Innovation Mysteries - Opening the Pandora Box

Innovation Mysteries - Opening the Pandora Box for Scribd

Software based world, Crafitti's Lean Inventive Systems Thinking (LIST), Software Innovation workshops

CRAFTING SOFTWARE REVOLUTION - CHANGING THE GAME 

 "Software" based world that we have, requires rapidly evolving our understanding of how to innovate, compete and make reliable systems. Given this need, Crafitti has designed and is offering attached workshops for transforming your software development organization with science based frameworks and techniques for software innovation, reliability, vulnerability and patents.

Systems that we are delivering - even mission critical systems - are susceptible to reliability problems and vulnerable to potential attacks as these are predominantly software based systems. The attached training programs gives exposure to the software development organizations which leads to strong potentially patentable inventions along with high level of reliability and robustness. Our overall innovation framework called Lean Inventive Systems Thinking (LIST) a combination of five thinking dimensions - Lean or Value thinking, Inventive Thinking using TRIZ and Systems Thinking combines the logical and analytical thinking dimensions that world has used extensively to deliver faster, inventive and robust software solutions to the mission critical systems.

e globe is being re-engineered rapidly. Our businesses of today are not what they used to be even a decade back. Our existing methods of thinking – based on analytic and logical methods developed over last couple of centuries are suddenly looking in-effective in the new world of increasing globalization, increasing complexity, unprecedented pace and an absolute dependence on software.

The problem solver is in a complex web of decision dependencies and fuzzy end of decision complexity. Crafitti has developed potent frameworks to thrive in the world of global complexity after successful experimentation in multiple domains – it is called the  Lean Inventive Systems Thinking (LIST).  The LIST framework is delivered in the form a series of workshops giving a comprehensive exposition to LIST. This is a potent framework for collective problem solving using five key thinking dimensions – these are Lean Thinking, Inventive or Design thinking and Systems Thinking along with Analytical and Logical thinking. It has already proved its worth in designing new products and services, improving overall productivity, reliability, reducing cycle time, designing relevant solutions needed by customers, generating Patentable Inventions and minimizing stress on the employees. Some of these cases will be shared in the workshops.

2 Key Workshops
(Can be delivered as a five days course or 2 three days workshops)
1. Software Patents and Patent Analysis using TRIZ and Social Citation Network Analysis (www.socialcitnet.com)

Patents are the most comprehensive source of information and knowledge. In the rapidly globalizing world of continuous change and cutthroat competition, every enterprise searches for competitive advantage. Patent information although realized by many as highly informative is not really tapped by enterprises at large, simply as the understanding of patents as a source of information and trigger for inventing the next are still in infancy. Although there are many open tools and databases to make patent data visualization, there doesn’t seem to be enough awareness of using patents for inventing next! When it comes to software patents and their value – the awareness levels are much lower. This workshop gives an exposure to software patents, their acceptance in various geographies, and also oh how to analyze patents using some of the standard and Crafitti proprietary techniques. Altshuller, a Russian navy patent officer after Second World War, started a systematic study of patents – his aim was to find out what makes a successful invention. Can there be an algorithm for inventing? His search led him to develop a unique methodology called Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (acronym TRIZ in Russian). In the process he also developed a methodology to analyze and study patents.

Crafitti Consulting has developed on the TRIZ way of doing patent analysis and reinforced it with other techniques to build a comprehensive framework for Patent analysis. For the first time this framework is offered in India.

The delegates will be exposed to

• Understanding the level of an invention and a patent
• Finding out the key contradictions the invention is solving
• Looking at the claims hierarchy of the patent
• Function Diagrams of a patent/invention
• Pruning or Trimming as a means of inventing
• System Complexity Estimation

These techniques will help in

• Finding Technological Alternatives to a Patent
• Writing Future-proof claims of a Patent
• Understanding the evolution of an invention compared to prior art
• Finding white space in a field to leverage

2. Software Innovation and Reliability using Lean Inventive Systems Thinking (LIST)

The workshop will provide exposure to some of the known LIST techniques such as

• Design Structure Matrix (DSM),
• Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP),
• Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ),
• Lean Product Development - Set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE),
• Value Stream Mapping (VSM)
• Software Reliability Growth Models (SRGMs)

Delegates will also be exposed to some of the new techniques developed by us, such as

• System Complexity Estimator (SCE),
• System Change Impact Model (SCIM),
• Project Cacophony,
• Decision Dependency Matrices (DDM’s)

Conducting One day workshop for Madras Management Association on A Framework for Innovation

Dear Members,

Greetings!!

