Blaine Childress / Don Ross 2012 Innovate Carolina Presentation

1. Beyond Tilting at Windmills:
Breaking the “quick fix” cycle through technology discovery
April 20th, 2012

2. Speakers
Blaine Childress
– Sealed Air’s Manager of Open Innovation
– 32 years in Technology and Innovation
– Focus on technology protection, product innovation, and
technology scouting
– Role of project leader and problem owner
– Blaine.childress@sealedair.com
Don Ross
– Innovare’s Founder and President
– 35 years as an innovation practitioner
– Focuses on the front end of innovation including discovery, concept
development and validation
– Role of team facilitator and process owner
– donross@innovare-inc.com

3. Sealed Air – Legacy of Innovation
“We take pride in our history of pioneering new technologies and
applications and earning our value with customers through unique
inventive solutions”
Dr. Ann Savoca, Vice President, Technology and Innovation
• 56 labs, 500 Scientists, 4600 patents
• 17% of Sales from New Products and Services
But we feel the pressure
• New Global Competitors
• Poor macroeconomics
• Rising Raw Materials Cost
• Faster Innovation

4. The New Normal ?
– Tight budgets
– Lowering head counts
– Long project lists
– Quick to market
development timelines
– Risk averse climate
– Short Term Spending Focus
Stocks Are Up…But It Doesn’t Feel Like It

5. Demands on R&D Shifting and Conflicting
The business is demanding innovation
but…
– Greater workload, changing project mix
results in less time to think/analyze
– Demands of short term business needs
overshadow broader innovation agenda
– Pressure for quick results conflicts with
ability to explore new technologies
related to customer needs

6. The Unintended Consequence
• A Quick answers culture is systemic/pandemic -
firefighting today’s burning problem
“An engineer or scientist identifies a defect that can be fixed with some change
to formulation or process condition, and then moves on to the next urgent
matter. Seldom is real effort applied to finding the root of the problem and a
fundamental solution.”
• Avoid pursuing novel, untried
solutions outside the box
Result: Limited scope of innovation

7. Keeping in the Comfort Zone
Relying on existing “comfort” models for solutions,
leveraging what we already know and can readily
apply
Challenges that
make life
Comfort worthwhile and
Zone interesting
• The comfort zone mentality approaches problems using a current capability
mindset
– Appears to be faster, cheaper, and quantifiable, plus easier to get mgt. support
• But, more costly in the long run
– Problems return
– Current methods/solutions no longer satisfactory
– Subject to disruptive change by another
– Capacity for Innovation is limited to incremental change

8. Our Process Challenge
How to increase technology innovation with less time and money?

9. Other People’s Money & Minds
• Increase innovation capacity while reducing R&D costs and time
by reaching out to external expertise and inventions

10. a Forum for Technology Discovery
• Connect to customer needs
• Engage multidisciplinary team
• Provide a strong external perspective
• Move beyond what is already known
• Broaden the opportunity space
• Apply Serendipity
SAC adapted Innovare’s Tech Explorer technology discovery approach

11. Technology and Customer Needs Intersection
Customer Needs Technology
Advances in science and technology have a dynamic
relationship with customer needs
• Tech can be used to create solutions that satisfy existing needs
• Tech can reshape the environment, creating new sets of needs
Advances drive needs the customer doesn’t even know they have

12. Technology Discovery with Experts
Tech Explorer Multidisciplinary team process of discovery driven
by R&D and supported by marketing
Three Phases
Phase 1 Secondary Research - intriguing technologies that might address key
customer needs
Phase 2 Discovery with the Experts – exploring the state of the art and future
trajectory of selected technologies
Phase 3 Synthesis – creating concepts for applying the technology, prototypes,
and a road map for bringing in the technology to drive innovation

13. Phase 1 Tech Explorer – Secondary Research
Categorized UV Resist
20 years Delighter
??? Technology
Requirement level
• Begin with a customer need
• Brainstorm / hypothesize scientific principles that might be
applied to deliver product attributes at desired levels
• Generate a list of technologies that relay on the scientific
principles
• Select the most intriguing technologies to research

