Tag: Innovation

Loonshots – Safi Bahcall

Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries: Amazon.co.uk: Safi Bahcall: 9781250225610: Books

Title: Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
Author: Safi Bahcall
Publication Date: 2019
Recommendation Score: 4.5/5

Safi Bahcall is an entrepreneur with a Ph.D. in physics. In his book “Loonshots” he tries to apply the principle of physics to innovation in business ventures. The book is inspired by two success stories in recent American history 1) the turnaround of the Bell Telephone Company, led by Theodore Vail, during the first decade of the 20th century which resulted in creating the Bell Labs, 2) and by the efforts of Vannevar Bush to improve the technology of the US army during the second world war.

The author states that for an organization to nurture innovation, the following conditions should be met:

Phase Separation and Dynamic Equilibrium

Create phase separation and dynamic equilibrium: to separate the artists, who want to create crazy technology, from soldiers whose discipline ensures that the technology is being implemented efficiently (quality, cost, time). And create a continuous exchange of ideas, information, and people between the two groups (dynamic equilibrium) to allow the transfer of technology from the innovation phase to the implementation phase, and to allow the transfer of field experience to innovators.

The Leader as a Gardener

Innovation leaders should be like gardeners: their role is to balance between the two groups and to manage the transfer between them. Not to intervene as soldiers, nor to contribute as artists. And leaders should love their artists and soldiers equally.

The Comfort Zone

ComfortZone

There is nothing so practical as a good theory.

Kurt Lewin

From Knowledge to Wisdom

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The Perfect Boss | Axel Zein

Edith Clarke – a Pioneering Woman Engineer

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Edith Clarke (1883-1959)

Every electrical engineer who works in the field of alternating current (AC) systems should be familiar with the Clarke Transformation concept. It is a fundamental concept used for control, monitoring, and analysis of electric motors, generators, variable speed drives, electric grids, AC power converters, etc.

What not so many engineers know is that Clarke is a (pioneering) woman engineer called Edith, who managed to find a place for her talent in one of the biggest masculine industries in the first half of the 20th century.

Throughout her career, Clarke was often the first in her endeavors, whether the first professionally employed female electrical engineer in the United States, the first female full voting member of the AIEE (that would become IEEE), or the first full-time female professor of electrical engineering in the US. She had substantially contributed to the development of mathematical methods that simplify the design and analysis of AC power systems (equivalent circuits, graphical analysis, etc.).

Life and Career

Clarke was born in Howard County, Maryland, in 1883 and was orphaned at a young age. She studied mathematics and astronomy at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, USA, and received a bachelor’s degree in 1908. Then after 3 years as a teacher (in mathematics), in the fall of 1911, she enrolled in the civil engineering program at the University of Wisconsin, but left after a year to become a computing assistant to George A. Campbell at American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T), where she could acquire good knowledge about the transmission lines and electrical circuits. 

From MIT to GE

Edith Clarke enrolled in electrical engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1918, to earn an M.S. degree in 1919, and was the first woman to receive an electrical engineering degree at the school. She then joined General Electric (GE) in Schenectady in 1920, where she trained and directed a small group of women computers doing calculations of mechanical stresses in turbine rotors. In 1921, she filed a successful patent application on a graphical calculator to be used in solving transmission line problems, and it was published in her first technical paper in the GE Review in 1923.

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Agility – Beyond Software Development

The digital technology industry has been moving at a very fast pace over the last decades. Companies that are unable to adapt have been left behind (Nokia, Kodak, etc.). Agility is a key skill for a company to remain competitive.

Since the Agile Manifesto for software development declared in 2001, several software companies have been moving towards this mindset. Some companies went further and adopted the Agile way of development in industries other than software industry.

bobdylan_2275506bIf your time to you is worth saving
Then you better start swimming, or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changing.

-Bob Dylan

Is it possible for any company to apply Agile? How about big companies, with complex organizations, top-down policies, rigid processes, over-specialized teams, and other bureaucratic burdens? And above all, what is Agile, and what is not Agile? First, let’s review the life-cycle of a product.

Product life-cycle

A product life-cycle can be broadly divided into 4 phases as shown in the figure below:

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Product Life-Cycle

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Vision without Execution is just Hallucination

Thomas A. Edison