MMA conducts one day workshop on

A Framework for Innovation

Facilitator
Mr Navneet Bhushan
Founder Director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING

Date
Friday  23 March 2012
(09.30 am - 5.30 pm)

Venue
Hotel Deccan Plaza
36, Royapettah High Road, Chennai - 14

Overview:

The globe is being re-engineered rapidly. Our businesses of today are not what they used to be even a decade back. Our existing methods of thinking – based on analytic and logical methods developed over last couple of centuries are suddenly looking in-effective in the new world of increasing globalization, increasing complexity and unprecedented pace.

The problem solver is in a complex web of decision dependencies and fuzzy end of decision complexity. This workshop gives a comprehensive exposition to Lean Inventive Systems Thinking (LIST) framework developed after successful experimentation in multiple domains. This is a potent framework for collective problem solving using five key thinking dimensions – these are Lean Thinking, Inventive or Design thinking and Systems Thinking besides the traditional Logical and Analytical thinking. It has already proved its worth in designing new products and services, improving overall productivity, reducing cycle time, designing relevant solutions needed by customers, generating Patentable Inventions and minimizing stress on the employees. Some of these cases will be shared in the workshop.

If you, your team, your organization or your business is

·        Impacted by rapid increase in Globalization?

·        Impacted by explosive increase in complexity?

·        Overwhelmed by continuous pressure to think “out of box”?

·        Faced with decision paralysis due to information de-coherence?

·        Feeling the heat of unknown competitors doing unprecedented things to eat away your business?

If most of your answers are YES, this workshop will help you find answers.

Do you think that

·        “Decision Making” is your one of your teams’ core strength?

·        “Problem Solving” and “Innovation” are embedded in your teams’ attitude?

·        Your team manages to avoid getting into crisis most of the time?

·        You know the value that you are creating or delivering to your customer?

If most of your answers are NO, this workshop will help you find answers.

Methodology

The sessions will be interactive. There will be sharing of knowledge by the facilitator. The participants will be engaged in discussions and hands on exercise. The sessions will be aided with ppt for better understanding of concepts and a workbook will be distributed to the participants.

About Facilitator

Mr Navneet Bhushan is a  Post Graduate Diploma in IPR (NLSIU, Bangalore), Diploma Patent Information (The Netherlands), M.Tech (Computer Science &Engg) IIT Madras, M.Sc (Software Science) Allahabad University, B.Sc (Hons.) Physics (Delhi University).

Mr NavneetBhushan (Navneet) is a founder director of CRAFITTI CONSULTING, an Innovation and Intellectual Property Research, Consulting and Training firm head-quartered at Bangalore, India.

Over a career spanning more than two decades, Navneet held positions such as Vice-President and Head (Innovation) with Hexaware Technologies, Principal Consultant with Wipro Technologies, CEO of CREAX Information Technologies Pvt Ltd., Technology Specialist at Philips Global Intellectual Property & Standards (IP&S) division, and Senior Research Associate with Infosys Technologies. Before joining the corporate world Navneet worked for more than a decade as a Scientist at Defence Research &Development Organization (DRDO). Navneet has extensive experience in the fields of Innovation, Patent Portfolio Management, Software Development, Management, Research, IP Analysis. He has been providing advisory and problem solving consultancy to variety of Industries in the decision engineering, Innovation, Intellectual Property and Information Technology landscape.

