Explaining failures in innovative thought processes in engineering

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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 41 (2012) 442 – 449

International Conference on Leadership, Technology, and Innovation Management

Explaining failures in innovative thought processes in engineering design Minna Pärttöa, Pertti Saariluomaa a

Department of Computer Science and Information Systems, P.O.Box 35, FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Abstract The aim of this study is to explore factors causing failures in innovative thought processes in engineering design. An innovation process is here understood as a complex and multi-phased thinking and problem solving process generating new and mostly unforeseeable solutions. The phases are partly overlapping and simultaneous. This complicated nature of innovation process demands a lot from innovation management, and thus it is not unusual that innovation processes fail. Identifying problems and shortcomings is important because it helps organizations to eliminate them in the future. This study focus on thought processes of individual participants in an innovation process, which is referred by us as microinnovation approach. This approach understands innovations as being based on human thinking.This study shows that factors related to knowledge, management and interaction are causing failures in engineering design. We found haste to be the most common reason for failures. Other contributing factors were lack of long-term thinking and inability to understand others’ perspective. Keywords: Microinnovation processes, engineering design, thought errors; thought failures

2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or underofresponsibility of International ©©2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer reviewpeer-review under responsibility The First International Conference on Leadership, Technology and Innovation Management Conference on Leadership, Technology and Innovation Management *Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected]

1. Introduction Emergence of innovation is a complex process and has several preconditions. One of them is closely related to how human beings think. Only by means of thinking it is possible to renew ideas and products, and for this reason it is essential that we study how human thinking is involved with innovation processes. All of us must have heard the phrase "innovative thinking" or some of its equivalents. However, we very 1877-0428 © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of The First International Conference on Leadership, Technology and Innovation Management doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.04.053

Minna Pärttö and Pertti Saariluoma / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 41 (2012) 442 – 449

seldom regard innovation processes as thinking or rely on the concepts and methods of the research in human thinking [1, 2]. We have coined the word microinnovation research to refer to the thought processes of individual participants in an innovation process. Innovation presupposes ideation, design, product marketing and selling. It also presupposes acceptance by users during the related diffusion processes [3]. All these processes entail numerous complexly organized thought processes. If some of them fail, the innovation will never see the light of a day. Therefore, it is essential that innovation management also sees human thinking as an important factor for innovations. There are many kinds of factors which can destroy promising innovation processes, and only by understanding the reasons for their existence and their nature innovation management can respond to them. To get a holistic picture of innovations as thinking, we have to study the involved thought processes in all the stages of innovation [2]. One of them is design. Our main topic here is engineering design, which is a process that is complex and creative. Although many of its procedures and operations are based on routines, one can usually find something new and different each time. Engineering design can be defined as a thought process, which aims to organize nature so that it can meet human needs [4, 5]. It is thus a thought process in which the natural sciences, mathematics, physics and chemistry are applied to the conversion of resources of nature to meet stated human objectives [6]. In the beginning, engineers hardly know what the final outcome of their efforts will be, but in the end of their thought and problem solving process the working solutions can be found [7, 8, 9]. Engineering is based on human thinking and therefore it is prone to error and failure. Engineering design process often entails fatal errors [10, 11]. Due to this, engineering thinking has become highly valued as a research problem, and as a result we have numerous handbooks and practical engineering guidelines to explicate the ideal design process [12, 13]. It has been correctly assumed that explicating and using systematic design methodologies would improve our design thinking [e.g.14, 15, 16, 17]. A study conducted at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich analyzed 800 cases of structural failure which lead to 504 people being killed, 592 people injured, and millions of dollars of damage incurred. Where engineers had been at fault, the researchers classified the causes of failure as insufficient knowledge (36%), underestimation of influence (16%), ignorance, carelessness, negligence (14%), forgetfulness, error (13%), reliance on others without sufficient control (9%), objectively unknown situation (7%), imprecise definition of responsibilities (1%), choice of bad quality (1%) and other (3%) [18]. This shows that understanding thought errors in engineering is a socially important goal, but the analysis of engineering errors is important also as it illustrates how human thinking is organized in innovation processes. Errors tell us about the factors which are relevant for understanding the involved thought processes and their preconditions. Cognitive scientists have developed empirical methods for human problem solving [7, 8]. Consequently, cognitively oriented literature on architectural and engineering design has emerged [19, 20, 21]. In this tradition, it has become important to find a better empirical understanding of designers’ thinking [e.g. 22, 23, 24, 25, 26]. The logic of errors in design thinking becomes quite clear if we define error as incapacity to fully reach the design goals [27]. Inability to make a product that will satisfy the highest criteria in the field is also considered to be an error. For example, engineers who do not take seriously the importance of new technical breakthroughs would be committing errors. This is demonstrated by word processor companies which did not start developing graphical interaction applications in time and suffered serious losses as a consequence of their miscalculations. Innovation requires new ways of thinking, which in turn sets challenges for human cognitive capacities. In addition, innovation activity is always related to risks and insecurity because the outcomes are often beyond prediction. These outcomes are not immediately perceived because innovation activity is by nature long-term and future-oriented. It is no wonder that innovation activity in organizations is very vulnerable to thought risks, miscalculations and errors [28].

