Dr.

Tal Lavi an
ht t p: / / c s . berkel ey. edu/ ~t l avi an
t l avi an@c s . berkel ey. edu
UC Berkel ey Engi neeri ng, CET

Invention and Innovation
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Many people dream of success.
To me, success can only be achieved through
repeated failure and introspection. In fact,
success represents the one percent of your
work which results only from the ninety-nine
percent that is called failure.

-Soichiro Honda, founder, Honda Motors


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Fail your way to Success
Who invents?
In a given company, ~1% of employees produce 99%
of patents.
Thus, individuals who have mastered the skill of
inventing and patenting are incredibly valuable!


How can we become inventors?
How can we produce inventions as employees?
How can we encourage inventions as business
owners?
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Typical Barriers to Innovation
There is no shared understanding of what innovation
means
Little consensus for roles and responsibilities around
innovation
Task versus system orientation
Long term IT contracts often focus on SLAs, not
innovation
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Typical Barriers to Innovation
Volume-based revenue streams view innovation as
counter growth
Management incentives depend on current unit
contribution, not long-term
Main street financial metrics (revenue growth and
earnings) make entrepreneurship difficult
Sales-driven market development strategy
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Typical Barriers to Innovation
Failure to recognize innovation as a discipline,
capable of being learned, capable of being practiced:
No systematic scanning for changes
No systematic analysis and exploitation of opportunities
No systematic commercialization of innovation
Sales pipeline determines portfolio (market has to
exist already)
Rely on others to create new markets
Lack of investment dollars for innovation
Innovators dilemma: new things look too small
compared to existing business
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Cultural Challenges

There are significant cultural challenges:
Between the researchers, inventors
and entrepreneurs
Between all of the above and investors
and owners
And these relationships change over
time
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The Myths of Innovation
By Scott Berkun

Describes the methodology of realizing
the potential of modern ideas.

Ideas never stand alone
Ideas without implementation are not inventions
The goodness of the invention is always counter-balanced
by the ease of its adoption
Inventing and implementing always require hard,
consistent work.

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Stages of Innovation Diffusion
We distinguish among:

Early adopters: More educated, innovative individuals who
gain from technology.

Followers: The majority of adopters who see its success and
want to join in.

Laggards: Less-advanced individuals who either do not adopt
or adopt very late and may lose because of the technology.
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Factors Affecting Invention Diffusion

Heterogeneity of potential adopters (size, location,
land quality, and human capital).

The individual decision process aimed at improving
well-being (profitability, well-being, risk
minimization).

Dynamic forces that make technology more attractive
(learning by doing, learning by using, network
benefits).
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And Suddenly, the Inventor Appeared
By Genrich Altshuller (TRIZ method)

Suggests methods of thinking that can resolve many
technical contradictions:

Do it inversely
Change the state or physical property
Do it in advance
If it cannot be done completely, do it partially
Fragment and/or consolidate

TRIZ focuses on physical and chemical solutions
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Elements of Invention
Technical solution to a problem
New
Distinct from known solutions
Produce useful effect


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How to invent?
Consider a problem worth solving
Ex: gooey candy melts at high temperatures. How to dip in
warm melted chocolate to form chocolate covered candy?
Identify physical/technical contradiction
Resolve them without creating new contradictions!
One solution can be to separate conflicting requirements using
time or space.
Ex: first freeze the candy center. Dip into chocolate. Store at
room temp to defrost center.


Source: And Suddenly, the Inventor Appeared,
by Gentrich Altshuller
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Discovery Inventions
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Mental Process and Real World Testing
The Scientific Method
What is the Problem?
Hypothesis
Methods of observation
Experimental methods
Obtain results
Interpret results: hypothesis testing
Revise hypothesis
Modify study design
Reiterate
How to Identify the Real Problem
Rewrite the problem in 10 different ways
List causes of the problem
Look at what is influencing the product
Redefine the problem in order to come up with
different, innovative solutions
service is too slow vs. customers are too demanding
Set innovation goalposts that have a variety of
solutions to your problem between them
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Most inventions improve existing systems
How to improve a perfectly functional mechanism?
The 4 periods of technological improvement
1. Selection of parts for the system. (Make it work)
2. Improvements of parts. (Make it work faster/cheaper/smaller)
3. Dynamization of the system. (Make it
dynamic/adaptable/mobile and moveable)
4. Self-development of the system. (Make it self-adaptive)


Source: And Suddenly, the Inventor Appeared, by Gentrich Altshuller
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Improve without impairing!


