Engineering professions 2 Skills for innovation
of cheaper, better and more personalised services will require a multi-disciplinary framework for collaboration, involving STEM (science, technology, engineering, maths) alongside the social sciences and humanities.
Future proofing Technologies such as virtual prototyping, simulation and modelling, can assist collaboration by drawing on multiple perspectives and expertise. These technologies have profound consequences for the role of engineers in the organisation and management of services innovation. They hold the possibility of major productivity improvements in services themselves, comparable to the advent of machine tools in the 1850s or lean production in the 1980s. Research organisations are already responding to
Innovation requires teams that bring different skills to bear on the design process
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ability to collaborate with people from other disciplines as one of the four broad capabilities that engineers will need to participate fully in service innovation. Innovation in services needs teams that bring
different skills to bear on the design, development and management of systems and processes. This requires ‘horizontal’ expertise and an understanding of the behaviour of individuals, groups and organisations in related fields. Such expertise requires the development of professionals with deep knowledge in one or two fields and who also have a broad knowledge of other fields that are critical to solving complex challenges. Collaboration is especially important because services
Professor Mark Dodgson is director of the technology and innovation management centre, University of Queensland Business School. Professor David Gann CBE is head of innovation and entrepreneurship at Imperial College London, and group innovation executive at Laing O’Rourke. Together they are part of the Think Play Do Group, a London-based innovation consulting, training and software company. Dr Irving Wladawsky-Berger retired from IBM in May 2007 after a 37-year career with the company, and is currently strategic adviser at Citigroup. The authors would like to thank Michael Kenward OBE for his help
are not produced in the laboratories and factories of the industrial research and development (R&D) arena where they can be fully tested and optimised. Services are usually produced at the point at which they are consumed: the act of consumption rather than invention is the focal point for innovation. New services are therefore developed using a ‘market-facing’ approach, often connected to people and organisations that articulate and express their requirements and demands as they use the innovation. For example, companies such as Amazon and Google,
or online gaming and entertainment businesses, typically conduct hundreds of experiments a day, using different versions of web pages to test consumer preferences. This emphasises the importance of prototypes and shared experiments with users in real time, including with employees, partners, clients and the public at large. These high levels of collaboration are symptomatic of what has become known as ‘open’ innovation. The nature of services innovation implies that
answers to technical problems will not lie exclusively within research institutions or companies with proprietary R&D cultures. Instead, they will emerge through integration of ideas from a wide range of organisations with which they have had little or no previous experience. Furthermore, the delivery
36 CIBSE Journal November 2010
these changes. This is seen in the development of large university teams researching the interdisciplinary problems of transportation, healthcare, energy, the environment and new digital media. It is seen in new education programmes that build on interdisciplinarity and use the new supportive technologies. One recent example of this new multi-disciplinary
approach was the launch in September of the Laing O’Rourke Centre for Systems Engineering and Innovation at Imperial College London. The centre focuses on innovative research and teaching, using the insights to deliver greater value in the disciplines of mechanical and electrical engineering, building services and manufacturing systems.
The pace of change in services is not likely to slow
down. Indeed, there is the potential for a new wave of innovation, based on rapidly expanding markets for personalised services, and taking advantage of the availability of massive amounts of data from ubiquitous sensors and devices and the availability of hardware and software to analyse this data flood. Realising this potential depends on the capabilities we have identified, developing and using the emerging technological infrastructure to support innovation. These skills and technologies will also be essential if
we are to deal with the intractable social and economic problems we face in health, energy and environment. The changing pattern of innovation has implications for the way in which we conduct R&D. The private and public sectors invest around $1 trillion a year in the production of knowledge. This investment inevitably affects innovation in services, raising questions about how we choose where and how to spend that money. Engineering’s influence in these opportunities and challenges will rise when its contribution is less hidden than it has been. Engineers need to learn to engage effectively with people and organisations with which they have had little contact previously. This requires the ability to cross traditional boundaries, and a new approach to the education of scientists and engineers. l A longer version of this article appeared in The Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenia magazine – see the September issue at
www.ingenia.org.uk
www.cibsejournal.com
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