1 00:00:01,650 --> 00:00:07,800 \h Please welcome Adam Nair, an adviser of manufacturing for Earth Rise Envoy. 2 00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:12,980 \h Adam Nair: Hi. Thanks. Okay. Hi, how you doing? A little bit about my background because some of you will 3 00:00:12,980 --> 00:00:15,850 \h probably recognize me because i used to work out here. 4 00:00:15,850 --> 00:00:22,990 \h When i was really young, my father wanted me to be an engineer. And i wanted to be a photographer. 5 00:00:22,990 --> 00:00:32,540 \h As a result, i became both. So basically my journey brought me through a lot of different 6 00:00:32,540 --> 00:00:40,760 \h Things that I've done in both areas, and one of them -- let's see if we can get this -- there we go. 7 00:00:40,760 --> 00:00:46,510 \h One of them was working for an aerospace company here locally. 8 00:00:46,510 --> 00:00:52,870 \h And we participated in the Indian River raft race. You probably are all familiar with this. 9 00:00:52,870 --> 00:00:57,740 \h What does this have to do with innovation? Well, the first year it didn't go so well. 10 00:00:57,740 --> 00:01:02,130 \h I was the videographer, believe it or not, on this first project. 11 00:01:02,130 --> 00:01:04,540 \h Didn't have anything to do with the design of the boat. 12 00:01:04,540 --> 00:01:08,260 \h I thought it was kind of an interesting thing what they were doing. 13 00:01:08,260 --> 00:01:19,430 \h And so we wound up with a vessel that was kind of interesting. We called it big foot, by the way. 14 00:01:19,430 --> 00:01:27,200 \h And up the Yeti river without a paddle. The 1992 raft race with a mechanical entry. 15 00:01:27,200 --> 00:01:35,250 \h The mechanical entry is an interesting thing because it's really big budget stuff for a raft. 16 00:01:35,250 --> 00:01:39,810 \h You know, some people put a Little boat together and away they go out on the river. 17 00:01:39,810 --> 00:01:46,970 \h But mechanical entry, engineers design and build it. We had all the things we need. 18 00:01:46,970 --> 00:01:53,560 \h Fit, ample crew, budget, highly trained engineers. Enter big foot. 19 00:01:53,560 --> 00:01:57,870 \h As you can see, it is not a sleek and nimble vessel. 20 00:01:57,870 --> 00:02:02,620 \h This was basically the bottom half of an M-1 Abrams tank powered by 2.4 horsepower, 21 00:02:02,620 --> 00:02:05,850 \h that's what you get out of eight people. 22 00:02:05,850 --> 00:02:10,790 \h You can imagine the tank with 2.4 horsepower did not if very fast. 23 00:02:10,790 --> 00:02:21,560 \h And while it was a wonderful Looking thing with a really slick paint job, it came in last. 24 00:02:21,560 --> 00:02:30,480 \h As you can see, we're being beaten right here by a row boat. It was fun. 25 00:02:30,480 --> 00:02:35,420 \h It was meant to be fun. But we came in last. 26 00:02:35,420 --> 00:02:42,540 \h And that's the problem because, of course, when we came in last the executives of the company said, 27 00:02:42,540 --> 00:02:49,390 \h why did you come in last, and we had to explain why the design didn't win the race. 28 00:02:49,390 --> 00:02:52,650 \h The first part of the problem was politics and group dynamics. 29 00:02:52,650 --> 00:02:59,660 \h This was a design by committee. If you look at all of the points there, 30 00:02:59,660 --> 00:03:05,190 \h we wanted to stick to proven methods. Avoid looking foolish at all costs. 31 00:03:05,190 --> 00:03:08,640 \h Oh, we don't want to do that. Design by a large committee. 32 00:03:08,640 --> 00:03:11,550 \h We got everybody in the engineering department together, put their two cents in. 33 00:03:11,550 --> 00:03:15,640 \h So as a result, we wound up with big foot. This giant, hairy yeti that 34 00:03:15,640 --> 00:03:21,060 \h lumbered around and didn't go very fast. Compromise. 35 00:03:21,060 --> 00:03:28,060 \h Everybody had their say, nobody wanted to hurt anybody's feelings. As a result, Bigfoot. 