Mr Navneet has authored more than 65 technical research papers and articles in various International and National Journals, Trade Magazines and Conferences. He has spoken on innovation, patents, Intellectual Property, TRIZ and Strategic Decision Making in various organizations & forums. Mr Navneet has conducted TRIZ, Lean and Patent based workshops for more than 2000 senior and middle level executives of companies such as, HAL, LG, IOCL, Wipro, Honeywell, Infosys, Aditya Birla Group, ABB, GE, Hughes, Sharp, Philips, Thomson-Reuters, CavinKare, TVS Motors, Weir Minerals, DRDO, etc.

         

He is the principal author of Strategic Decision Making- Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process published by Springer-Verlag, UK, as part of the Decision Engineering Series. The book has been featured at Harvard Business School working knowledge for business leaders. He is an associate editor of the International Journal of Analytic Hierarchy Process and reviews research papers for defence science journal. Navneet has been invited as an external expert for assessment board of DRDO Scientists and has participated as a facilitator for evolving citizen centric rural e-governance workshop conducted by IIPA, Delhi. Mr Navneet has been conferred Entrepreneurial Innovation and Leadership Award for 2012 .

Fee Details
Participation fee – Rs 2500/- plus 10.3% service tax per participant

Special discounted fee for MMA members Rs 2000/- per participant

The cheque/DD to be drawn in favour of ”Madras Management Association”. 

Prior registration is necessary. The fee once paid will not be refunded; change in nomination from same organisation will be permitted.

The registration is through email and the following details is to be given for registration Name of the Participant, Designation, Contact No and Email id.

Look forward to the pleasure of receiving your nominations at the earliest.

Thanks for your continued support to MMA and its activities.

Kindly send your nomination to:

Madras Management Association
“MMA House” |  148-K Old Mahabalipuram Road
Thoraipakkam, Chennai – 600 097
P 2496 2766 | F 2496 2777 |M 9176665229
mma@vsnl.com  | www.mmachennai.org

With warm regards,

Gp Capt R Vijayakumar, VSM
Executive Director
Madras Management Association

LIST Techniques for Thinking Out of BOX

Explore Innovation Potential in Software - My Interview

I was interviewed by Murali of Hindu Businessline. The topic was "Explore Innovation Potential in Software". The interview has been published at the newspaper site. You can read it HERE

One more version of the interview (more complete) was published in The Hindu. One can access that version HERE

The complete Q&A I am also including below (the unedited interview :))

Innovation potential in software

1) First, what is software innovation? And, why is it important?

Answer:

Before getting to “software innovation”, it is important to revisit what is software. Software has been defined as instructions and data structures (computer programs) that when executed on a machine provides desired function and performance along with documents that describe the operation and use of programs. The essence of software entity has been described by Brooks in his classic The Mythical Man-Month, as complexity, conformity, changeability and invisibility that makes it inherently difficult to build. Further, unlike hardware, software doesn’t “wear-out”, rather it evolves by addition of new functionality.

Now, let us look at software innovation. To me a very useful definition of innovation is successful creation of change by (new) ideas. Combining the above, software innovation has to be successful creation of change by new ideas in developing computer instructions, data structures and associated documents. This should include how to develop software, how to evaluate software and also what software to develop to achieve desired functionality and performance to meet a need or set of needs. I call this the software innovation triangle – the two “how’s” and one “what” of software innovation.

Coming to the importance of software innovation, software has transformed our world in multiple ways than many of us would even comprehend. In my book, Strategic Decision Making – Applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process, I described technology to be the most important factor defining the structure of current and future world, besides the factors such as power systems, geo-political systems, social systems, economic systems and forms of organization. Starting from our mobile phone or rather mobile device – it is the inherent software based changes that are giving us a new functionality every day!

2) How are large tech enterprises approaching software innovation?

