple 1997, he returned to a slew of ill-conceived product lines. Some were excessive, and some were downright silly, but many were ultimately killed off for their poor alignment with consumer needs and wants. Still, even with Jobs’ discerning eye, he wasn’t immune to having to deal with a few bad product decisions. 

We discussed the Jobs’ portfolio management methodology here. I had mentioned that it is hard to make the right decision about what is crap.  This prevents some leaders from making any decision at all.  The idea should be to find failures early before a significant investment has been made.  In fact, we should encourage some amount of risk taking in R&D organizations to ensure that we are somewhat pushing the boundaries.  The only way to ensure sufficient risks are taken is to see some projects fail and rewarding failure.  Even Steve Jobs occasionally made bad product decisions.  The only answer is to have a good risk management process in place to catch failures. We also want to make sure we learn something from each failure so we can improve decision making for the future. So, here is an example of a bad product decision by Jobs:

The Power Mac G4 Cube, a computer suspended in a clear plastic box, was designed by Jonathan Ive and released in July 2000. The Cube sported a 450MHz G4 processor, 20GB hard drive, and 64MB of RAM for $1,799, but no PCI slots or conventional audio outputs or inputs, favoring instead a USB amplifier and a set of Harman Kardon speakers. The machine was known in certain circles as Jobs’ baby.

While Apple hoped the computer would be a smash hit, few customers could see their way to buying the monitor-less Cube when the all-in-one iMac could be purchased for less, and a full-sized PowerMac G4 introduced a month later with the same specs could be had for $1,599. Apple attempted to re-price and re-spec the Cube in the following months, but Jobs ended up murdering one of his own darlings, suspending production of the model exactly one year after its release. While the Cube’s design is still revered (it’s part of the MoMA’s collection), it proved consumers won’t buy a product for its design alone.


Risks of government investment in innovation

We have often talked about the role of the government investment in driving innovation (and here).  We had identified the risks of government investment as corruption and inefficiency.  We had also discussed potential solutions: 1) Have a large number of industry participants competing for government investment and 2) address smaller industries such as wind power for innovation investment (as opposed to large fixed cost industries such as high speed rail).

The article How do we know that China is overinvesting? by Prof. Pettis has one additional major risk – lost economic value.  The article discusses large investment made by the Chinese government in the electric car industry:

The electric car industry was often Exhibit A in the argument that Chinese investment was in the aggregate rational and economically sensible. This industry is clearly the industry of the future, the China bulls argued, and China’s massive investment in the technology, which would allow the country to dominate one of the key sectors of the future, showed why it was mistaken to complain about capital misallocation. This kind of investment was actually very clever stuff.

Prof. Pettis points out two major concerns about the investment:

  1. Whether the total economic costs of investment are less than the total economic benefits: Innovation should create additional wealth for the country that more than offsets the government investment.
  2. Whether there is a mismatch in the timing of costs and benefits: Even if the value generated is positive in the long-term, it might be negative for short to medium term and harmful to the economy.

These are good question to ask, but probably difficult to answer effectively.  Computing economic value of an innovation investment is likely expensive.  It would be difficult to build a business case to invest in the effort to compute economic value.  However, the key problem that the article identifies is very valid:

… risky high-technology ventures are not best funded and directed by companies, industries and policymakers who are historically weak in the technology sector, especially when they have no shareholder or budget constraints and have almost unlimited access to heavily-subsidized capital. This seemed to me a recipe for wasted investment.”

After the significant thrust by the Chinese government in electric vehicles, the reality set in – there was no market for the electric vehicles.  Instead of redirecting the innovation investment, the government tried to compensate for it through regulation:

…a directive signed by four government ministries encouraging 25 pilot cities, including major markets such as Beijing and Shanghai, to “actively study” exemptions for electric cars from license plate lotteries and auctions, as well as a host of other purchase restrictions.

Hence, the industry was propped up:

The only way to make electric cars economically viable in China, in other words, is to put into place administrative measures that divert buyers, but as any economics student can tell you, these kinds of administrative measures simply shift resources from one sector of the economy to another without creating wealth. In fact because they force consumers to choose something that they otherwise wouldn’t, they actually reduce overall wealth.

One way to justify this additional regulation could be reduced emission / pollution.  But the fact that the regulation was not planned in the first place, and is being considered solely to account for lack of market demand reduces the efficacy of that justification.

So, we could add a couple more solutions to our list: 3) Target small businesses for the bulk of the innovation investment; 4) Focus on investment, not regulation to promote adoption of innovation; and 5) if regulation is necessary, plan for it upfront while deciding the investment.


