Elements
of being Innovative
04-13-20062006 Invited talk to IBM female
engineers
It is my honor to give this talk to a group of respectful female engineers in our company (IBM). Indeed, I am more than happy to do so, since I myself have two women engineers at home, my two beloved daughters – Joni and Amy. Under my tutoring, they both have successfully filed patents and now both worked for the USPTO.
Learning is fun
As the top inventor in our giant international company, I am more than happy to share my experience with anyone who is willing to learn on how to be more innovative at work. The first key element to be innovative I believe is to gain knowledge in the field through education, work, cross-training, studying, researching, experimenting, attending seminars, solving problems, and networking with experts. Knowledge is the wonderful tool to facilitate innovation. However, we must admit no single human being knows everything. For me, I encourage myself at least learn one new thing each day. Don’t stop learning, since learning is fun!
Tool and method
Secondly, you must have some basic skills in order to invent. Now a day, many search engines can be accessed on internet. Million of patents, research papers, references can be located almost instantly at your finger tips. Besides, you better learn how to write a complete invention disclosure including introduction, background arts, drawings, descriptions, and claims. After you have documented it, you must also learn how to be a good sales person to sale your concepts or ideas to a review board. Your presentation must be concise, clear and convincing. If they like the idea, they would recommend for search and file. During this period you can assist your attorney on analyzing the prior art search results, helping writing up a good application.
Seeking inventing opportunities
The third key element is to vigorously seek for inventing opportunity. Good opportunity doesn’t last long therefore you must grasp it as soon as possible. Always use your brain to think, think fast, think ahead, and think unconventionally. Normally, the ideas are nothing but problem solving, time/cost saving, performance improving, etc. After a good (or bad) idea is conceived don’t tell anyone unless you have recorded it. In the past, people used a technical notebook for documenting idea and most likely it required witness’s signatures. Now, you can just type a simple draft into your laptop which will provide you a time stamp. Once you have done so, you can do two things to save your time to test whether that is a good or bad idea. The first thing is you may share your idea with an expert in the field whom you trusted, or you can do more on-line search and find out whether your idea is novel and non-obvious. These are two critical elements required by the patent law.
Work hard and work smart
The fourth key element is to treat inventing business as one of your highest priority tasks. Being busy is the first degree murderer of innovation!! Now a day, the majority companies just routinely force their employee to work hard to deliver one project after another. Meeting the deadline is their primary goal. However, they overlook the importance of protecting their intellectual assets. I would say their efficiency is rather poor, and their profit margin is very narrow. These companies can not survive through competition. I would encourage my colleagues to be serious on innovation business. Never give up protecting a valuable idea. Be diligent and responsible about your duty of protecting company’s asset. Each week or month you should set a target and try to achieve it. Form a team to invent together and share the workload. Work hard, also work smart is my principle on inventing.
The best strategy to win
Finally, to be successful in innovation, over the years I discipline myself to be self-confident, persistent, diplomatic, humble, honest, and always listening to good advices. I stress top quality on my work, and always plan for the best strategy to win.
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