In our previous interview with James “Jim” Hoffmaster, formerly the President and COO at Cognex Corporation and Division President at Emerson Electric, we talked to Jim about the topic of Breakthrough innovation for incumbents and entrants. Here’s the remainder of my interview with Jim where he provided several R&D management tips on what steps an incumbent company has to undertake to successfully execute a breakthrough technology innovation.
In today’s interview, Jim talks about the factors that go into making a successful team for a breakthrough innovation product.
Picking Your R&D Breakthrough Innovation Team
Jim shared what’s most important with building your technical team, the internal factors to consider, Jim said, “you need to start with an honest assessment of the strengths and weaknesses in your technical team. How do they handle innovation? How well is the team equipped to deal with the new technologies and the breakthrough concepts? If your organization is heavily invested in an existing approach, you need to build the new product team very carefully. You need people who believe in the breakthrough concept! Any naysayers could effectively tie a boat anchor to the new product.”
Separating the Team Physically
When it comes to breakthrough innovations if your company is an incumbent, the company, its staff and existing resources, especially those people whose careers have been tied to an existing technology will have some difficulty in making a switch to developing a new innovation. Jim describes some of the factors to consider, he said,
“You can certainly build a team around the existing organization, but you have to be careful. You have to isolate them from the rest of the development group; it’s best to move them off site. Yet, when you take some of the best people away from the existing technology; the people who remain responsible for that technology, and your existing revenue stream, will want to tap those experts for existing products. It’s important to be aware of this and to manage it. You have to assess each situation carefully, and consider both the issue at hand and the opportunity cost of pulling the resources away from the new initiative. In my experience, there are usually far more forces at work to pull the resources back to support the existing product than there are at work to keep them focused on the new innovation. The way I’ve found to have this succeed, is to bring in some new talent. For example at Emerson Electric on the Delta V product I brought in a large number of fresh graduates, which was a appropriate because we needed people who had been trained in web and Ethernet technologies.”
Part of the success of building an offsite team is to build a place conducive for innovation, as Jim explained,
“Create an environment where the people working on the breakthrough reinforce each other, and don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what they have already done, or work on existing technologies. Create an environment where your team is not impeded by the work on the other products.”
Addressing Skepticism From The Existing R&D Team
There’s a lot of uncertainly when you embark on a new breakthrough innovation. It can be a real issue for the people who remain assigned to work on the existing products. Jim explained,
“I’ve seen a lot of skepticism from the people who remained committed to the old product lines. Some of them just don’t believe the new approach is going to work. I think it’s important for leaders to talk candidly about their own confidence in the initiative, as well as the risks involved.”
Creating A Breakthrough Innovation Constituency
Jim went onto to discuss how despite the risks at one of his former companies he went forward with a breakthrough initiative. Jim said,
“At Emerson, we rented an offsite location, we handpicked people; they stopped going to the old location, and went to the new location. We created a constituency around the new initiative. There’s an emotional component here, we had a core group of senior people, who were heavily invested in the existing product, but they believed in the breakthrough. In the beginning, you can’t know if you’ve chosen the right approach, but it’s essential to believe you have! With Delta V, we got it right. In the end we became category leaders.”
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