I worked with Nathan Zeldes at Intel some years ago; he is one of the most electric, energetic, insightful engineers I've ever had the privilege to know. He asked a question the other day about my Medal of Defiance -- the answer I sent him is the basis for the previous post.
He has posted it on his own blog, with some contextual description, on his site. See:
http://www.nathanzeldes.com/blog/2013/05/intrapreneurship-and-the-hewlett-packard-medal-of-defiance/
What was more fun for me was to get Nathan's response to my brief essay. Here it is -- unvarnished:
To be honest, I'm not at all surprised that you did all that insubordination (I remember well your "Let's highjack the summit" that led to the founding of our VCRT) - but the thought that a senior manager would reward Defiance instead of punishing it is what I found particularly intriguing and very worth sharing.
"Highjack the summit?" Me? Maybe this is a more fun story to recall...
Well, this was circa autumn or early winter 2000. I had become a member of the Intel technical staff after they bought Dialogic. I actually missed the 'recruiting season' due to an enforced medical absence (I was immobilized, bedridden for a few months with a sports injury), and I was not a chip designer, so the question was 'what do we do with this guy?' Recently back on my feet, they invited me to a conference and workshop to talk about Information Technology (IT), or so I thought.
What it turned out to be was a group of IT managers whining about how hard their job was, how slow the network was, how many Intel 'users' beefed about their slow service, and etc. In other words, it was the typical lament of the typical IT organization, NOT a workshop to talk about possibilities for new applications and capabilities of "information technology".
Somehow, and I don't actually remember how, I had met Nathan by phone (he worked at Intel Israel), and we'd already explored what we might do with better collaboration tools. Intel hadn't yet given up on Intel ProShare or Team Station, but the writing was on the wall. Those systems were the best thing available at the time, but in truth they were clumsy, expensive, prone to technical difficulty, and worst of all, guaranteed to generate mistrust since you could never look the other person in the eye, only the eyelid. Nathan and I had 'chewed the rag' on the phone several times about what might be better.
But at this conference, to which several hundred folk had flown in for several days, we were disbarred from having a session, or even a speaking gig. Protocol meant that 'the important people' had agenda time; the troops were to listen and salute. We poked this beast several times, and got nowhere.
I was incensed, and so was Nathan. We talked about what to do, and I suggested that he stand up just before lunch on the second day with a 'spot announcement' -- saying something like "Hey, I know a lot of you folk are interested in collaboration tools across remote sites, and we don't have that on the agenda. We're (that guy in the back, Chuck House, who you probably haven't met, and me) hosting a Brown Bag workshop in the next room over lunch, if you'd like to attend, we'd welcome you."
He did it. And we got seven people. The group met, got excited, formed a volunteer project, named it the VCRT team, and started on our own time to build some things. VCRT stood for VIRTUAL COLLABORATION RESEARCH TEAM. It took us a couple of years, but we built some prototypes, filed some patent applications, GOT THEM!, got noticed by management (not just in IT, but at the Exec level), and got instantiated as the Colab research team for the company.
One paper still available is titled "3D Global Virtual Teaming Environment" which shows some of the environment. See my Research gate postings: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/221338080_3D_Global_Virtual_Teaming_Environment?ev=prf_pub
Friday, May 24, 2013
Monday, May 20, 2013
Medal of Defiance
People keep asking ... what's the story on this wacko-sounding award. So, here's a brief summary:
.jpg)
House was one of those mavericks, though, from a remote division who exemplified local creativity. He had pioneered several major programs, and helped launch a dozen divisions in his first twenty years at the company. If anyone could meet Young’s goals, and persuade the bulk of HP engineers and managers that this was workable, it augured to be House.
Packard recalled one long-forgotten incident with House, and he concluded that an award to House at inception of this new corporate role could set a tone that emphasized innovation and creativity at EVERY level of the company. Voilà, the Award of Defiance was conceived, created, and bestowed.
