For and Against: Can Britain still lead the way in innovation?
For
Director of Giraffe Innovation, professor associate and TV presenter
Profile: Rob Holdway
Rob Holdway is director of Giraffe Innovation, described by the Guardian as one of the UK’s top ‘green’ businesses. He is also professor associate, Brunel University School of Engineering Design. Holdway was the presenter of the Channel 4 environmental reality programme ‘Dumped’.
Against
Professor of Innovation and New Product Development and author
Profile: Keith Goffin
Keith Goffin is professor of Innovation and New Product Development at Cranfield School of Management with a special interest in breakthrough products. His latest book is ‘Identifying Hidden Needs’ and is available from Palgrave MacMillan.
This is a very diffuse subject and to make a definitive statement is difficult because it depends very much on which sector you look at. For example, with the IT sector, I think Britain is a very good place to innovate.
My frustration with innovation in the UK comes from the integrity of the whole process. If I go to Hong Kong I can see some very good talent. What the guys in Hong Kong and China are starting to understand is that the great skill of the designer is synthesis. They are connecting their R&D into developing new products. They are also linking the process into building brands. As everyone knows, the intangible assets such as branding are crucial.
The environment is inextricably linked to the efficacy of that brand. So the challenge is to convert education into R&D and then transfer this into usable, likable, aesthetically pleasing, environmentally friendly products. Building a brand around these qualities is weak in the UK.
I generally agree with quite a lot of what Sir James Dyson says, and I think what he has done is incredible. I’m interested in the way he organises for innovation, looking beyond investment and predicting where innovation will happen. I’ve been working with designers from the Far East. In terms of innovation they could be quite credible. Why are they over here? Because the Hong Kong government wants them to learn about eco-design as a way of competing. Not because it could be leveraged for operational efficiency reasons, but because they think their designers can be more creative.
One thing designers in Hong Kong do that we can’t is develop a project in the studio, and then visit the factory where it is going to be made. They work with the manufacturer really closely. In the UK a product gets designed and then all responsibility for the outcome gets subjugated to the manufacturer. All the product integrity, brand efficacy and quality gets undermined. There are gaps between our design functions and manufacturing.
Designers in the Far East are developing a very strong methodological approach to coming up with new insights into technologies and the customer. But crucially, they are becoming better at converting this into new products. Thirty years ago the approach was to respond to the request to “make this; here is the design, now make it”. That’s what China was doing. What we’re now seeing is guys who’ve worked at big corporates such as Philips, whose understanding of the methodology of innovation is very powerful. They’ve studied at UK universities and their universities are linking up with ours in such a way that we’re giving our technologies away. There’s now a stronger culture in the Far East of understanding innovation: they’re moving up the food chain to higher-end manufacture and developing a technology base from cosmetics through to space rockets.
This isn’t Britain’s fault, so much as our competitors moving faster. If I send a design to Hong Kong for a prototype to be developed, I’m getting samples back in a much shorter time than 4-6 weeks, which is typical in the UK. Not only that, I’m getting suggestions for improvements, fault analysis and other comments that we used to consider a unique aspect from British suppliers.
There is this rising efficiency in design-for-manufacture in the emerging economies that we don’t seem to have a competitive response to. We are seeing faster turnaround, better technical insight from people on the other side of the world. Not only that, I can specify a project to someone out in the Far East and my associates over there can tell me that they know 100 factories that can get the job done.
People say that British manufacturing is pretty strong, but it is a very small percentage of our national GDP. There is, however, a great opportunity for design in the UK, especially environmental and eco-design. The key is to work more closely with countries like China, rather than distancing ourselves.
I think that the UK definitely needs to improve the way it approaches innovation, but I cannot agree with the idea that we can never get there. It’s very positive that government has made encouraging statements about the importance of small and medium-sized companies as well as the manufacturing sector. We need to follow that through with support in the form of loans. There are some excellent companies in the UK and these are recognised by the Best Factory Awards run through Cranfield School of Business. These are innovative companies, both in product development and manufacturing in the UK.It’s totally defeatist to say that the UK has lost its direction in innovation. There’s a lot of competition, but we need to approach that positively and not with the assumption that it’s too late to do anything about it.
I’m involved in helping companies to identify their customers’ needs that they can’t articulate, and therefore require new methods of research, such as ethnographic market research, which is where you study customers in depth. When you can identify these issues you can come up with ‘breakthrough products’. You have to be dynamic and take higher risks if you wish to do something significantly different, rather than implement small improvements on what’s already there. Companies that are good at this realise innovation is linked to risk - it is only through being bold that you will get success back.
To achieve this it’s not simply a case of farming out design and innovation functions to emerging economies in the Far East. The first factor is that technology is changing rapidly and 3D printing is allowing us to produce much faster prototypes, with the cost for that equipment falling so fast that 3D printing will be used for manufacturing runs in the not-too-distant future.
Some of the lower-cost manufacturing economies, where there is high inflation, will come into competition with the Western world where control over cost is easier. It’s also a generalisation to say that the quality of product from these regions will be better. There are some producers that are excellent and there are others that are average.
There is another issue of companies struggling with manufacturing in Asia. If you do manufacture out there, in the short-term you are outsourcing manufacture. But in the medium-term you are outsourcing innovation. There are many stories of where IP is difficult to protect in the Asian sector and this is a theme that many companies talk to me about. A few years ago Mattel, the US toy manufacturer, was late to market with one of its new products and missed the exhibition where it was to be launched. At the same time, a Chinese manufacturer introduced what was essentially the same product. Normally manufacturers worry about copies, but this was a copy that beat the ‘original’.
Most manufacturers realise today that you don’t do a straightforward manufacturing cost analysis of ‘Country A versus Country B’. There are other factors, such as where you intend to do your innovation and how you are going to give your innovation long-term competitive advantage. Often this is not just through patents, but through real manufacturing strengths that can’t be copied.
Mars, the food company, is excellent at manufacturing. It talks about the ‘crown jewels’, which means that when you visit its factories you can’t see certain parts of the process. What’s fascinating about this is that the results of the ‘crown jewels process’ are not just embedded in the product, but are also things the customer wants. That thinking gives you a much broader view, where you’re not just thinking of manufacturing as ‘making things’ but of manufacturing things that are unique and hard to copy.
If we do this, manufacturing in the UK can and will be very successful: so long as this takes place in a well-managed company.
Do you agree?
Britain has lost its competitive edge in innovative design
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