The Importance of Innovation

At its recent meeting in early October, our ASME Industry Advisory Board (IAB), under the leadership of Michael Cronin, CEO of Cognition, spent some very productive time exploring the importance of innovation. This topic is one that has significant implications for the future of the industries we serve. As I listened to the presentations at this meeting, it became obvious to me that what these leaders of industry were saying had important implications for the future of ASME as well. Indeed, given the changes that our profession faces, an understanding of innovation may well be the key issue for the economic survival of the engineering enterprise worldwide.

Terry Shoup

Perhaps one of the more profound definitions offered at this meeting came from a publication by our colleagues at Booz, Allen, Hamilton, an established management consulting organization:

"Innovation — the ability to define and develop new products and services and deliver them to market — is the fundamental source of value creation in companies and an important enabler of competitive advantage." (Rakesh Bordia, Eric Kronenberg, and David Neely, "Innovation's OrgDNA")

This definition suggests that there are two important facets to innovation as it applies to organizations. It is not enough to be creative and come up with new ideas and new business models. These improvements must move into practice — they must foster new products and new services. This is especially true for ASME. The definition goes on to assert that value creation is the enabler of competitive advantage and financial success. This also is true for ASME.

A wise person once said that innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity rather than a threat. We live in a time of exciting and challenging transitions. These include transitions from local and regional programs to global communities, transitions from an economy based on product capital to one based more on intellectual capital, transitions from single discipline projects to multidisciplinary systems, transitions from emphasis on individual achievements to a recognition of team achievements, transitions from "business as usual" to the concept of global networks, transitions from individual effort to collaboration and partnerships, transitions from measurement of input effort to assessment of actual outcomes, and transitions from the concept of "volunteer driven" or "staff driven" organizations to the concept of a synergistic volunteer-staff partnership.

While not every change is beneficial, change is, nonetheless, a reality of how we will find ourselves operating in the future. I believe that these transitions do, indeed, represent opportunities for ASME to move forward and that the real threat is found in standing still.

Believing that you cannot achieve progress if you are not able to measure it, our industry advisory board wisely has chosen to focus on the question: "How do you measure innovation?" The IAB will be pursuing this topic in more depth at future meetings. It suggests that ASME as a Society must also ask, how do we measure and quantify our organizational innovation?

Let me offer some of my own ideas about how we might begin to measure our progress. It is in the form of a series of questions that every unit of our Society should ask itself. These questions should be applied to every unit of the Society, including the Board of Governors, the Sector operating boards, all Society committees, all districts, divisions, and sections. It goes as follows:

1.) To what extent has your unit made changes that have resulted in sunsetting low-value programs in order to free up resources to allow the addition of higher-value programs? (Or is your unit mostly concerned with maintaining the status quo?)

2.) To what extent has your unit engaged early career engineers as leaders? (That is, is the average age of the most active and enthusiastic members of your unit increasing or decreasing?)

3.) To what extent has your unit produced new products and services that have added new value to our customers and new revenue to our operations?

4.) To what extent has your unit produced conferences, publications, codes, short courses, and other knowledge products that are seen as market leaders, in acceptance by the industries that we serve?

5.) To what extent has your unit utilized new technologies to improve its ability to network, share information, and transact business?

6.) To what extent has your unit utilized assessment tools like the Balanced Scorecard to evaluate the outcomes of its programs and use this information to make continuous improvement?

7.) To what extent has your unit embraced the notion that our profession and our work is now more global than ever before, and how has this changed the way you approach your programs and projects?

It may be that some of these questions will cause a level of discomfort. It may be that some units will find that one or more of these questions are simply not appropriate. It may also be that some of us would add additional questions that I may have missed. These are useful outcomes of such a measurement exercise. Clearly, change for the sake of change should not be our goal. It is sometimes true that when we implement change, we discover it does not produce the result we had hoped. When this happens, we must rethink the change and adjust our course. On the other hand, a quote by Woody Allen is most likely appropriate: "If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative."

I think that we all would agree that innovation and change are inevitable parts of our profession. They have the potential to open doors of opportunity. A lack of participation in innovation and change also has the potential to leave us behind in the engineering marketplace. The future of ASME is at stake if we do not heed the call to innovate.

— Terry Shoup
ASME President 2006–2007

back to columns