The Big Idea: Before You Make That Big Decision

Deciding which R&D ideas to invest in and how to prioritize product portfolio opportunities is difficult.  CTOs of several large companies have actually reported that R&D performance increases with cuts in budgets (TI, Pfizer).  However, we have often discussed the problems with reliance on gut feelings or irrationality of decision making.  Here is an interesting article from the Harvard Business Review about The Big Idea: Before You Make That Big Decision…:

Thanks to a slew of popular new books, many executives today realize how biases can distort reasoning in business. Confirmation bias, for instance, leads people to ignore evidence that contradicts their preconceived notions. Anchoring causes them to weigh one piece of information too heavily in making decisions; loss aversion makes them too cautious. In our experience, however, awareness of the effects of biases has done little to improve the quality of business decisions at either the individual or the organizational level.

Clearly, some intuition will always be necessary to make decisions about the future. However, should we try to minimize the impact of biases in our decision making?

Though there may now be far more talk of biases among managers, talk alone will not eliminate them. But it is possible to take steps to counteract them. A recent McKinsey study of more than 1,000 major business investments showed that when organizations worked at reducing the effect of bias in their decision-making processes, they achieved returns up to seven percentage points higher.

Cost of questioning and examining decision-making can be large. The article has some great pointers about when and how to dig into decisions.  Here is my version of a checklist based on the article to eliminate decision bias. (as you know, I love checklists):

  1. Is the decision sufficiently large to warrant an evaluation of bias? (do not question all decisions)
  2. Is there a  reason to suspect the self-interest bias in the team making the recommendation? (do a thorough review)
  3. Has the team has clearly fallen in love with its proposal and not evaluated other options? (Are credible alternatives included along with the recommendation?
  4. If there seems to be Groupthink because dissenting views were not solicited or explored.  (Solicit dissenting views, discreetly if necessary).
  5. Are the people making the recommendation overly attached to past decisions?
    1. Is the team is relying mainly on a memorable success?
    2. Is the team assuming that a person, organization, or approach that is successful in one area will be just as successful in another?
  6. Do you know where the numbers came from? Can you get better numbers / results from other models?
    1. If you had to make this decision again in a year’s time, what information would you want, and can you get more of it now? 
    2. Is the base case overly optimistic?
    3. Is the worst case bad enough?
    4. Is the recommending team overly cautious?
As the article points out, a key to eliminating decision bias (and literally, the success of all change), is discipline on the part of the R&D manager.  If we do not follow the same process that is required of all teams, the biases will never be questioned or eliminated.

Nokia’s troubles arise from mismanagement not lack of innovation

Nokia has been in the news quite a bit lately.  Nokia’s new CEO Elop was recently quoted in the WSJ saying:

Rising competition in China and Europe has forced Nokia to cut its prices, contributing to the second-quarter sales miss, Mr. Elop said. He singled out Google’s Android operating system as a major source of Nokia’s current troubles in both regions

In fact, Elop announced on May 31 that company’s second quarter of 2011 will come in substantially below expectations. The outlook is so dismal that Nokia disavowed its forecasts for the rest of the year.  We have speculated in the past that Nokia’s management bureaucracy stifled innovation. The new article in Business week (Stephen Elop’s Nokia Adventure) has a lot more empirical evidence:

For a moment, Elop, 47, lays into the complacency he sees settling over the company. When he asks how many people in the crowd use an iPhone or Android device, few hands go up. ‘That upsets me—not because some of you are using iPhones, but because only a small number of people are using iPhones. I’d rather people have the intellectual curiosity to understand what we’re up against.’ Finally, after emphasizing that he believes mismanagement—not a lack of innovation—is what ails the company

From hi-fi sounds to water proof phones, interesting innovations abound at Nokia:

On his visit to Salo, Elop was shown a hi-fi speaker that encloses a phone, giving a richer sound. Another engineer handed him a phone and asked him to toss it into a tank of water. When the engineer dialed its number, the device, still submerged, rang. A nanoscale coating makes electronic parts water-resistant. “

However, few of the innovations came to market because of management:

This kind of stuff has been sitting around people’s desks, because it’s too hard to get anything done around here,” Elop says. “If we can get some of this to market—that’s what gives me confidence.

Mismanagement seemed to start from senior leadership (Ex-CEO):

Recent history has hardened employees to the opportunities of a new era. “Under OPK, you could work on something for four years” before a decision was made to halt it, says Tuomas Artman, a former employee and Nokia contractor. OPK is Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, the former CEO frequently accused by ex-Nokians of running a politicized, indecisive organization. 

Even in well managed organizations, it may be necessary to halt ongoing R&D projects if the market realities or competitive pressures change.  However, the leadership should be able to communicate these changes to employees and need to be held accountable for their decisions.  This was definitely not the case at Nokia:

On Sept. 21, his first day, Elop sent an e-mail to every employee asking what they thought he should change, what should be left alone, and what they feared he wouldn’t understand. There were more than 2,000 responses, mostly about accountability. (One of Elop’s favorites: “At Nokia, everybody and nobody is accountable for nothing.”) Elop personally responded to each one, and word got around that the new boss was serious about addressing their concerns.