Inventors improve a single part or characteristic of the
system without impairing other parts or
characteristics of the system or adjacent systems

Source: And Suddenly, the Inventor Appeared, by Gentrich Altshuller
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Improvements from organizational perspective
Cost leadership path
Separating the organization from others by providing the
lowest cost option
Product/Service differentiation path
provide the most unique products/services available
can be achieved by marketing unique products, branding these
products, or holding a specialized patent
Customer segmentation path
Being the only organization to target a unique customer
segment within a market
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Superior process path
Offering the fastest, highest quality, or most desired customer
service in the marketplace
Superior distribution path
Offering the customer a preferred distribution and delivery
option

Improvements from organizational perspective
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How to Decide upon Future Destination
Identify key factors to the success/failure of your
organization in the marketplace.
Identify how to take advantage of future marketplaces,
trends, and key success factors.
Change your view of the customer, product line, service
level, etc.
Find new options by asking extreme questions.
What if the customer does not need us anymore?
Determine what you want your organization to be
famous for.
Define the organizations future in a meaningful way.

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How to Uncover Insights
Customer needs- select the customer group of your
interest and list their needs/problems and how you
want to solve those needs/problems
Emerging technology- figure out how emerging
technology can be advantageous to your customer
base
The marketplace- figure out how your industry is
changing/growing
Your organizational needs- find out what your
organization would need to fill the customer needs
with the new technology and changing marketplace
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Successful Business Thought Process
yesterdays problem todays solution
tomorrows problem near-future solution future
problem future solution


Tomorrows problems can be predicted from the
present situation.
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Considering Trends
Fad- short term mania for a product/service that
quickly dies off; good for quick cash
Shift- easier to see and predict that Fads. Last
longer. Change in direction (shifting from
television to internet as source of entertainment)
Leap- dramatic change in direction. Giant step
towards future. Hard to predict (like Human
genome product)
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How to See the BIG Picture as an Employee
The BIG idea must be simple
The simpler it is the easier for customers to understand it
Idea must be new and better
Needs to have a quality that is important enough to be a selling point to
clients
Idea must be proven to manager and potential customers
Even if it is a new idea some parts of it will have existed before in some
industry
Idea must be quickly and easily implemented to the existing
system
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How an Individual can Achieve Systems Thinking
Look at how your task is related to part of a bigger process

Figure out how your project is related to the organization in
which you work

Look at how your work relates to the market place
How will it affect your companys other products in the
marketplace?
How will competitors react?

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Where do ideas come from?

Over 60% of inventors get their ideas from:
Brainstorming
Collaboration
Experimentation
The study of other fields
Journaling (writing down their thoughts)

Source: The Myth of Innovation, by Scott Berkun
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Seven Sources of Innovation
The unexpected the unexpected success, the unexpected failure,
the unexpected outside event;
The incongruity between reality as it actually is and reality as it is
perceived to be or as it ought to be;
Innovation based on process need;
Changes in industry or market structure that catch everyone
unawares...
Demographics (population changes);
Changes in perception, mood, and meaning;
New knowledge, both scientific and nonscientific.
Peter Drucker: Innovation and Entrepreneurship
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Deciding Which Ideas to Pursue
Identifying the real problem is important in finding
the real, lasting solution to the problem.
Questions to ask from a business perspective:
Is there a customer need?
Is it feasible?
Can we generate significant revenues and profits from
this?
Does it play to our strengths?
What technical challenges would we face to do this in the
real world?

