Technology and Organizations

Electric aircraft aficionados: are there questions you’d like asked?

Wired’s Aug 2010 cover has Will Ferrell in a white skin suit with the title, “The Future That Never Happened.”  I’m going to where the future IS happening (hybrid planes, flying cars, personal electric aircraft, and all): AirVenture.  For the next week or so I will focus on electric aircraft and any other whiz bang innovation I can get a picture of.  I’ll be fighting over 550,000 other enthusiasts through the mud and aircraft noise to see what Boeing, GE, Airbus, NASA, cutting-edge vendors, and 1000s of homebuilders have to offer.

AirVenture is the Experimental Aircraft Association’s annual convention, airshow, and meetup.  From July 26 to Aug 1, 2010, Oshkosh, Wisconsin will be the heart of innovation — as well as the busiest airport (yes, busier than Atlanta given that the OSH control tower can handle over 3,000 flights in 10 hours).  I’m going to leave the Silicon Valley behind and focus on innovations you can get inside.

Electric aircraft had some exposure last year, but 2010 is a major milestone —  GE Aviation is sponsoring the World Symposium on Electric Aircraft as well as the Aviation Learning Center.  I’m looking forward to daily themed forums (search here with keyword: electric) and Friday’s full-day event:

Demo flights are on Sat, but I’ll be on a commercial flight home unless I can find a better ride… hint… hint.

Hope to see you there.  I’ll be wearing shirts with either Santa Clara University or N58PP logos — say, “Hi!”

Entrepreneur and aviation executive George Bye was the guest speaker in my Technology & Innovation Management course last night. He presented The Green Flight Project, an open innovation collaboration among alternative energy and aerospace industries with the goal of an electric hybrid propulsion system for aviation. Besides the “cool factor” of building an electric airplane, Mr. Bye provided evidence that the time is right for this endeavor — and provided yet another example of the value of open innovation for complex development projects.

Here is one of his opening slides:

Just as you would expect from a combined 4000+ hour pilot and experienced entrepreneur, Mr. Bye is staying ahead of the airplane and ahead of the industry ecosystem. He’s positioning his organization and collaborators to be ready rather than wait for photovoltaic or battery technology to make the needed jumps.

The project requires tight integration across a variety of technically-sophisticated partners. Bye Energy, Ascent Solar, Porous Power, Scion Aviation, UQM Technologies, Vertical Power, and Bye Engineering must work as one to succeed. These technical partners are supported by an equally sophisticated advisory board and more than ten additional sponsors.

From my perspective this is a strong example of systems savvy. Not only are these enterprise partners managing the technology to get us to electric hybrid flight, but they are also managing the organizational dynamics of tight integration. I’m guessing that some of the technical capabilities exist in multiple pieces of the partnership. I’m guessing too that technical decisions are made with a combination of technical, organization, and business dynamics in mind. Making these decisions and providing the needed integration is systems savvy at both macro (across organizations) and micro (within organization) levels. I look forward to learning from their management experience as well taking advantage of their end product.

For more on electric aircraft, please see this EAA announcement of the electric aircraft activities planned for AirVenture 2010.

Thank you to all who provided support for Mr. Bye’s presentation, including:

• The Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University
• Santa Clara University’s School of Engineering
• The Kern Entrepreneurship Education Network

The Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prize (LEAP) was announced yesterday. This is another step forward in the developing electric aircraft industry and community. LEAP joins the NASA sponsored CAFE Green Flight Challenge in providing incentives for enterprise and hobbyist innovation focused on electric aircraft propulsion.

LEAP has four awards:

• Best Electric Aircraft
• Best Electric Aircraft Sub-System
• Best Electric Aircraft Component Technology
• Public Choice Award

(The CAFE award is focused on flight efficiency “.. for aircraft that can average at least 100 mph on a 200-mile flight while achieving greater than 200 passenger miles-per-gallon.”)

The LEAP site provides some background on the role innovation prizes:

Prizes, which have been used for centuries to recognize excellence, have seen a significant increase in the last decade. Historically, prizes have come in one of two forms: accomplishment recognition (Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize) and future incentive (Orteig Prize, Ansari XPRIZE). Prizes offer advantages that other types of motivators, such as grants, do not.

