This article on Invention Machine is the lead story in today’s Innovations website.

http://innovations.ziffdavisenterprise.com/.  Though Editor Paul Gillin focused on the “search” aspect of Goldfire, it is still a positive story as it describes the software within the context of innovation. Overall, he was very impressed with Invention Machine and the product.

 As for Innovations, it is a supplement to Baseline, CIO Insight and eWEEK and published by Ziff Davis Enterprise. It is a resource for technology professionals to learn and share ideas about how to foster, implement, and perpetuate innovation in business.  

Can you bottle innovation? Conventional wisdom says no; innovation comes from inspiration backed by knowledge. It can't be packaged or automated.

However, a Boston-based company is challenging the conventional wisdom. Invention Machine has developed technology that applies a semantic search engine to the task of mining possibilities for innovative new materials and procedures. The core technology was originally developed for specific vertical applications, but the company now sees bigger potential.

If the phrase "semantic search" means nothing to you, join the club. I got a telephone briefing on Invention Machine's technology and couldn't quite figure out what it did. So I stopped in for a visit and got one of the more impressive demos I’ve seen in recent years. I'm a veteran of thousands of demos, and so have learned to be skeptical, but this was interesting stuff. Invention Machine's customer list would indicate that the company is on to something.

Semantic search involves mining text documents not only for terms but for relationships between terms. Most search engines can’t do this. They can deliver some insight by finding words in close proximity to each other, but they don’t establish a clear relationship.

For example, if you search for “smoking” and “cancer” on Google, the results indicate there’s a relationship between the two, but the search engine won’t explicitly define that relationship. Semantic search goes a step further. It’s intended to deliver a small number of results but with terms that are specifically related to each other.

For example, a semantic search engine might infer from its search that smoking and cancer are related and return documents that explain that relationship. The semantic engine is at the core of what Goldfire does. A host of other features are wrapped around that, including a project workbench and a database of scientific and patent literature. The demo I saw showed one example of how innovation can be guided, if not packaged.

Suppose your company makes packaged food and you want to figure out a way to substitute artificial sweetener for sugar. Engineers can use the workbench to deconstruct ingredients in the current product and then test the substitution of various artificial sweeteners. Goldfire's scientific database understands the characteristics of alternative ingredients, such as texture, taste, heat tolerance and chemical interactions. A researcher could model the impact of substituting different artificial sweeteners and determine which ones are good candidates for a new recipe. By querying on the attributes of potential substitutes, engineers could also discover new ingredients they hadn't thought of.

The patent database comes into play when attempting to innovate on existing intellectual property. For example, an automotive engineer could deconstruct the components of a patented turbocharger and test the impact of substituting different metal alloys. This could lead to an improved design that doesn't infringe on existing patents. In fact, Invention Machine says this re-engineering of existing patents is one of the most popular applications of its product.

Goldfire isn't a simple product to use. Customers typically go through several days of training and setup to customize the software to their industry. It also isn't cheap; installations run in the six figures. For the kinds of problems Goldfire is meant to solve, however, these costs aren’t surprising.

Goldfire is a difficult product to describe, but an easy one to understand once you see it in action. The company provides several podcasts and videocasts that demonstrate how customers are applying the technology. This isn’t innovation in a bottle, but it's a pretty good start.

Incidentally, I have no financial interest in the company or its product. I just think this is a technology that deserves more attention.

http://www.designnews.com/article/47336-Flooring_Company_Takes_Innovation_Cues_From_Mother_Nature.php

 Flooring Company Takes Innovation Cues From Mother Nature

Biomimicry R&D practices and the Goldfire innovation platform are steering Interface on a path to sustainability

Beth Stackpole -- Design News, July 30, 2008

Call it nature's way of coming full circle. More than a decade after Interface Inc. Chairman Ray Anderson embraced his vision to lead the company on a path to sustainability, the carpet manufacturer's R&D group is well along in a transformation to take its innovation and new product design cues from that most highly regarded source-- Mother Nature.

Anderson, who credits customers for getting him to think seriously about environmental impact well before it was the blockbuster business imperative, assembled myriad teams as far back as 1996 to develop a framework for what a sustainable, non-oil dependent company might look like. The teams examined everything from how the company sourced its materials to its energy consumption and its product development processes to retool with a sustainable edge. The goal: To convert Interface to a completely sustainable business model by 2020.

Today, Interface is well ahead of the sustainability pack, having traveled about 40% of its way through its transformational journey. Led by the vision of Anderson, Interface is among a growing number of industry pioneers that believe wholesale changes to all facets of a company are imperative not just for success, but for survival. "We've built an industrial system that lived off Mother Nature's savings, not its cash flow and that can't go on forever," explains John Bradford, Interface's vice president of operations and R&D." We're starting to see some of the social and economic issues that will happen whenever oil becomes truly scarce. The face of business will absolutely change if we can't break our oil addiction."