An interesting side node about Elop’s interesting change management style: He clearly has engaged the employee base, shown a sense of urgency and personal commitment.  Many of the traits we have been discussing about effective organizational change.  The real challenge for Elop is to instill accountability in the organization (more on it below).  Back to the R&D management, Elop quickly recognized that Symbian was a significant problem:

Most of these problems could be traced back to Symbian. Never beloved by users, it became hopelessly buggy as Nokia tried to make the 10-year-old dog pull off iPhone-like tricks.

Nor did Nokia have a coherent effort to develop a developer community for Symbian:

And while Apple and Google have created software tools that help outside developers to easily create apps, Nokia’s equivalent tools gave developers fits. “Developing for Symbian,” says Artman, the former Nokian, “could make you want to slice your wrists.” 

The root cause of this seems to be a lack of a single driving vision (like that of Steve Jobs) to help prioritize what features to focus on:

Until last month, the company hadn’t delivered a single new smartphone on time or without major software glitches since 2009, in part because of delays as scores of different hardware teams lobbied to get their pet capability—a new camera, say—built into Symbian. 

Another root cause is the lack of focus on  user experience.  The amazing factory and ability to crank out cutting edge hardware seemed to treat software as just one component.  This lack of integration allowed Apple and Google to gain market share:

And while Apple and Google focus on making one operating system to power a wide variety of devices, software at Nokia had been seen as just one more “component” to enable hardware teams to craft their latest models. “The terminology shows the mindset,” says Mark Wilcox, a former Nokia engineer. “The focus was on the phone, because Nokia had this amazing factory that could crank out 100 million units a year if you got a hit.” 

The last root cause (at least for this post) seems to be a lack of R&D portfolio management processes.  As the link shows, the lack of results was despite large R&D investments.  In fact, Nokia invested almost 6.2B Euro in Symbian in 2010 – more than 10 times the total R&D budget at Apple.  The fact that the company had no visibility into the product pipeline or the R&D portfolio is even more shocking:

Elop drew out what he knew about the plans for MeeGo on a whiteboard, with a different color marker for the products being developed, their target date for introduction, and the current levels of bugs in each product. Soon the whiteboard was filled with color, and the news was not good: At its current pace, Nokia was on track to introduce only three MeeGo-driven models before 2014—far too slow to keep the company in the game.

So, instead of having a live dashboard to look at status of the entire R&D pipeline, the CEO had to collect information through interviews and phone call.  I wonder how accurate that information was!  As if that is not enough, the chief development officer was also unaware of the development status:

When they finally spoke late on Jan. 4, “It was truly an oh-s–t moment—and really, really painful to realize where we were,” says Oistämö. Months later, Oistämö still struggles to hold back tears. “MeeGo had been the collective hope of the company,” he says, “and we’d come to the conclusion that the emperor had no clothes. It’s not a nice thing.”

I wonder who is going to be held accountable for a complete lack of R&D portfolio management!  May be that can be the first order of business for the new CEO…  May be we can suggest our integrated system for R&D management? 😉 Back to R&D management: clearly, Nokia needed to remove unprofitable projects from their portfolio and that is what they decided to do (illustration via engadget):

Overall, this looks like a good R&D strategy from Elop: Eliminate low-return R&D and focus on core business of low cost phones:

Windows-based smartphones are the first stage of Elop’s three-part comeback plan. One huge incentive for dumping Symbian was to cut the company’s bloated costs. With an estimated $1.4 billion annual savings from discontinuing Symbian, he says he will invest more to protect and build Nokia’s massive low-end phone business in emerging and yet-to-emerge nations in Asia and Africa, which brought in 33 percent of Nokia’s sales in 2010.

The third priority seems to be investing in disruptive innovations by setting up skunkworks:

It’s a fully sanctioned skunkworks, with teams in Helsinki and Silicon Valley, staffed by top technical talent from the discontinued Symbian and MeeGo efforts, especially MeeGo. That initiative began when Nokia hired a crew of inventive open source evangelists in 2009 with orders to dream up entirely new devices. A few months later they were reassigned to develop a replacement for Symbian. The goal, as Elop told a group of engineers in Berlin on Feb. 29, is once again to “find that next big thing that blows away Apple, Android, and everything we’re doing with Microsoft right now and makes it irrelevant—all of it. So go for it, without having to worry about saving Nokia’s rear end in the next 12 months. I’ve taken off the handcuffs.

The key challenge here is going to be the same – effective R&D portfolio management processes.  Even if there are disruptive innovations in skunkworks, industry’s record of successfully integrating them in developed products is weak at best.  Hopefully, Elop’s superpower will help him through this challenge:

“It was classic Stephen,” says Myerson, who worked for Elop at Microsoft. “His superpower isn’t his great intuitive judgment. It’s his amazing ability to create a transparent, fast process that reasonable people can feel good about.”

Article first published as Nokia’s Troubles Arise From Mismanagement Not Lack of Innovation on Technorati.