Research shows that typical brainstorming is about 30% effective. Therefore, i developed the Thinking Innovative process that consists of the four stages of idea generation. The stages are Good, Crazy, Stupid and Funny that correspond to using memory, left brain, right brain and full brain. The above innovative thinking process and other aspects makes the innovation process predictive, pervasive and profitable,i.e., better ROI.

Context

20 years ago a Senior VP wanted to make money and have fun. We could measure how much money was made but could not measure how much fun one had. That led to the question, How do we know people are having fun? The research on establishing a correlation between brain functions and the innovation process led us to develop the new thinking approach for innovation in 2004. It was developed at Accelper Consulting, Schaumburg, IL with less than 10 employees, a company that had been in business for about 20 years. It is a niche company focused on promoting science and engineering of innovation.

Triggers

Being a first project leader for deploying Six Sigma at Motorola, I was trying to optimize Six Sigma methodology using Mr. Goldratt's Theory of Constraints approach. I concluded that in order an improvement project to be successful we need to have four attributes that are Time Management, Process Thinking, Statistical Thinking, and Innovative Thinking. This led me to develop the Breakthrough Innovation (Brinnovation(TM)) framework.

Key Innovations & Timeline

To support development of science and engineering of innovation, we answered unknowns about the innovation process. For example Rule of 2 for defining breakthrough innovation, four types of innovation (Fundamental, Platform, Derivative and Variation), five phase (Target, Explore, Develop, Optimize and Commercialize) innovation methodology, three measures of innovation (Innovation recognition, ideas generation and revenue growth), and a frameworkto put it all together. Accordingly the innovation is a function of effort and speed of thought.

Now we have developed a college-level course, certification program, and many other products to roll out the science of innovation for over four years.

Challenges & Solutions

Making people believe that innovation is a learned skill still faces resistance from people and experts alike. People who have heard this process they love it. Two universities have committed to teaching the framework. In order for people to understand the process better before accepting it, we have developed training programs for people at different levels in the organization.

Benefits & Metrics

As a result we have defined competency in innovation, eduction programs for industry and academia. We have received feedback that innovation time reduction from 1.5 years to 3 days, six months of regular work to a weekend, seven months of learning to one day, We have teachable innovation framework that teaches people how to innovation on demand and fast with a boundary condition being innovation on demand in real time. Recently it was selected a branch of U.S. defese entity.

Lessons

It takes time for large corporations and innovation experts to believe that innovation can be a learned skill. We have to continue our journey to educate people at all levels in our society in order to excite them about being innovative.

Credits

Even though I developed the thinking process and breakthrough innovation framework it has taken about 200 people over 7 years to validate it.

Materials

Business Innovation in the 21st Century book has been published and available at Amazon, and The Innovation Solution is available in draft form at info@accelper.com. Besides, articles have been published in Journal of Private Equity, Quality Digest, Six Sigma Forum, Quality World, and other magazines. We have compiled most of the work at www.ibusinessinnovation.com (work in progress).

Documents

Brinnovation Maturity Model_020110.pdf

ASQ Mexico Conference Nov 17 09.pdf

CampIT_Keynote.pdf

Videos

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmEQj1GVaVU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iaDmVwRbDg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcIG8nXqWRc

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June 29, 2010 at 7:50am

Matt Shlosberg

Praveen -

Thank you for your post.

There are numerous frameworks and ideas out there that outline various approaches to innovation. Can you describe how your approach is different?

Thanks

July 3, 2010 at 10:15am

Praveen Gupta

The difference between the Breakthrough Innovation (Brinnovation) and other frameworks is that the Brinnovation framework is built based on the study of approaches used by Edison, Einstein, Newton, Galileo and Ford. It has answered unknowns about innovation process that can be used to create new knowledge as one of seven sources of innovation recommended by Peter Drucker. Here are its elements:

Framework of innovation described by the equation below:

Innovation = F(Effort x Speed of Thought),
Where Speed of though is a function knowledge, play and imagination

Types of Innovation are Fundamental, Platform, Derivative, and Variation

Breakthrough Innovation is described as the Rule of 2.

Three measures of Innovation are Innovation Recognition, Ideas per employee, and revenue growth.

It has been developed to make innovation a learned skill and to predictable, pervasive and profitable process.

July 2, 2010 at 11:02am

Satya Vegi

Hi Praveen

Great Post

Gone through your framework ...like six thinking hats its about Good, Crazy, Stupid and Funny phases of ideation and innovation .it will be helpful if you can diffrentiate with other frameworks and give a case or example of it .

thanks
vegi