The FAA wanted to see images of airplanes near an airport ― recall movie scenes where a control tower is tracking radar blips on CRTs (cathode ray tubes, or television tubes) that indicate planes. Our chief competitor, Tektronix, had voted ‘no,’ giving us an opening. Milt Russell, a short soft-spoken scientist, had come from General Electric, the company that built the display equipment extant at airports. Russell was touting a new technology: an expansion mesh lens that he believed could shorten the picture tube length dramatically (from 54 inches to 18 inches).
For this project, however, there was a new requirement: the FAA wanted the CRT to show more than a radar blip. They wanted identifying flight letters next to each blip, a hard goal with an expansion mesh approach. The prototype didn’t meet the FAA needs since it defocused the letters that identified the planes. Russell fiddled with the focusing problem; I sought applications where focus wasn’t so important. We probably should have gone back to our bosses and said, “Hey, this won’t work for the FAA requirement. We should call FAA and say ‘we’re sorry’ and then cancel the project.”
By the time that our bosses figured out that we couldn’t solve the FAA problem, I loved the pictures we could display. Wanting to take the unit to some potential customers, I was strongly told ‘No.’ HP did not allow engineers to go alone to customers (a sales representative had to go); second, we couldn’t afford the extra travel expense; and third, HP didn’t allow prototypes to be shown to customers because that might tip our hand.
I proposed to take the box with me on a personal trip to California for the upcoming Christmas holidays, calling on customers where HP sales people set up the meeting. This met two of the three objections ― the contacts and the travel cost. For the third point, I argued that if we were going to cancel the project for lack of market, there was no real danger in ‘tipping our hand to competitors’. They grudgingly acquiesced.
The box, though, was too big to put in my car. I had to package the unit ― in an eight cubic foot box, two feet on every side ― take it to the airport, and fly it from place to place. At each stop, I’d put my family in a motel, take the right front seat out of my vintage Volkswagen Beetle, go to the airport, get the box, bring it to the motel, unpack it, and then go to the customer.
I met with twenty potential customers in two weeks. It generated phenomenal excitement. Sadly, the findings weren’t persuasive back home. At the annual division review, Packard asked us about the technology, and later, about the market. The executives punted, saying they’d found few potential customers. I wasn’t asked ― I was ‘just’ a designer, sans experience with marketing. In a stentorian voice, Packard said: “When I come back next year, I don’t want to see this project in the lab.”
Told this verdict the next day, I was quite upset. Our marketing manager, a talented, energetic voluble man, had said the sales forecast was thirty-one units, a number that enraged me. I countered, saying that he’d missed by six percent, since he had not called my father, who wanted two units.
I argued for the applications; my R&D boss was courageous, granting an extra $60,000 for eight months to get to production. When Packard returned a year later and saw it, he nearly had a stroke ― pounding the table, he bellowed : “I thought I said to kill this damn thing.”
I witlessly said, “No, sir. You said when you came back, you didn’t want to see this in the lab. It isn’t. It’s in production.”
The answer didn’t satisfy.
The HP Medal of Defiance
From the viewpoint of Dave Packard, founder
The Medal of Defiance was
awarded only once in the history of Hewlett-Packard, by HP's founder , David Packard, to Chuck House in April 1982 when House began a new
role as HP’s Corporate Engineering Director, sitting in an adjoining office to
David Packard, chairman of the board.
Bill Hewlett, Dave’s co-founder, had the adjacent office on the other
side. Packard had become concerned that the “new HP” in the computer
business was becoming very bureaucratic.
.
.jpg)
New CEO John Young thought
it key to shift resources from instrumentation to computing, and to co-ordinate
all of the R&D efforts across ninety divisions into something much more
efficient. But the very appointment of a
Corporate Engineering Director was evidence to Packard that a job to
co-ordinate strategies, streamline development times, and strengthen
productivity rather than emphasize creativity would be viewed as another
“Headquarters” imposition.
