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http://global.weirintranet.com INNOVATION
Innovation - it is a strategic priority
Some of the delegates at the workshop
How do we generate new ideas? How do we find creative people? How can we improve the rate of new products being introduced to our markets? Who is responsible for developing new products and concepts? How can we develop a culture that makes it easy to bring new ideas forward? The ‘game changing’ innovation workshop
held in Dubai during the last week of Janu- ary was attended by 28 Weir delegates from engineering, operations, sales and marketing to address these questions. It set out to develop a Weir Way of innovating, to identify potential game changing ideas and the changes we need to make to fully embrace a culture of innovation. “I wanted to signal the importance of innovation as one of our strategic pillars and I hope this has been achieved by investing in a senior group getting together to take a thor- ough look at how to develop our capability”, said Keith Cochrane. The workshop, sponsored by the Engineer- ing Excellence Committee, was led by Dennis Sherwood of The Silver Bullet Machine. Dennis is a recognised leader in the field of innovation and creativity and the first part of the workshop focused on training in his Silver Bullet methodology. This simple and effective approach is already used in some of our busi-
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nesses and will now be adopted on a Group- wide basis as the Weir Way of generating innovative ideas and assessing their impact. The group tackled a number of exercises designed to stimulate debate, challenge preconceptions and make the most of the cross-functional and cross-business exper- tise. Further demonstration of the value which can be generated from collaboration was evidenced by the number of ideas worthy of further exploration, including changing ideas in pump design.
“I was struck by the energy in the room when I visited the workshop and impressed by the thinking that was evident in the ideas that had been developed. I am looking forward to seeing further development of these concepts to see if they can be applied practically”, said Keith. “Now we’ve made a start, we will con- tinue to work with Dennis to look at the things that need to be put in place to support wider adoption. On my mind is further training, fund- ing and a way of measuring and tracking our success. I see this as a strategic priority.”
And the answers to the questions
How do we generate new ideas? Systematically. The Silver Bullet Machine process will help us.
How do we find creative people? We are all creative and we all can contrib- ute to the generation and development of new ideas.
How can we improve the rate of new prod- ucts being introduced to our markets? By making sure that there is a process to evaluate ideas and support their develop- ment with real funds and expertise.
Who is responsible for developing new products and concepts? We all are and innovation is not limited to new products. The process can be applied to process, structure, strategy, relationships and even the way we operate personally.
How can we develop a culture that makes it easy to bring new ideas forward? And that’s our challenge from here on.....
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