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96 IEEE Spectrum | November 2004 | NA

Six years ago, the brass atArvinMeritor, an auto compo-nents supplier in Troy, Mich., real-ized their product developmentpipeline was running dry—insteadof new and innovative ideas, theirengineers were turning out small,incremental advances to existingproducts. Hoping to jump-startcreativity, the company hired aconsulting firm to host a series of“innovation” workshops.

Each three-day workshop in-volved a half-dozen employeesdrawn from a variety of depart-ments, including engineering,manufacturing, and legal. Morethan just free-form discussions,the workshops looked at a spe-cific technology, and then out-

lined concrete steps to move thattechnology to real products.Having perspectives from differ-ent business units was key, saysNathan Clark, senior project en-gineer. “It’s easy to get trappedby what you know,” he says.“People who don’t know all thelimitations of a certain areamight offer out-of-the-box per-spectives.”

As ArvinMeritor, which to-day employs 32 000 workers in27 countries and had US $8 billionin sales last year, conductedmore workshops, “employeesbegan to think more creatively intheir everyday jobs,” Clark says.The results were staggering: theaverage number of potentially

CAREERS

FROM DILBERT TO DA VINCICompanies find new ways to harness theirengineers’ creativity BY SUSAN KARLIN

Editor’s note: Earlier this year, IEEE Spectrum explored what individualengineers could do to foster creativity [see August, “The CreativeEngineer”]. This month we look at what managers and companies can doto reap the benefits of productive creativity within their organizations.

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November 2004 | IEEE Spectrum NA | 97

patentable ideas rose sixfold,from fewer than 70 per year from1992 to 1997 to more than 400 peryear from 1998 to 2002.

IN THE PUSH for new products andprofits, more companies are ex-ploring how to harness the cre-ativity of their engineers, evenwithin the admittedly regimentedcorporate structure. “The typesof problems engineers encountertoday are more narrowly focused,”says Jonathon N. Cummings, anassistant professor of manage-ment at the Massachusetts Insti-tute of Technology, in Cambridge,and an expert on corporate inno-vation. “As engineers becomemore specialized, they becomeless inclined to communicatewith those outside their special-ties. So while there’s higherincremental innovation, [over-

specialization] may lower the rateof truly new innovations.”

One way companies can getaround this issue, he says, is torotate engineers through dif-ferent jobs, “which exposesthem to a broader range ofideas and perspectives.”

Creativity germinates bestwith nurturing and positivestimuli—all too rare in settingsthat stress immediate results,uniformity, and motivation byfear and competition, say JeffMauzy and Richard Harriman.The two have spent the lastcouple of decades observingwhat makes a creative workplacewhile working at Synectics, aCambridge, Mass., consultingfirm, and they outlined theirfindings in Creativity, Inc.:Building an Inventive Organiza-tion (Harvard Business SchoolPress, Boston, 2003). Their ad-vice: eliminate fear (whichmakes people less curious) andprecipitous judgment (whichshuts people up).

Workers’ fears may be rootedin job insecurities or in

a desire not to be ridiculed.“Recognize how much fear is inthe company or room—once it’sopenly acknowledged and vali-dated, people can deal with it,”says Mauzy. “Employees alsohave to be taught to start theirevaluations [of others’ ideas]without harsh judgment and notbe immediately negative.” Hesuggests videotaping meetingsto give participants a sense ofhow they interact: “A singlenaysayer in the room can makeeveryone feel dumb for beingtoo accepting.”

Company leaders and man-agers need to embrace and enforce these attitudes, saysDavid Blakely, a senior projectmanager who directs technology-based projects at IDEO, a firmheadquartered in Palo Alto, Calif.,that helps companies create

products and develop businesspractices. “Meetings should havea facilitator to encourage wildideas, but also [to help the group]stay focused and to guard againstnegativity,” says Blakely. “Havewell-defined rules for etiquette,the most important being to defer judgment. An idea that at first sounds wrong may lead to thinking that provides a breakthrough.”

Medical instrument makerGyrus ENT LLC, in Bartlett,Tenn., adopted IDEO’s commu-nal strategy when it began re-vamping its line of instrumentsfor ear, nose, and throat surgery.Gyrus hired IDEO to fill in gapsin expertise. Alongside electricalengineers and software program-mers, IDEO brought in behaviorspecialists to participate in thedesign process.

Before writing a line of codeor designing a single element, theengineers, programmers, and be-haviorists sat in on surgical oper-ations and brainstormed withsurgeons. The surgeons advisedthe engineers on such issues as

“All the colored walls and free food won’t

matter” if people are bored. “If problems are

interesting...that’s what will get people excited”

handgrip position, motion control, and theposition of LEDs on a console. The resultingDiego Surgical System tripled Gyrus’s market share for that product segment.

COMPANIES ARE ALSO FINDING that giving engi-neers more autonomy and “percolationtime” stimulates their creative juices. Mauzycites the policy at 3M Co., in St. Paul, Minn.,that lets employees spend 15 to 20 percent

of their working hours on personal projectsthat might lead to new company products.The thinking is that a labor of love can spark“eureka!” moments in other areas besidesthe task at hand.

“People with the most passion are themost creative, because they want to finda way to get it done and will transcend theroadblocks that dissuade other people,”says M.W. (“Mickey”) Mantle, the chiefoperating officer of Gracenote, anEmeryville, Calif., firm that designs musicrecognition technology for cataloging CDs.

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Passion is an elusive trait, Mantle ad-mits. Years ago, while working at anothercompany, he was told by upper manage-ment to make his department “more cre-ative.” So he set aside a room with toys andgames for his staff, and he hired wackyspeakers to teach seminars.

Meanwhile, though, other managerswere pressing him to keep productivity up.Mantle’s plan flopped. “It taught me a valu-able lesson: you can’t impose creativity.”These days he hires employees who are al-ready excited about their work, rather thantrying to instill passion by fiat.

Peppering the workplace with incentiveslike free food, a cool décor, and the occasion-al motivational seminar may strengthen ex-isting collaborative cultures. But “all the col-ored walls and free food won’t matter” ifpeople are bored, says MIT’s Cummings. “Ifproblems are interesting and the company isclear in communicating where it’s heading,that’s what will get people excited.” In addi-tion to giving engineers more discretion inthe problems they choose, he suggests using“more engineers in the bleeding-edge proj-ects, which are often reserved for the star en-gineers.”

Incentives should support the work’simportance. Gracenote trains its engineer-ing staff to move their ideas through thepatenting process, offering stock optionsfor completing various stages. Mantle citesthe cautionary tale of Robert B. Ingebretsen,the digital audio inventor who never gotaround to filing patents.

The oversight cost him millions whenother companies went on to make products,like the compact disc, that incorporated hisdesigns. “The patent applications just sat onhis desk for years,” says Mantle. “Many en-gineers have good ideas, but they ignore thesteps to protect them. Our system sets an ex-ample that patents and documents are im-portant and that no idea is too trivial. Noteverything has to be the laser.” �

98 IEEE Spectrum | November 2004 | NA

SUSAN KARLIN (skarlin@aol.com) is an award-winning

journalist based in Los Angeles. She writes frequently

for IEEE Spectrum about inventors and innovation.

TO PROBE FURTHER:For a look at how companies cannurture creative ideas by employeesdistributed across different geographiclocations, see “Initiative for DistributedInnovation” by Jonathon N. Cummings,an assistant management professorat the Sloan School of Managementat the Massachusetts Instituteof Technology in Cambridge (http://www.distributedinnovation.org/).