For example, prizes:
Open the field to a larger number of participants.
Bring visibility and publicity to participants.
Shift risk and cost from the sponsor to the participants.
Help focus efforts and funding in areas that are not supported by more traditional market forces.

McKinsey provides an overview (pdf) report on the growing use of innovation prizes. They support a dynamic that I believe differentiates current prize efforts from those of the past:

We expect to see new ways to stimulate and allow collaboration among competitors, better vehicles for funneling developmental capital to competitors, more investment in prize development, and more creative collaboration between the social, private, and public sectors.

The role of collaboration highlights a connection with trends toward the do-it-ourselves (DIO) economy. LEAP’s site includes a partners’ page including Aviation High School, The Experimental Aircraft Association’s (EAA) AirVenture, and The Lindbergh Foundation.

This is the first time I will get to watch a prize from Day 1, well, Day 2 (thanks, Bob!). I have added LEAPs Twitter feed to both my aeroinnovate and electric-aircraft lists (happy to accept suggestions of other feeds for either of these lists).

This is also the first time I am watching the development of an emergent technology (electric aircraft in general) from the start. While many of us can participate and/or watch the development of a product or service, how often do we get to carefully watch the development of a full system play out on a global field? This is different than living through the development of something as broad as personal computing or the role of electric propulsion more generally. The constraints of electric propulsion for aircraft make this a more bounded scenario. Weight is even more critical, regulation will keep the issues in the public, and there are clear opportunities for hobbyists and enthusiasts, as well as formal enterprise. Yes, the history of technology folks have been at this for decades, but now we can all participate as the events unfold.

What’s the best support system for open, collaborative innovation? There are sites to help you find collaborators (e.g., Build It with Me) and there are sites focused on collaboration around specific areas of interest (e.g., DIY Drones, Local Motors, & AeroInnovate). Should you add collaboration to community of interest pages or should projects build their own collaboration spaces (perhaps with Google Sites, Huddle, or within the enterprise, Brainstorm)? These are the questions my Managing Technology & Innovation students will be addressing in their Spring term (focusing on Electric Aircraft collaborations). But first, I’m going to spend some posts following my own advice: doing an audit.

First audit question: Who are the participants? Ans: Companies, individuals, and teams.

Henry Chesbrough, David Teece, Eric von Hippel and others have drilled holes in the traditional innovation funnel. “With knowledge now widely distributed, companies cannot rely entirely on their own research, but should acquire inventions or intellectual property from other companies when it advances the business model.” Instead of companies having closed R&D processes where ideas are generated and developed within the walls of the company, we now see ideas coming from non-research focused employees, customers & users; collaborations across past competitors; alliances; and acquisitions as being the dynamics of R&D.

At the same time, individuals and teams are seeing the value of small batch entrepreneurship, hackerspaces, and the Do It Ourselves (DIO) economy. Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson presents this shift as “The Next Industrial Revolution:”

The tools of factory production, from electronics assembly to 3-D printing, are now available to individuals, in batches as small as a single unit. Anybody with an idea and a little expertise can set assembly lines in China into motion with nothing more than some keystrokes on their laptop. A few days later, a prototype will be at their door, and once it all checks out, they can push a few more buttons and be in full production, making hundreds, thousands, or more. They can become a virtual micro-factory, able to design and sell goods without any infrastructure or even inventory; products can be assembled and drop-shipped by contractors who serve hundreds of such customers simultaneously.

In the case of electric aircraft the list of participants is long, and diverse: Enthusiast organizations, foundations, and government agencies (e.g., EAA, NASA, CAFE Foundation, FAA); companies like Boeing and Yuneec; and component firms and inventors (see the preliminary program for Cafe Foundation’s 2010 symposium for a flavor).

Next up: What activities does an open innovation infrastructure need to support? Hint: I’ll be building from Gibson & Gibb’s discussion around innovation teams. Thanks in advance for comments that suggest sources outlining the activities that companies, individuals, and teams need to be supported by an innovation infrastructure and/or tools that support these activities. Personal favorites or ones to avoid especially appreciated. For some background, check out Open Innovators and their list of platforms.