36 00:03:28,060 --> 00:03:37,010 \h And that results in design by dilution. This was the thing that was driving them against doing an innovative design. 37 00:03:37,010 --> 00:03:41,100 \h The fear of the blank page. Oh, my gosh, we've got a blank piece of paper here. 38 00:03:41,100 --> 00:03:47,460 \h Let's go find out how other people did raft and just kind of modify it a little and have some fun. 39 00:03:47,460 --> 00:03:55,100 \h And you know, maybe do a few other things. Well, as we can see, that didn't work. 40 00:03:55,100 --> 00:04:01,980 \h Eighth place out of eight entries. Really unfortunately angry 41 00:04:01,980 --> 00:04:06,460 \h executives saying that embarrassed our engineering department. 42 00:04:06,460 --> 00:04:10,640 \h Frank and probing questions about why big fat came in last. 43 00:04:10,640 --> 00:04:18,440 \h You can imagine the effect that had on volunteers. The next year nobody wanted to touch it. 44 00:04:18,440 --> 00:04:22,900 \h Desperate times and nothing left to lose the next year. 45 00:04:22,900 --> 00:04:31,850 \h Executive castigation was so severe, nobody wanted to volunteer. It was a potential for embarrassment. 46 00:04:31,850 --> 00:04:38,220 \h Everybody ran like heck. The only candidates that were willing to take the challenge were not design 47 00:04:38,220 --> 00:04:45,800 \h engineers in concurrent engineering. I was in photographic high-speed motion analysis. 48 00:04:45,800 --> 00:04:51,820 \h The guy that was the other engineer on this project, the lead engineer on it, 49 00:04:51,820 --> 00:04:58,950 \h was a guy named Mike Brennan. And he was a range test engineer. So we weren't in the design group. 50 00:04:58,950 --> 00:05:05,120 \h So if we designed something, oh, those guys aren't designers, if it failed, heck with it. 51 00:05:05,120 --> 00:05:13,580 \h We were eager to prove that we could do it. This was the things we had to do, use it fast, 52 00:05:13,580 --> 00:05:24,010 \h elegant, fun, and above all, win the race. This is how we did it. We used the correct materials. 53 00:05:24,010 --> 00:05:28,910 \h We did a lot of the math. We tested, we threw all the conventions out, 54 00:05:28,910 --> 00:05:34,920 \h and we just decided to take it from scratch. From that dreaded, blank piece of paper. 55 00:05:34,920 --> 00:05:43,140 \h This was the result. I wish i could speed this up to show you. This was the test trial. 56 00:05:43,140 --> 00:05:50,920 \h In a second you'll see it in the actual race. You see that thing's ripping right away. 57 00:05:50,920 --> 00:05:56,480 \h The competitors that we had in this race were from the other engineering companies. 58 00:05:56,480 --> 00:06:02,700 \h This is us finishing. And you see one of our competitors briefly there going the other way. 59 00:06:02,700 --> 00:06:20,040 \h We almost lapped them. Uh-oh, didn't like that. Large groups stifle innovation. They make big foot. 60 00:06:20,040 --> 00:06:29,590 \h Small, newly empowered groups of fairly effective people, they're a much better choice for innovation. 61 00:06:29,590 --> 00:06:33,660 \h The kind of people that innovate are not the kind of people that do concurrent engineering. 62 00:06:33,660 --> 00:06:37,630 \h The kind of people that most managers have a little bit of problem with every now and then, 63 00:06:37,630 --> 00:06:42,970 \h those are the innovators in your group. And if you identify them and empower them, you will get innovation. 64 00:06:42,970 --> 00:06:49,110 \h They have different personalities. They don't think like concurrent engineer, they think like innovators. 65 00:06:49,110 --> 00:06:54,470 \h Micromanagement and instilling a fear of failure will kill innovation. 66 00:06:54,470 --> 00:07:01,310 \h If you make the consequences of innovating so terrifying that no one will do it, it will not happen. 67 00:07:01,310 --> 00:07:09,200 \h This is how you kill that innovation yedi right there. 68 00:07:09,200 --> 00:07:16,770 \h Choose people that speak up, propose bold ideas, don't pollute with conformists and provide sufficient resources.