The exploration of sustainability led the Interface R&D group to the practice of biomimicry, which looks to nature as the muse for innovations around engineering and manufacturing. One of the first principles adopted in the product development area was to mirror how nature reacts to negative energy, first by evaluating inputs and then adapting. Following suit, the Interface R&D group went out to the marketplace and sought negative input. "Five years before, we might have asked customers what they wanted and the answer would be, `what we have, but cheaper,'" Bradford explains. "We started asking different questions like what they hated about what they already had. It was then we started hearing about things that were opportunistic for new and greater business."

Radical R&D

That research was the springboard for some radical new thinking around design. Following the principle that everything is different in nature, Interface began to experiment with designing patterns and color schemes that were varied, instead of honing its development and manufacturing operations to produce consistent fabrics or colors. "Not a single blade of grass is the same color nor is a single leaf the same size," Bradford explains, "meanwhile we try to design everything in perfect harmony." As a result of that effort, Interface began to have two dye lots in the same tile and to make every tile design different on purpose. The resulting product line, called Entropy, fast became a top selling carpet style, and the innovation doubled the size of Interface's business between 2002 and 2007, he says.

Next, the R&D group began to apply biomimicry practices to traditional product development. In one example, the group determined that buyers selected carpet tile over products like broadloom when they required flexibility, say for moving offices. "Yet we were gluing carpet tile to floors," Bradford says. An R&D team hit the drawing board and conducted months of studies on glue and nature, evaluating organisms like mussels, flies and the suction cups on octopus. Finally the teams determined that nature didn't use glue, but rather applied gravity. The resulting Interface product innovation was TacTiles, a way to leverage the dimensional design of the tile backing to employ gravity to make it hold. "We had to totally change the way we thought about installation," Bradford says. "We brought the products to market two and a half years ago, and we're now selling 2 million a month."

Flush with its success, Interface pushed the concept even further. Feeding off nature's idea of feedback loops and realizing that the TacTile design supplied a node every 50 centimeters, the R&D team began an exercise of questioning what the floor knew that could be useful to building inhabitants. Using new advancements in RFID (radio frequency identification) technology, Interface is now pilot testing a product, due out in 2009, that essentially creates a GPS (global positioning system) of everything in a building. Applications are numerous, including those around security, tracking retail traffic and helping hospitals keep track of lifesaving equipment and patients.

While such innovations indicate Interface is cruising on the sustainable innovation track, there have been bumps along the way. Changing the culture of the R&D and engineering organization was a major challenge as was encouraging engineers and designers to problem solve in different ways, Bradford says. Having strong leadership drive the vision was crucial to getting engineering buy in. Interface's R&D group also prioritized creating a culture that would encourage people to share. "You need to have a culture that is trustful and that doesn't have a problem with making mistakes," he explains. "Celebrating missteps along the way and having faith in the process is probably one of the most important steps."

Another big hurdle to conquer was encouraging the R&D group to branch out into areas where it didn't necessarily have expertise. "A major challenge to this is that Mother Nature takes you places you've never really been," he says. "RFID is a perfect example. You don't think of RFID and carpet together."

One of the tools that helped Interface make such connections was the Goldfire innovation platform from Invention Machine. Goldfire's deep search capabilities, domain expertise and access to all kinds of third-party resources, including patent literature and engineering communities, enabled the R&D group to incorporate external domain knowledge into its innovation processes, not to mention, build on prior concepts and ideas.

"We as engineers and designers tend to be specialized-we know our subject matter well, but oftentimes when you're talking about biomimicry or innovative problem solving, those are solutions that lie outside the domain of our direct experience," says Jim Todhunter, Invention Machine CTO. "Goldfire can help people look at biomimicry issues that are outside of their area of expertise. It provides access to outside domain knowledge and internal information so they don't have to reinvent the wheel."

Along with encouraging engineers to challenge their way of thinking, Goldfire also has capabilities and methodologies to help Interface analyze possible failure modes, which aids in its ability to winnow down the number of possible design choices. Being to able to kill projects more quickly means the company doesn't waste money on pursuing bad ideas. The software and product development changes have also sped up the innovation process to be three times faster than it was previously and it's made ideas that do get commercialized far more marketable.

"What we've done is taken our eye off our competitors and put our eye on our customers and started to innovate for them," Bradford says. "As a result, we're developing products that are more appealing and we're more successful in R&D."

http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/tips/archives/2008/07/driving_sustain.html

Driving Sustainable Innovation in Tough Times

Posted by: on July 09

While many companies are hunkering down during the current economic storm, smart companies understand that it is critical to drive the market, instead of being driven down by it. CEOs have to be committed to sustainable innovation, and management must make its commitment to innovation palpable.

Here are several ways for management to drive the innovation culture at your company:

•Invest in people. Develop innovation capabilities by providing innovation best-practices training.

•Reward wanted behavior. Publicly reward those who distinguish themselves as innovators. Two examples: Create annual innovators awards. Build a wall of innovation.

•Invest in infrastructure to support sustainable innovation.

•Visibility to corporate objectives. Often investment is wasted on ideas that are doomed from the start because they are not aligned with the needs of the company. Knowledge-workers must be able to integrate corporate strategy into their innovation paths.

•Practice innovation. Workers must practice innovation in everything they do. Managers must support innovation workers and not push employees to short-circuit the solution process.

