Accelerating Innovation & Business Results at SCPD 2016

This week, Axiom sponsored the 15^th Annual Society of Concurrent Product Development conference at 3M’s Innovation Center. Like Axiom, SCPD is focused on accelerating innovation, business results and outcomes. Its membership is comprised of corporate functions including: engineering, innovation, marketing, sales and human resources. The 2016 conference, entitled “Innovating at the Speed of Teams,” featured a variety of speakers from North America who discussed topics such as:

• Creating innovation ecosystems
• How IOT (internet of things) breaks boundaries, impacts business and creates consumer engagement
• Using social media to accelerate innovation
• Making innovation happen in a world of “no”
• Breaking addictions to certainty
• Harnessing customer experience as a competitive advantage

For me, a key thread from all the presentations is the importance of turning on end the various heuristics, routines, behaviors and thought processes that govern how we work, think and process information, and act. This is rarely easy, but it always produces fruit such as:

• Greater competitive advantage
• More and better concepts that meet market and user needs
• More and faster methods that break through the clutter
• Earlier identification of market trends
• More first mover advantages
• Increased market share

The real question is how to begin setting the stage for the fruits — individually and from a team perspective. At Axiom, our CTO Rob Beachy focuses our consultant teams on the following axioms.

• Innovate or die. (Our clients’ collective cheeses are always being moved – despite the fact that they don’t always know or believe it. Our job is to show them why and present them with solutions.)
• Destruction is the first step toward reconstruction. (Everyone is hesitant to “blow up” a product or a method that seems to be working. Our job is to give them permission AND the facts they need to act courageously.)
• Fertilizer happens. (Bad stuff happens in the market place. The real question is how you’re going to use adversity to create advantage and the speed that you accomplish it.)

For more information, contact mreiber@axiomcom.com or rbeachy@axiomcom.com.