Answer:

I mentioned three key parts of software innovation triangle – creating successful change in “how to develop software”, “how to evaluate software” and most important “what software to develop”. The large tech organizations are grappling with how to use software to solve client problems, provide new ways of achieving key functions, faster, better and cheaper. In this regard, the relevant infrastructure needs to be developed. The inherent software in infrastructure (IT or non IT) need to be a creator of change. Third, managing the inherent information complexity that has been enmeshed in the large organizations need to be either untangled or made useful. All these require software innovation. The product development companies – protect the “What software to be developed” part of software innovation triangle. They define, describe, contextualize, get Intellectual Property Rights and then get to the development part. In the “how to develop software” – they look for in-house software development structures, outsource to another organization or look for open source development. Finally, in the third part – “how to evaluate software” – which also includes software testing, measurement, metrics, reliability and other quality metrics, they look for in house or third party software evaluation. In all the three, they would like to look at software innovation per se. The large IT development companies are looking at “how to develop software” and “how to evaluate software”. Specifically, Indian IT companies are focused predominantly on how part of software innovation triangle. Indian It companies need to focus on “what” part of the software innovation triangle, as it not only has more value but it is that leg that one can protect by ways of IP rights as well.

3) Do you see software innovation happening in smaller enterprises, too? Any examples.

Answer

Historically large enterprises have innovation-inertia. The next software changes – be it something that SAP, Dell, Amazon, Wikipedia and Google did in 1990s, or Skype, Facebook and Twitter did in last decade, will most likely be created by smaller enterprises. What these companies did was the “what” part, hence their valuation and value created by them was much more than say companies that were focusing on “How” parts of software innovation triangle. Indian IT services companies have been predominantly focused on “How” part of software innovation triangle. Even large technology companies, although they themselves want to create the “what” part of software innovation, they want their partners – whom they outsource the software development – to focus on “how” parts of software innovation. Obviously, it is in their interest to keep the software development partners to continue to be in “how” part of software innovation triangle. Software development companies need to figure out “how” to do “what” part of software innovation.

4) What do you see as the major challenges faced by software innovation?

Answer

Scale is the first challenge. We are making big systems and these large systems are evolving into humungous systems. The methods, principles, capabilities one uses to make systems at a particular scale are found insufficient when the scale increases and complexity explodes. The glue that is making systems huge and evolving into higher and bigger forms is software. The increasing demands on “what” of software innovation at large scale need new “hows” of software innovation. Scale – requires multiple changes in the way human-machine interaction evolves, decentralized ways to implement network forms instead of hierarchical forms of system organization, ways in which design is becoming central to creating meaning, top down engineering is replaced by computational emergence based on mechanism design, and adaptable and robust system infrastructure and system quality for the uncertain future. Since software is the glue, “what” software to build to solve world problems pertaining to sustainability, harmonizing global economic imbalances, creating a connected future for the globe and minimizing terrorism causes and impacts, are the key challenges.

5) Any suggestions on the policies and framework that can promote software innovation?

Answer

Surprisingly, despite 150 years old proposal by Darwin’s, “Evolution” as a model of reality is a recent phenomenon. The technical systems, just like living beings, also evolve was discovered by a Soviet Engineer, Altshuller, in 1946, after studying scores of patents in multiple domains. He used this study to propose a Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (acronym TRIZ in Russian). TRIZ identifies discrete technological stages on lines of evolution. TRIZ evolution lines based on system laws can be very nicely used to generate next generation concepts. As mentioned software systems also evolve, a software innovation framework need to have TRIZ, definitely. Second component is Lean thinking coming from actual practice by Toyota motors. However, Lean considered by many as waste reduction (and mapped to people reduction in many IT companies), is not what I propose. It is Value Maximization view of Lean that I would like to consider. Finally, systems thinking - which includes scenario planning, thought experiments and understanding the new sciences of complex adaptive systems and network centric organizations – including social networks, is the third component. This combined framework I call the Lean Inventive Systems Thinking (LIST). However, LIST by no means eliminates the analytical and logical thinking that have stood the test of time. In effect LIST integrates Lean Thinking, Inventive Thinking and Systems thinking, together with analytical and logical thinking for software innovation challenges. LIST as the five dimensional thinking framework has great potential.

6) Other points of interest.

Answer

I think time has come for Indian IT companies to start defining the “what” part of software innovation triangle. This is a challenge as the existing IT companies have been winning by continuing to be in the “how” part of software innovation. Now we need to move towards the “what” part and one solution that I can see and offer is Lean Inventive Systems Thinking (LIST) – a potent framework combining analytical and logical thinking with three different forms of thinking to own the future.