In my previous post I talked about motivations for innovation. The example I focused on was Brooks Instrument’s Coriolis MFC (mass flow controller). So how did we come up with this idea and why did we think it would work?
Where do you get ideas?
I am convinced that there is no magic formula that works in every case. There are a variety of good approaches for getting ideas that won’t work sometimes. The key is to stay flexible and if the results are unsatisfying try a different approach. In Brook’s case we used a “seeded” brainstorming method. I call it “seeded” in that we stablished a context and knowledge baseline before we launched into the brainstorming to expand and then filter ideas to the mostly likely to succeed.
I invited technologists from our sister divisions and subsidiaries to the seminar and included some consultants that had already been screened by Emerson corporate. Several presented technologies that were known and some potential from external ideas. I presented my idea that I had originally pitched to Unit Instruments. Obviously, most of us came with a predisposition toward a particular idea. To keep the effects of prejudice to a minimum, we exposed the prejudices and requested that the participants keep open minds. Here is where we conducted the brainstorming collecting as many ideas as we could. We then discussed product feasibility, time to market, expected development costs, risk factors, among other topics to drill down to a final candidate.
One of our sister subsidiaries was Micro Motion whose founder had invented the Coriolis flow sensor. Coriolis sensors respond directly to mass flow. There are no conversions or inferences required to obtain a measurement of mass flow as with other mass flow sensing technologies. There was considerable IP protection and the technology could obsolete the multi-calibration capability that we had just developed. This would not cannibalize our current product line initially since our initial application would be for liquid flow. Our main products were for gas and vapor flow. The liquid flow products throughout the industry were known to be weak in meeting customer needs. A Coriolis based MFC for liquid applications would expand our product offerings and allow for a reasonable return on investment from the Digital Thermal MFCs. Eventually, the Coriolis MFCs would expand to include gas and vapor applications displacing the digital thermal MFCs. Ok, so we had a technical direction to head in, but what was the product going to be like?