14. Individual Team Member Assignments - Tech Briefings
• Each team member takes one or two topics
• Explores topics using secondary sources – internet, reports… etc.
• Creates briefings
– what is the technology, the IP landscape
– how might the technology evolve
– how might it be applied to create solutions
– who are the experts

15. Socializing the Tech Briefings
• Workshop environment - 8 – 10 topics
• Team members present their briefings
• Team create a synthesis of findings with implications & next steps
• Select experts to work with in Phase 2

16. Phase 2: Discovery with the Experts
• Reached out to external experts representing targeted science &
technology areas
• Held workshops with experts, exploring the state of the art,
clarifying, and anticipating trajectories of their technologies
• Brainstormed implications, applications,
and impact on needs
• Created beginning technology
application concepts

17. Phase 3: Synthesis
Incubation time involving several rounds of
technology application concept refinement
• Research and problem solving to build concept feasibility
• Prototype and test solutions
• Vet the list of opportunities to a few feasible solutions
Building the case for the technology
• Outline the development or acquisition approach, timing,
costs
• Define the technology’s impact on the customer &
competitive environment
• Show anticipated connections of the technology to future
product lines
• Project the impact on the business

18. Case Ready Example
• Mature business – ramp up innovation in established
business - Modified Atmosphere Packaging for meat
• Problem to Solve/ “Customer Need” - extend shelf life
(4 days to over 14 days) by presenting bright red color
longer

19. Case Ready Phase 1 Example Secondary Research
• Team members conducted literature research on selected topics
and created tech briefings & identified external experts
• Several hundred patents, journal articles, internet sites
– Topics ranged from oxygen complexing in blood, to contact lens design,
to manufacture of complex integrated circuits

20. Farm Film Example
• Plasticulture refers to using plastic products in
agriculture to improve crop quality, yield and conserve
water
• Potential new market for Sealed Air

21. Farm Film Example Phase 2 Discovery with the Experts
• 2-day workshop with university and industry experts, both live and via web link
– Extension Agents
– Tyvek manufacturing process
– Fumigant chemistry
– Moisture sensors
– Medical Tubing
• Proposed possibilities for use of Sealed Air technical strengths

22. Phase 3 Outputs – Concepts and Road Maps
• Technology application concepts
– Not fully fleshed out solutions but a
representation of what we could do with the
technology
• Road maps relate the technologies to future New Market Product Line and Technology
Potential Technologies
product lines Advanced Design Green T
New T1 New T2 UV
Current Technology
Extrusion
– Shows timing when technologies could be Thermal
Distillation
ready and the enabled new products Time Line
2007
Product Lines
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Advanced New Gen 2 Gen 3 Gen 4
Gen 1
Platform
Enhanced Design
New Products First Generation Enhanced
Second Generation

23. Phase 3 Output - Technology Vision of the Future
Creative team exercise using future news article format …
“Dateline 2017”
p ts
i s ru
p e D et !!
Ta ark
M

24. Foundations of a Successful Tech Discovery Approach
• Well connected to customer needs
• Engaged multidisciplinary team
• Strong external perspective
• Broad opportunity space
• Diligent use of synthesis process to
identify value paths
• Embrace well considered sciences and
pursue opportunities outside the
comfort zone

25. Lessons Learned-
Make Time For Synthesis
Wind Energy Example
• Only 4 weeks to explore windmill blade
protection strategies
• Quick fix mentality truncated the process
– Eliminated incubation and synthesis time
– Cultivated closed-minded thinking
Team reverted back to just applying what they already knew with little
to show for the effort, and yielding obvious solution approaches
that would not differentiate

26. In Tough Times We’re Providing More Bang For The Innovation Buck
• We’re shifting from quick fixes to developing deeper understanding
• We’re identifying strong solutions, never considered by internal experts
“Our synthesis is more successful when an independent facilitator
prods the team to dive deep, explore and consider different
perspectives, achieve a shared understanding of the problems and
possible solutions; and then present action plans and reports.”

27. Thank You