Companies need to adopt concrete policies to drive innovation
By Ryan Huang, Channel NewsAsia | Posted: 02 March 2010 1819 hrs

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SINGAPORE : Companies need to adopt concrete policies in order to drive innovation, according to Geoff Nicholson - one of the key men behind the huge commercial success of 3M's Post-it-Notes.

Dr Nicholson was in Singapore as an invited speaker by the Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Singapore Management University.

Speaking at a recent entrepreneurship forum in Singapore, he said such policies could include adopting the right incentives to encourage new ideas.

One example, failed designs for a new bra cup which have since been turned into what are more commonly recognised today as face masks - one of 3M's best-selling products.

Dr Nicholson, who is the former vice president of 3M's International Technical Operations, said such an innovation was made possible because various policies were in place to encourage workers to get their ideas off their chest.

He believes more companies should to put their money where their mouths are, and implement concrete measures to drive innovation.

Dr Nicholson said: "It has become a buzzword, and I think we have to make a true commitment if we are going to be involved in innovation. And that requires certain resources to do it. And I ask the question, is innovation in your business plan? If it is not, do you really have the commitment to follow it through?"

Some of the ways to drive innovation include job rotations across departments, which may help new ideas develop. This includes tapping experience to find new ways to cross-apply technologies or practices.

Another way to foster innovation is by adopting the mindset of finding ways to not just satisfying the customer needs, but finding ways to delight the customer. Experts said this can be done by looking at how current products can be improved.

Professor Desai Arcot Narasimhalu, director, Institute of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Singapore Management University, said: "This is about generating incremental innovations...you take a product and surround it with new features or new innovations which should be very easily doable.

"Let us take camera phones for example. You take your camera and you find what complementary functions it wants. For example, it could be a flash light. With a flash, you get a better picture.

"Another possibility is can I introduce a new feature, for example a zoom lens. Another example is to remove some controls which are cumbersome to use; you may have aperture control which you may want to remove."

Experts said that it is also important for companies to look at how they structure incentives to encourage innovation.

They said there should be reward mechanisms, like stock options and profit-sharing, and these should be geared towards recognising team efforts.

On the other hand, allowing individual incentives - like royalties - may backfire.

Dr Nicholson said: "That (royalties) will prevent people from sharing with each other. If I knew, for example with Post-it-Notes, that I was going to have to share this, I would close my shop and I would not have got assistants and help from the other people in my business."

Professor Narasimhalu added: "When more brains come together, they can create bigger innovations, more compelling innovations which means they will be even better, which means profits will be much bigger than otherwise."

According to Dr Nicholson, many of 3M's hit products have been born because staff were not stifled by the pressure of trying something new or making mistakes.

He said: "It is a learning experience. There are some processes at 3M that took 10 years to finally be able to manufacture, so many of the reflective signs that you have in Singapore, it took 10 years for the manufacturing process to get that to work. There were a lot of failures along the way, as you can imagine." - CNA/ms