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2.Method The data consists of eighteen half-structured interviews. The interviewees, who were mostly from managerial level, represent big and medium size design and consulting firms extracted from the register database of the Finnish Association of Consulting Firms SKOL. First, we asked the designers to tell us why innovation processes fail. Second, we asked further questions about the reasons behind that. These included questions such as “Why do you think there was not enough information available?” or “In your opinion, what should have been done differently in order to avoid failure?” The main goal was to find certain typical thought errors behind the most common failure factors. The interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed. In order to categorize the responses, the material was analyzed qualitatively using data-based content analysis. Quantitative results were also achieved by totaling the cases in each category. Table 1 shows the business field of the respondents. Table 1. Respondents’ business field (n =18) Business field

n

Miscellaneous engineering fields

4

Construction

3

Infrastructure

3

Forest and paper

2

Process technology

2

Consulting

1

Energy

1

Marine Technical

1 1

The respondents were often quite reluctant to share their own experiences about failures. They admitted that errors do happen, but they were not that keen on memorizing or analyzing them. This reluctance can be explained by a human tendency to reject unpleasant things that could pose a threat to one's self-concept. The interviews were conducted by phone, so there was no face-to-face contact. It is possible that the participants didn’t feel comfortable or were not trusting enough to share their downs in work life. 3.Results Altogether 28 comments were given in relation to explaining failure. The comments were categorized into three main failure factors: 1) Knowledge, 2) Management, and 3) Interaction. The knowledge factor consists of two subtypes: inadequate knowledge and false knowledge. The management factor consists of poor timing, insufficient resources, stiff organizational structure, no-one in charge and no goal oriented and systematic operations. The interaction factor is composed of insufficient interaction with clients, conflicts between actors and inadequate networking.

Minna Pärttö and Pertti Saariluoma / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 41 (2012) 442 – 449

Table 2. Failure factors relating to knowledge and percentages of all the failure comments (n=28) Knowledge

%

Inadequate knowledge

21,4

False knowledge

10,7

Table 3. Failure factors relating to management and percentages of all the failure comments (n=28) Management

%

Poor timing

10,7

Insufficient resources

10,7

Stiff organization structure

10,7

No-one in charge

7,1

No goal oriented and systematic operations

7,1

Table 4. Failure factors relating to interaction and percentages of all the failure comments (n=28) Interaction

%

Insufficient interaction with clients

7,1

Conflicts between actors

7,1

Inadequate networking

7,1

3.1 Knowledge factor Design processes consist of several interrelated phases, where a previous phase defines the next phase. The most critical phase is the preliminary phase, which is about collecting data and defining a project plan. The preliminary phase creates a certain framework to the whole process, and shortcomings in this phase put the whole process in danger. Inadequate and false information in the preliminary phase was considered the most common reason to failures. Inadequate information refers to situations where project plans are made and project operations are conducted without comprehensive data: schedules are tight and time costs money. Planning and construction were simultaneous, and constructors were often forced to start building before the plans were ready. There was no time for ensuring and checking the results. Haste and tight schedules were also given as reasons for false information, and lack of data was often due to these. It became obvious that lack of long-term thinking leads to haste. In the long run, haste could lead to errors and problems, which were very costly.