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How to Sell your idea
Understand your audience- there are four different
type of people
1. cares about the numbers
2. cares about the tasks
3. cares about the people
4. cares about the BIG-picture strategy
Distinguish between adults and kids
Adults care about the products features first and brand
second
Kids care about branding first and features second (kids
wants whats cool)

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How to Sell your idea Cont.
Understand that everyone goes through multiple
phases before buying an idea/product
Prepare a prototype- this will help your ptential
buyers fully understand your idea
Presentation- keep it simple
Dont overload the buyers with facts
Limit your use of jargon
Create a demand for your idea as a solution to a
problem
Sell the problem so that the buyer will WANT the solution
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How to Sell your idea cont.
BE passionate
Connect with your potential idea-buyers

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Assessing Value Influential Factors
Likelihood of third parties using the solution (now or
in the future)
Demand for the solution (cost reduction and/or new
feature)
Whether base invention patented (fundamental v.
improvement)
Key enabling/lynchpin solution
Whether the invention is of general applicability
Whether the invention is useful to a key competitor

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Assessing Value Influential Factors (cont)
Breadth of the solution (available alternatives)
Likelihood of solution being an essential feature of
an industry standard
Whether infringement is detectable
Whether invention outside core industry
Simplicity of solution
Importance of innovation to future company
products and/or services

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Technical Documentation of Inventions
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Conception:
Formation in the mind of an inventor of a permanent embodiment
of an operative invention.

Invention
Creative Inventions
E.g., a space ship, computer software design, new pencil, etc.

Discovery Inventions
Asking questions of the real world and getting answers
Design an experiment
Technical Documentation of Inventions
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Actual Reduction to practice
(for Inventorship, Novelty and Non-Obviousness)
E.g., build it, clone it, sequence it, express it, test it
For self-enabling inventions, draw it.
E.g., a pipettor, a gene chip, a bioinformatics program, new chemical
structure. If you can draw it, you can make it.
Do the Experiment
Test the hypothesis; provide working example: A did B (strong)
Interpret the results
Eliminate confounders in the experiment (stronger)
Negative controls
Positive controls
Calibrate the study methods, reproduce results
Generalize the discovery to other areas
Provide a variety of working examples (still stronger)
Technical Documentation of Inventions
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Constructive Reduction to Practice (Filing date)
(For Novelty, Prior Art and Inventorship)
File a patent application
Description
State of the filed before the invention
Contribution embodied by the invention
Prophetic examples
A does B If it is not apparent that A does B and there is no
proof, then this is merely a place holder. Prove up the
invention later (CIP, Declarations showing actual results)
Teach others to make and use
Dont keep the best mode secret
Claims
Metes and bounds of the property right
Technical Advice on Scope
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Is the invention complete?
Theory may be incorrect or subject to revision
Methods may have problems (reproducibility, accuracy)
Results may be inconclusive (e.g., scattered data)
Conclusions may not be fully justified (wishful thinking?)

Scope of invention is hard to ascertain in advance
More study is always needed in other/related areas
E.g., breast cancer, prostate cancer, adenocarcinomas, etc.
Revise hypotheses or theories
Broaden based on mechanism?

Equivalents are hard to ascertain
Infringement under the Doctrine of Equivalents:
Function, way, result
HOW TO KILL A CREATIVE IDEA
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Adapted from Measurable Performance Systems, Inc.
Our own self-criticism is often so strong that many novel and unusual ideas never even
reach our conscious awareness.
1. Don't be ridiculous.
2. We tried that before.
3. It costs too much.
4. That's beyond our responsibility.
5. It's too radical a change.
6. We don't have time.
7. We're too small for it.
8. That will make other equipment
obsolete.
9. Not practical for operating people.
10. Our competitors are not doing it
11. We've never done it before.
12. Lets get back to reality.
13. Thats not our problem.
14. Why change it, it's still working okay
15. You're two years ahead of your time.
16. We're not ready for that.
17. It isn't in the budget.
18. Can't teach an old dog new tricks.
19. Top management will never go for it.
20. We'll be the laughing stock.
21. We did all right without it.
22. Let's form a committee.
23. Has anyone else ever tried it?
Summary
Innovation is a skill that can be learned by practice
Innovation-oriented thinking can help individuals,
employees, and business-owners
Realizing an ideas potential requires selling on the
part of all inventors.
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