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[[Nurturing Innovation - Part 2] [Jeffery Davis - NASA director of space life sciences]]
[Specifically for open innovation, because it's new,]
[you get what I would say would be a usual cultural resistance,]
[that it's a new tool, it's an unproven tool, at least for this workforce when we first tried it.]
[And so there was a fair amount of cultural resistance to trying these new tools.]
[We were able to get a small group of pilots together.]
[And as I said in the previous question, the results in peer-to-peer teaching ]
[then have helped us move the knowledge of using these tools out into the workforce.]
[So the culture--I would say, not invented here;]
[it hadn't come from within our organization--we had to overcome that,]
[that it was good to get ideas in from the outside]
[and that we could partner with people, and it overall improved our innovation strategy.]
[Some of the more specific learnings were spending the time to write the challenge.]
[The energy really needs to go into that process first.]
[And the problem needs to be fairly well deconstructed.]
[We like to think of it as being abstracted as well.]
[So the more abstract the problem can become,]
[the more different disciplines you can get looking at the problem.]
[So for instance, the solar flare challenge I mentioned]
[was actually a math modeling problem, an algorithm.]
[It wasn't about radiation physics, which we thought would be very narrow.]
[And so that's what I meant by putting the time into writing the challenge]
[and thinking at the highest level you can possibly write it]
[to get more disciplines to look at the problem.]
[[What role should an organization's leadership or senior executives play in nurturing innovation?]]
[The role that leadership should play in stimulating innovation]
[is managing it from the top,]
[especially if you're going to try to manage twin cultures]
[of what I would call more process improvement, small incremental innovations,]
[Those are sometimes different cultures, and if you're trying to do it]
[within the same large organization, in my opinion, ]
[that needs to be held at the senior management leadership level]
[so that it can be just part of the workflow for the organization.]
[Disruptive innovation to me is that breakthrough innovation,]
[the one that's going to change the business, ]
[change your approach to the way you do the work]
[as opposed to more incremental improvements to, say, existing products or existing processes.]
[I think the way you foster that is, again, making that part of the fabric of the entire workforce,]
[finding a way to nurture small projects when they come along,]
[and providing new tools such as using the open innovation platforms that we did.]
[So you can combine new approaches with older approaches.]
[An example of disruptive innovation might have been the introduction of the quartz watch]
[as opposed to the mechanical watch in the past]
[where you completely change the way the watch works and time is kept.]
[I'm not sure how often those come along or when you can look for those from outside]
[from open innovation, but I think the more you get ideas from other disciplines]
[by abstracting the particular problem,]
[you may increase your chances of finding that disruptive innovation.]
[Someone looks at the problem completely differently and says,]
["Have you ever thought about trying to solve the problem this way?"]
[Disruptive innovation could be, say, a new propulsion system]
[where we could actually transit space faster, say, for a Mars mission.]
[So right now our planning involves fairly long missions, long periods of time,]
[so a disruptive innovation would be a new, reliable, faster propulsion system,]
[for instance, that would get us to our objective much faster.]
[Now that we've done open innovation pilots, ]
[we've looked at balancing the use of those tools with older tools.]
[We're in the process of developing a decision framework]
[that allows us to build those new tools, that open innovation approach,]
[So rather than waiting until you have a gap or where you're stuck to go try a new tool,]
[where can we deploy those tools at any stage of a product life cycle?]
[So we've begun that work on a decision framework]
[to ask and answer the question, "Which tools should I use in a project at what stage?"]
[And we're making some progress, so we want to deploy these tools ]
[at an earlier and earlier stage because we think it can better inform a project.]
[For instance, right now we're looking at finding a new analyzer on orbit]
[to measure some of the gas constituents in the cabin atmosphere.]
[We're trying a lot of these new techniques at the same time in parallel.]
[So rather than just taking an approach, ]
[we're trying an open innovation platform, we're trying a technique that looks out broadly]
[through the investment areas in technology.]
[And so rather than just trying one approach, we're seeing if trying three or four]
[at the same time that are fairly short in duration can enhance our technical solutions.]