House was one of those mavericks, though, from a remote division who exemplified local creativity. He had pioneered several major programs, and helped launch a dozen divisions in his first twenty years at the company. If anyone could meet Young’s goals, and persuade the bulk of HP engineers and managers that this was workable, it augured to be House.
Packard recalled one long-forgotten incident with House, and he concluded that an award to House at inception of this new corporate role could set a tone that emphasized innovation and creativity at EVERY level of the company. Voilà, the Award of Defiance was conceived, created, and bestowed.
The history, by Chuck House (extracted from “Old Bribery”,
Chapter 2 of Permission Denied: Odyssey
of an Intrapreneur, InnovaScapes Institute Press, 2013)
Given a choice of several new projects, I hadn’t previously seen one that
was on the list, an FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) control
tower monitor. I asked my boss, “What’s
this one?” His cryptic answer: “We don’t
really know. It’s a new request, not
really an oscilloscope. Milt Russell in our cathode ray tube (CRT) department has worked in this area;
he might know something about it.”
The FAA wanted to see images of airplanes near an airport ― recall movie scenes where a control tower is tracking radar blips on CRTs (cathode ray tubes, or television tubes) that indicate planes. Our chief competitor, Tektronix, had voted ‘no,’ giving us an opening. Milt Russell, a short soft-spoken scientist, had come from General Electric, the company that built the display equipment extant at airports. Russell was touting a new technology: an expansion mesh lens that he believed could shorten the picture tube length dramatically (from 54 inches to 18 inches).
For this project, however, there was a new requirement: the FAA wanted the CRT to show more than a radar blip. They wanted identifying flight letters next to each blip, a hard goal with an expansion mesh approach. The prototype didn’t meet the FAA needs since it defocused the letters that identified the planes. Russell fiddled with the focusing problem; I sought applications where focus wasn’t so important. We probably should have gone back to our bosses and said, “Hey, this won’t work for the FAA requirement. We should call FAA and say ‘we’re sorry’ and then cancel the project.”
The prototype was pretty intriguing.
Essentially it was a very high-speed television set. The diagonal screen size was impressive for a
‘scope, 14 inches instead of 5 ― an 800 per cent larger display. The joke was that we were building a much
faster TV set so that you could watch the movie Gandhi in four minutes.
Other wags opined that it was a ‘scope for nearsighted long-armed
engineers.
By the time that our bosses figured out that we couldn’t solve the FAA problem, I loved the pictures we could display. Wanting to take the unit to some potential customers, I was strongly told ‘No.’ HP did not allow engineers to go alone to customers (a sales representative had to go); second, we couldn’t afford the extra travel expense; and third, HP didn’t allow prototypes to be shown to customers because that might tip our hand.
I proposed to take the box with me on a personal trip to California for the upcoming Christmas holidays, calling on customers where HP sales people set up the meeting. This met two of the three objections ― the contacts and the travel cost. For the third point, I argued that if we were going to cancel the project for lack of market, there was no real danger in ‘tipping our hand to competitors’. They grudgingly acquiesced.
The box, though, was too big to put in my car. I had to package the unit ― in an eight cubic foot box, two feet on every side ― take it to the airport, and fly it from place to place. At each stop, I’d put my family in a motel, take the right front seat out of my vintage Volkswagen Beetle, go to the airport, get the box, bring it to the motel, unpack it, and then go to the customer.
I met with twenty potential customers in two weeks. It generated phenomenal excitement. Sadly, the findings weren’t persuasive back home. At the annual division review, Packard asked us about the technology, and later, about the market. The executives punted, saying they’d found few potential customers. I wasn’t asked ― I was ‘just’ a designer, sans experience with marketing. In a stentorian voice, Packard said: “When I come back next year, I don’t want to see this project in the lab.”