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The often lacking compatibilities of technical properties were not checked. (Design manager, industrial design) Haste in the beginning of a project resulted in preliminary data being inadequate. There was no time for its collection. It was only in the end of the project that the ensuing problems emerged. For example, we had to purchase a new, more powerful device because the original device was not suitable. (Supply manager, industrial design) 3.2 Management factor Timing is essential in innovation processes. Poor timing refers to situations in which designers are too late or too early in the market with their ideas. In this category, two out of three thought that being too early in the market causes problems. Either the equipment and programs are not advanced enough to get a product or service into the market or customers aren’t ready for the new product or service. Being too early in the market implies that the focus has been mainly on the design perspective: an overall picture is missing, and technological, social and financial elements are being ignored. Subcategory of insufficient resources refers either to time or finance. Lack of time leads to haste and negligence: too much work and too little time for it. Haste is closely related to innovation activity. Especially in creative thinking processes, such as design, haste can lead to routine-based thinking and negligence in details [27]. Insufficient resources are partly due to the nature of design work. The number of design projects varies a lot: sometimes there are several simultaneous projects; sometimes there are only a few. Managing this kind of variability is not easy, especially when no one can predict the number of upcoming design projects. The amount of resources allocated to development and research was also considered to be insufficient. Lack of long-term thinking prevails here: demands for instant results direct operations at the expense of development and research. Innovation activity requires flexibility and ability to adjust to changing circumstances. A stiff organizational structure leads to rigid operations and resistance to chance, which both have proved to weaken innovation ability [29, 30]. In our study, rigidness was found to occur particularly frequently among the attitudes of organizations’ members. Considering the ways of doing things, "the best and the only way" was causing barriers to innovative perspectives. Also, sticking to old working methods was common: “We do things like we are used to do.” Results of a project are not put into action because of the reluctance to change one’s way of doing things. (PR, management consulting and education) Design projects are made up of very complex multi-phased processes involving many people who may look at things from very different perspectives depending on their professions. This complexity demands a lot from management: all the different aspects should be combined while ensuring that the interaction between different professions works. Innovation failures due to a blurred idea about leadership were mentioned by some respondents. No-one taking charge of the whole leads to situations where a holistic view is missing. The main problem is in the management, but relying on others and certain free-riding could also explain these kinds of problems: It all looked great on the paper. But there was nobody leading the project, and the project just died out. (PR, management consulting) A certain glue was used in a conveyor roll, but the glue was not suitable for it. Everyone trusted that someone else had checked the technical properties of the glue but no-one had done it. (Design manager, industrial design)

Minna Pärttö and Pertti Saariluoma / Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 41 (2012) 442 – 449

