The future of innovation in an engineering centred organisation such as the Airbus Centre of Competence (CoC) Flight Physics is a question of how efficiently intellectual resources can be used. Innovation is the “natural” output of approximately 930 highly qualified engineers, employed in this CoC. With processes in place, which support the transition of innovative ideas into real products, CoC Flight Physics, among other engineering centres, contributes to the success of our products. However, there is room for further improvements.
Here are some measures, taken in the CoC Flight Physics, to stimulate and promote innovative thinking.
Information
Knowing that information stimulates innovation the most recent technical developments now are just one click away. On the centre's internal network pages, several links to information sources were placed including internal libraries, patent publications and pertinent publications. Not only is the technical state-of-the-art easily available now. The links also help to understand the Intellectual Property situation, which is becoming more and more important.
Innovation Workshops / Creativity Tools
An organisation, which wants to actively shape the future of its innovations, needs to consider both the individual and collective innovations. It is essential to find ways of combining individual innovation ingredients, such as richness of ideas, creativity, dedication, and enthusiasm, with a team approach, multiplying the innovative spirit. In this sense, a team may actually be part of an organisation or be only virtually bonded together by common interest.
To cover all this, Innovation Workshops are an appropriate means. They have been developed to make the best out of individual creativity, the innovative dynamics of teams and a set of Creativity Tools, being applied in a process of “Systematic Solution-Finding”. The participants, usually from different neighbouring departments, collectively work out the “real case” statement and the solution(s). The feedback from the Innovation Workshop is quite positive for both the workshop facilitation and the creativity tools applied. Better solutions can be found much faster by this kind of workshops where all stakeholders contribute their ideas and knowledge to the real time solution. Alongside, the participants learn how to use the creativity tools in their day-to-day work environment.
Not to forget Recognition / Motivation
The 10 most outstanding innovations are celebrated in an “Innovation Recognition Event” where developers have the opportunity to meet with Senior or Top Management. The combination of speeches, presentations and having lunch together, results in quite sustainable motivation, much more than monetary rewards.
So, what comes next?
Innovation Workshops have proven to be a very efficient means to promote collective innovation. This kind of workshops will step by step be opened to Universities and R&D Institutes where long-term relationships and contracts with Airbus already are in place. Thus minimising the implicit risks of opening to a broader community e.g. IP issues, contract issues, piracy.
On-line forums and open calls to contribute to discussions about “disruptive solutions” will follow.
All the before mentioned measure are promoting innovation. However, the Future of Innovation remains dependent on the richness of ideas and the creativity of people.
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