Told this verdict the next day, I was quite upset. Our marketing manager, a talented, energetic voluble man, had said the sales forecast was thirty-one units, a number that enraged me. I countered, saying that he’d missed by six percent, since he had not called my father, who wanted two units.
I argued for the applications; my R&D boss was courageous, granting an extra $60,000 for eight months to get to production. When Packard returned a year later and saw it, he nearly had a stroke ― pounding the table, he bellowed : “I thought I said to kill this damn thing.”
I witlessly said, “No, sir. You said when you came back, you didn’t want to see this in the lab. It isn’t. It’s in production.”
The answer didn’t satisfy.
Results: Most paradigm shifts start
slowly. Three months after sales
release, we had sold forty units, a pleasing if not rousing launch. The new applications for this display box
were compelling. It became the first
commercially available computer graphics CRT.
Beyond Alan Kay’s ‘personal computer’, Doug
Engelbart bought one to experiment in the first
demonstrated computer network in the famous “Mother of All Demos”. It won a Hollywood Oscar for technical screen graphics, it was
the surgery room display for Dr. Norman DeBakey’s first artificial heart transplant,
and it was the basis for the TV space video of Neil Armstrong’s foot landing on the moon July 20,
1969.
These high-visibility successes were in the future – for the
moment all we had were a few sales and a peeved CEO.
What did
I learn? Bring
passion and dedication to your job, and never quit in the face of adversity. Be willing to challenge ‘the rules’ – nothing
good happens unless something happens first.
Tuesday, April 30, 2013
Innovation and Jobs
The topic we return to again and again -- how to stimulate Innovation in medium-sized and larger companies -- was described in many forms at the recent Innovation For Jobs (I4J) conference. Here's a YouTube video discussion conducted by Martin Wasserman with Curt Carlsen (SRI CEO) and David Nordfors, organizer of the I4J conference.
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJpep5ZnTpQ
In this youtube video, published on Apr 26, 2013, Curt Carlson and David Nordfors discuss the purpose and objectives of the Innovation for Jobs Summit, Both make the point that it is not "a given" that innovation will create as many new jobs as it will destroy. More fundamentally, the skill levels required for new roles will inexorably rise, which for a nation with critically low math skills, etc. doesn't bode well for the future.
See what you think...
See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJpep5ZnTpQ
In this youtube video, published on Apr 26, 2013, Curt Carlson and David Nordfors discuss the purpose and objectives of the Innovation for Jobs Summit, Both make the point that it is not "a given" that innovation will create as many new jobs as it will destroy. More fundamentally, the skill levels required for new roles will inexorably rise, which for a nation with critically low math skills, etc. doesn't bode well for the future.
See what you think...
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
OUR VIEW
Our View of the World
With all the talk about innovation and its key role in solving many of our corporate and national problems, we believe there is very limited understanding of what constitutes impactful innovation and how those innovations occur. Much of our national conversation almost assumes that we can wish innovation into happening by talking about it and getting people together and urging them to unleash their creative energy.
In our view, that may be a decent start but it will hardly create the in-depth understanding necessary to achieve breakthrough innovations.
Both Chuck House and Ray Price bring industrial experience and industry analysis to the challenge of R&D effectiveness. We have worked in this space collaboratively for over 30 years. We keep returning to and evolving a set of ideas and principles for R&D management and new product leadership that we believe are needed more today than ever before. These ideas and principles are based on experience, observation, reflection, and analysis that we believe is unique in this business.
First, Chuck House is recognized widely as someone who was actually responsible for achieving several breakthrough innovations. Plus, he has demonstrated ability to reflect on what is required both during and after the innovation process. He has examined innovation from individual, project, program, corporate, and national perspectives.
Second, together we have examined in depth the innovation roots of one company (Hewlett-Packard) as described in The HP Phenomenon and are in the process of examining another iconic company (Cisco). We have both written about Serial Innovators or Intrapreneurs and believe we understand who they are and what they do, and importantly, that they are critical to future breakthrough innovations.