Managers who avoid taking responsibility for driving an innovation culture by using the crutch of "adoption must be a grassroots thing" will always be met with failure and left wondering why they can’t achieve their repeatable innovation goals.

James Todhunter
Chief Technology Officer
Invention Machine
Boston

OCE Selects Invention Machine to Accelerate Product Delivery and Discover

New Market Opportunities

International document delivery leader drives eco-friendly innovation with

Invention Machine’s Innovation Software

 Boston, June 3, 2008 — Invention Machine, a leading provider of innovation software, today announced that it has been selected by Océ, an international leader in digital document management technology and services, to help create a sustainable innovation infrastructure that accelerate new product development. Océ will also use Invention Machine Goldfire® Innovator to improve innovation processes to reduce costs and R&D, associated with designing its next generation product portfolio.

 Due to information governance standards, companies worldwide are required to properly manage the entire lifecycle of digital business documents. This need, coupled with an explosion in enterprise data has led to a highly competitive document management technology marketplace. To maintain its leadership in digital printing solutions for the very high volume market, the Netherland and German-based Océ chose Goldfire to empower its engineers and innovators so they can deliver a steady stream of productive and eco-friendly products that meet customer demand.

 The innovation platform will also enable engineers to speed time to market of new products, reduce product development costs and discover new market opportunities for its existing products.  Goldfire will also help increase productivity in R&D, leading to new innovations and redesign existing products with new functionality at lower cost. 

 “Known for its printers and document delivery technology, Océ is looking to design its next generation printers by combining in-house expertise with cutting-edge innovation solution,” said Edmund Creutzmann, executive director, Printer Technology, Océ. “With Goldfire Innovator we can now further accelerate and improve our innovation processes, and speed-up the delivery of unique and highly productive products that add value to our customers.”

 Invention Machine’s innovation software helps enterprises innovate repeatedly, accelerating and sustaining product innovation. Its unique semantic technology helps translate ideas into commercialized products by generating and validating the right ideas the first time - whether it's creating a folding box spring, an engine for NASA or a new printer. 

 “As a leader in document delivery technology, Océ understand the importance of sustaining innovation and getting the most out of their existing product portfolio,” said Mark E. Atkins, CEO and chairman, Invention Machine. “With Goldfire, Océ will be able to further drive its innovation initiatives, positively impacting the company’s top line growth and competitive advantage.”

About Océ

Océ is one of the world's leading providers of document management and printing for professionals. The broad Océ offering includes office printing and copying systems, high speed digital production printers and wide format printing systems for both technical documentation and color display graphics. Océ is also a foremost supplier of document management outsourcing. Many of the world’s Fortune 500 companies and leading commercial printers are Océ customers. The company was founded in 1877. With headquarters in Venlo, the Netherlands, Océ is active in over 90 countries and employs some 24,000 people worldwide. Océ is listed in Euronext in Amsterdam. Total revenues in 2007 amounted to €3.1 billion. For more information on Océ, visit www.oce.com.

Sustainable Innovation

by Stephanie Neil, MA Editorial Staff

Electric automobiles, wind power, bio-fuels, fuel-cell technology, flywheel energy storage — these are all alternative sources of energy. Where did they come from? Need, of course.

"Necessity is the mother of invention," the classical Greek philosopher, Plato, said. The green movement is pervasive these days. As a result, companies feel the need to act socially responsible, which often, out of necessity, leads to innovation.

Reducing gasoline consumption in a car, for example, has engineers looking at new ways to power that piece of metal. And what about that metal? It has mercury in it. What happens when the car goes to the graveyard? These are issues Daimler, Ford, Toyota, and others are thinking about.

Often, necessity takes engineers back to the drawing board.

"Typically a material — like lead in metals — these materials don't just sit there; they have a functional purpose to them," says Jim Todhunter, CTO of Invention Machine. "Finding a replacement is a challenging thing for these companies. They have to understand how all the functional properties play in the design and production of products, and understand how alternative selections meet or don't meet requirements."

As a result, many companies are looking for new ways to innovate in order to find that next big thing — either to fulfill consumer demand or to meet green initiatives.

Invention Machines offers a product to help companies achieve the "sustainable innovation" mission: The company says its Goldfire Innovator application facilitates the idea process. "It's bringing predictability and repeatability to product design," says Mark Atkins, Invention Machines' chairman, president, and CEO. It's what Atkins refers to as "knowledge-enabled ideation," which, he says, is the front end of PLM. "You need the ideas for the design in order to change or fix the product, or to anticipate defects," he says.

"Great innovation happens with the coherence of knowledge," Todhunter says. By that he means proven methodologies of how to innovate things. Using semantic-based technology, Goldfire can harvest relative concepts by collaborating among engineers, tapping into internal resources, and searching external patent archives.

For example, every time an engineer changes a specification on a product, that work is captured within a global index, which enables that knowledge — and experience — to be leveraged as the product evolves. Or it can result in idea validation, which accelerates innovation, moving the manufacturer toward that next 'aha!' moment.

"Anytime you can turn the situation from being, 'Oh, rats, we have to comply,' to 'Oh great, here's a way to increase profitability or increase market reach and create competitive advantage,' that's a huge change," Todhunter says.