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Innovation is not enough We must also implement to improve By Gary T. Fry, Ph.D., P.E.
I Gary T. Fry
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INNOVATE MEANS TO DESIGN NEW SYSTEMS AND PROCESSES BY IMPROVING EXISTING ONES. INNOVATE DOES NOT MEAN INVENT.
32 Railway Track & Structures // June 2022
nnovation is a popular word in many markets, and rail transportation is no exception. Innovation is often perceived as being associated with high-risk, emerging technology enterprises. Any organization can be innovative, and many are without even realizing it. In the best of circumstances, innovation is a natural, almost instinctive, process for an organization. The three most common innovation questions I have been asked over the years are: What is innovation? What does it mean for an organization to be innovative? What is the biggest risk to innovation? Since the word “innovation” usually brings to mind many different ideas to different people, we begin by establishing a frame of reference for our discussion. Our goal is to understand what the word “innovate” means, and of equal importance, what it doesn’t mean. Innovate means to design new systems and processes by improving existing ones. Innovate does not mean invent. Invent means to design new systems or processes that never existed before. Innovation can and does occur without invention, but there are sometimes essential relationships among innovations and inventions. For example, the first steam locomotive was invented in the early 19th century. From that point forward, improvements to locomotives have been innovations, most of which have incorporated inventions. The takeaway is that innovation is a creative process of designing improvements, and that process may or may not incorporate inventions. In the context of this column, the best antonym for the word innovation is the word “stagnation”. With that understanding of innovation, we can consider the essential features of innovative organizations. To be innovative, an organization must satisfy two conditions at a minimum. There must exist an organization-wide acknowledgment and acceptance that improvements are almost always possible. There also must exist regular assessments of the organization’s operations
with an eye to identifying opportunities for improving them. Innovative organizations are strategic in these assessments and always guided by their business models. The organizations establish and maintain an incentivized culture of innovation, especially in terms of intraorganizational communication and employee reward and promotion policies. With these conditions and policies in place, there is minimal inertia resisting progress, and the organization is receptive to innovation. All that is needed is a process for designing the appropriate innovations once areas of improvement have been prioritized. It can be difficult for an organization to design innovations on its own, but that should not be viewed as a barrier. Specific innovations can come from within an organization or can be introduced from outside. The source of the innovation is not nearly as important as its existence. For example, a railway company might identify as a high priority a desire for its railroad rail to last longer under heavy axle loads and to cause fewer broken rail derailments. If such railroad rail exists, it can be procured and installed. It doesn’t matter if the railway company developed the improved rail. It only matters that the company identified the opportunity for improvement and designed a response that would reliably accomplish the improvement. Now, one last critical decision remains. Will the company follow through and implement the innovation? If not, there will be no improvement. Innovation is not enough. We also must implement to improve. Without implementation, all the resources that were expended to identify opportunities for improvement, and to design innovations to accomplish the improvements, become fruitless. Implementation being the essential conclusion to the process of innovation also is its biggest risk. Fry is vice president of Fry Technical Services, Inc., Colorado Springs, Colo. rtands.com