Third, we are committed to codifying what we have learned and putting those lessons into a form that is useful to current practitioners and the next generation.
INTRAPRENEURING MISSION
MISSION:
Our mission is to claim the rightful role of R&D and New Product Development as the primary source of competitive advantage in companies world-wide.
What that means is manifest in our Goals:
- Support R&D teams in developing the perspectives and skills to lead company strategic directions;
- Support R&D teams in ensuring outstanding execution to ensure credibility among all stakeholders;
- Engage with and develop the capacities for overall R&D reviews from broadest corporate views to detailed project views.
- Challenge corporate leadership teams on the levels of investment and the expectations associated with breakthrough initiatives;
- Identify and develop potential serial innovators or intrapreneurs;
- Participate in and frame corporate and governmental policy decisions on innovation and R&D investment.
And this is how—Our Products and Services:
- R&D strategy, culture, program, and investment reviews;
- Training Programs on: Innovator Development, R&D Strategy, Opportunity Identification; Political and Influence Skills for Innovation; and R&D Strategy in context of Business Strategy.
- Keynote speeches;
- Coaching for R&D managers and potential innovators;
- Historical Analyses—to create memory and perspectives on breakthrough innovations and how they occur;
- Policy analysis and recommendation projects for corporations as well as state and national governments;
- Creation of articles, whitepapers, and books on important issues.
Wednesday, April 17, 2013
It happens to all of 'em
It happens to everyone. It has even happened to the Sand Hill Road venture capitalists.
The problem? Most ideas start small -- half-baked, my friends call 'em. Small ideas might (emphasis on "MIGHT") become nice businesses, given proper nurturing and a little luck. Most corporations can provide nurturing when they themselves are small to medium-sized. Larger corporations, though, don't have time for 'small' -- hence, they cannot do the nurturing, and the small fresh ideas wither and die.
My talk yesterday to the National Academy crowd (this was to the UIDP branch, University-Industry Development Projects) stimulated much discussion during the evening, and then again today. GE, Corning, HP, Bell Labs, 3M, Boeing, Weyerhauser, Deere, and Motorola all were cited in various conversations, with some vehemence on occasion. An Intel fellow chimed in, along with a DuPont person and a Kimberly Clark guy, and so did a Cisco senior researcher. By the time we were done, it seemed as though no company had escaped the plague.
Think of it this way: If you have a company of $200M revenue growing 10% per year, a 'new product area' that might yield $20M in two or three years is 'suddenly' 8% of your company, and might become twice that in three more years. Nice. But if your company is $20B, the new company idea must yield proportionately $2B in three years. Hard to invent a $2B business from a standing start.
Similarly, a VC firm with $500M to deploy can actually do some $5M to $10M investments -- in fact ten or fifteen of those, with adequate second round reserves, is about all that should be invested early. Manageable. But if the fund is successful, the next 'raise' might be $5B, in which case only $50M investments can be made -- leaving plenty of room for 'angels', but not much likelihood of the VC getting involved anymore in seed rounds or even alpha rounds.
Lots easier for the big firm to 'wait and see' and then buy up the successful ones (at which time they'll starve the newbie and the kids it acquired soon leave to start yet another one). Vicious circle?
The problem? Most ideas start small -- half-baked, my friends call 'em. Small ideas might (emphasis on "MIGHT") become nice businesses, given proper nurturing and a little luck. Most corporations can provide nurturing when they themselves are small to medium-sized. Larger corporations, though, don't have time for 'small' -- hence, they cannot do the nurturing, and the small fresh ideas wither and die.
My talk yesterday to the National Academy crowd (this was to the UIDP branch, University-Industry Development Projects) stimulated much discussion during the evening, and then again today. GE, Corning, HP, Bell Labs, 3M, Boeing, Weyerhauser, Deere, and Motorola all were cited in various conversations, with some vehemence on occasion. An Intel fellow chimed in, along with a DuPont person and a Kimberly Clark guy, and so did a Cisco senior researcher. By the time we were done, it seemed as though no company had escaped the plague.