Innovation process is not an uncontrolled chaos but rather an organized path of problem solving. [e.g. 31]. Innovation activity requires therefore systematic and persevering operations. Lack of goal-oriented and systematic operations was found to be the reason for some failures. New ideas were often introduced, but they were left “floating” without further development to concrete practices. Demands of instant results and profits made long-term and goal-oriented actions difficult. Creating ideas was not a problem, but further development of these ideas was often missing. Future-oriented action was also demanded. (Design manager, industrial design) Further processing of ideas or results is often limited or inadequate. (Design manager, infrastructure and environment design) 3.3 Interaction factor Insufficient interaction with clients refers to situations in which customers’ needs or wishes are ignored or misunderstood. This can easily lead to situations where market and demand do not correct each other. Designers design something that nobody wants. Here the main reason for this kind a problem was the lack of mutually shared language, in other words, customers didn’t understood the terminology of design and designers were incapable of communicating in layman’s terms. This is known as the communicative distance. [32] People often discuss problems in language they mistakenly assume everybody in the group understands. They use, for example, different kinds of concepts that are not understood by everybody, or the concepts can have different meanings in different areas of expertise. Inability to see things from others' perspective is evident here. It was within the company that we made our conclusions about what the clients wants. We didn’t hear the clients; we ignored them because we knew better. And it turned out that we had made a product that nobody wanted to buy. (Executive manager, forest and process industry) The second subtype is called conflicts between actors. In design projects there are various units working separately from each other, and the goals might be quite different among them. Also there are different expectations about the design projects and different viewpoints on them. Thus it is sometimes hard to reach a consensus. Conflicts could be understood as failures to reach a common understanding, which refers again to the concept of communicative distance. An ability to communicate and exchange ideas is an important part of the creative process and innovation. Innovation partners’ success in reaching a common vision, exchanging creative ideas and evaluating them depends on the ability to devise a shared language, which is an essential factor in developing a common understanding. Sharing a common language makes it easier to gain access to other people and their information. In order to combine the information gained through social interaction, the different parties must have some overlap in their respective knowledge. [33] Innovation is sometimes thought to mean reducing costs by poor design. The viewpoints of the parties are different, and consensus is sometimes hard to reach. (Leading specialist, infrastructure design)

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Successful design projects require continuous and well-timed co-operation between different actors. Inadequate networking was considered to be reason for failures in some cases. Lack of networks could lead to one-sided and incomplete viewpoints, which could be fatal. Networking is commonly acknowledged to be related to companies' innovation ability. The reasons for networking can be summarized as: 1) sharing risks, 2) attaining a new market, 3) need to adopt new technology, 4) shortening the access to the market and 5) unifying complementary skills. [34]. Insufficent networks could imply lack of long-term thinking and self superiority: an organization will not survive depending only on to itself [34] .

4.Conclusions A design process is a complex process which includes multidimensional interaction with social, technical and economical environments. The results of thinking in a design process depend on many factors inside and outside organizations. Therefore, explaining innovation failure in terms of one factor or two is often insufficient alone. A failure is always a result of several factors. This study shows that haste, lack of long-term thinking and inability to understand others’ perspective were present in most failure cases. Innovation processes in design include both external and internal processes. External processes relate to design and development of products and services. External processes often take place in interaction with a client. Internal innovation process refers to the development of a company’s own strategy in order to improve performance. It was often mentioned that an internal innovation process had taken place simultaneously with an external innovation process. Innovations are understood as multidimensional problem-solving processes, which are dependent on the actors’ ability to learn, co-operate, adopt and implement their knowledge [35]. All these elements were exposed in our data too. Our research has shown that there are preconditions for innovative thinking in design, explaining why things get worse than people have thought. Then there are rational reasons for errors. These reasons combine the internal and external factors so that they can tell us where people failed in their thinking. For innovation management working to improve innovation processes in companies this kind of knowledge is essential. They know what kinds of factors they have to recognize in their company to eliminate error risks and, in this way, to indirectly improve the levels of innovation processes there. Microinnovation research provides us with an additional tool in innovation management. It brings in science to replace intuitions in the analysis of preconditions for innovative thinking. In this way, it has a clear role in innovation research, and it is important to develop this kind of research to support innovation management processes [1, 2] References [1] Saariluoma P, Kannisto E. Designing micro-innovation mechanism: How basic science can be implemented in product development. Enterpreneurship as an Engine for Regional Development, European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management RENT XXII 173.2008. [2] Saariluoma P, Hautamäki A, Väyrynen S, Pärttö M, Kannisto E.(2011) Microinnovations among the paradigms of innovation research - what are the common ground issues, Global Journal of Computer Science and Technology 2011:12. [3] Rogers E. Diffusion of Innovations. New York: Free Press; 2003. [4] Pahl G, Beitz W, Feldhusen J, Grote K. Engineering Design: A Systematic Approacch. 3rd ed. London: Springer; 2007. [5] Ulrich K, Eppinger S. Product design and development. New York: McGraw-Hill; 2004. [6] Ertas A, Jones J. The Engineering Design Process. 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; 1996.

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