Think of it this way: If you have a company of $200M revenue growing 10% per year, a 'new product area' that might yield $20M in two or three years is 'suddenly' 8% of your company, and might become twice that in three more years. Nice. But if your company is $20B, the new company idea must yield proportionately $2B in three years. Hard to invent a $2B business from a standing start.
Similarly, a VC firm with $500M to deploy can actually do some $5M to $10M investments -- in fact ten or fifteen of those, with adequate second round reserves, is about all that should be invested early. Manageable. But if the fund is successful, the next 'raise' might be $5B, in which case only $50M investments can be made -- leaving plenty of room for 'angels', but not much likelihood of the VC getting involved anymore in seed rounds or even alpha rounds.
Lots easier for the big firm to 'wait and see' and then buy up the successful ones (at which time they'll starve the newbie and the kids it acquired soon leave to start yet another one). Vicious circle?
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
PERMISSION DENIED
Always a satisfying moment when you complete a task, and SHIP THE PRODUCT. Also scary for any engineer -- will it keep running, will people like it, will it do the job, what is it missing?
The NEW PRODUCT is called "Permission Denied: Odyssey of an Intrapreneur". It essentially is MY STORY of becoming first an INTRAPRENEUR long before that word was coined, and then being asked to teach how to expand it across a large company called Hewlett-Packard at a time that HP innovation was feared to be declining.
I assert that it worked for a long time -- HP growth continued unabated for another fifteen years, becoming the fastest growing and longest sustained growth rate company of the 2,000+ companies on the NYSE board from 1958-1998. But CEOs change, and so do practices, and just like so many other large companies, contribution and innovation lost favor by comparison with consistent quarterly results and small, incremental progress steps. Sigh...
PERMISSION DENIED is a memoir of ten years at HP developing the Logic Analyzer business, with two sets of rules that will work just as well today -- sever rules for erstwhile entrepreneurs, and seven more for their managers. We'll publish these rules and the two brief chapters about them separately.
It will be available from Amazon, searchable by Google, within about eight weeks. List price $17.95.
A better (and quicker) way is via LuluPress, available today at 15% discount (plus any coupons, which can often be another 20-30%), at the following:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/charles-h-house/permission-denied/paperback/product-20948639.html;jsessionid=B0C5C3DB9190216C9217EC70FB88DB45
If you buy it, read it. And let me know your thoughts!
The NEW PRODUCT is called "Permission Denied: Odyssey of an Intrapreneur". It essentially is MY STORY of becoming first an INTRAPRENEUR long before that word was coined, and then being asked to teach how to expand it across a large company called Hewlett-Packard at a time that HP innovation was feared to be declining.
I assert that it worked for a long time -- HP growth continued unabated for another fifteen years, becoming the fastest growing and longest sustained growth rate company of the 2,000+ companies on the NYSE board from 1958-1998. But CEOs change, and so do practices, and just like so many other large companies, contribution and innovation lost favor by comparison with consistent quarterly results and small, incremental progress steps. Sigh...
PERMISSION DENIED is a memoir of ten years at HP developing the Logic Analyzer business, with two sets of rules that will work just as well today -- sever rules for erstwhile entrepreneurs, and seven more for their managers. We'll publish these rules and the two brief chapters about them separately.
It will be available from Amazon, searchable by Google, within about eight weeks. List price $17.95.
A better (and quicker) way is via LuluPress, available today at 15% discount (plus any coupons, which can often be another 20-30%), at the following:
http://www.lulu.com/shop/charles-h-house/permission-denied/paperback/product-20948639.html;jsessionid=B0C5C3DB9190216C9217EC70FB88DB45
If you buy it, read it. And let me know your thoughts!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)