Monthly Archives: June 2008

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Solar Electric Powered Sailplane Glider Concept

We’ve seen electric cars, trains and bikes - but how about an airplane? This was my Master’s thesis project from 1993.  Yes, even 15 years ago, people were thinking about the environment! It’s an electric solar powered sailplane/glider for 2 passengers.  All the wings and the main lower fin fold up for easy storage for ground transportation too.  The propellor turns about the fuselage and the landing gear is retractable. 

And what is it about a sailplane or a sailboat that inspires?  It’s the direct connection that a pilot can have with the air he’s flying through. The only sound you hear is the sound of the wind. You don’t have to even look at the airspeed indicator when you can just listen to the rush of the wind over the canopy. You stall when there’s silence! A thermal rise of warmer air can be felt through the shuddering wings and fuselage letting you instinctively react with the purely mechanical controls. It’s a great feeling!

The above image is of the 1/4 scale model.

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Mass Transit X Prize Idea

Did you know you can submit your own idea for an X Prize?  If you go the X Prize website, you can submit your prize idea and if you’re lucky, it can be as wildly successful as the Ansari X Prize that put a spacecraft in orbit.  There’s several other X Prize competitions now in progress including an Automotive X Prize.  So how about a Mass Transit X Prize?  With gas prices sky high, maybe we need to start competing to design a system that moves a lot of people short distances vs. a couple of people long distances? It may not be as thrilling to watch as Burt Rutan’s spacecraft but you never know…

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Book Review: Harvard Business Review on Turnarounds

With the U.S. economy struggling, this is certainly an appropriate book for the times.  I will try to summarize the overall book and then list some of the key points worth remembering and applying.

This book is a nice collection of short studies in change and turnaround strategy.  Each study reads like a short story illustrating various cases and competing strategies.   It’s a quick read that’s broken up into easily ‘consumable’ chunks.  Here are some excerpts and key points from the book:

Corporate transformations typically fall into one of two categories.  The first called Theory E based on economic value.  This strategy is focused on maximizing shareholder value, managing change top down, emphasizing structure and systems, planning and establishing programs, motivating through financial incentives, and using consultants to analyze problems and shape solutions.  The second is Theory O based on organizational capability.  Theory O emphasizes: developing organizational capabilities, encourage participation from the bottom up, building up corporate culture/behavior/attitude, experimenting and evolving, motivating through commitment, using consultants to support management.  Theory E is the ‘stop the bleeding and cut back to survive’ strategy while Theory O is the ‘rebuild for the future’ strategy.  Each seems to have their place depending on how bad off a company is.  The book suggests administering the correct doses or E and O varies over time based on company condition but that both are ultimately required for short term survival and longer term growth.

‘Catalytic Mechanisms produce desired results in unpredictable ways, distribute power for the benefit of the overall system (often to the great discomfort of those who traditionally hold power, have a sharp set of teeth, attract the right people and self-select the wrong people, produce an ongoing effect.’  One example in the book is the pre-signed resignation letter – so you know that if you don’t achieve your objectives, you and your boss already know the consequences. ’Setting goals with real and immediate consequences and no fall back position provides public and powerful incentive to drive change.  Set BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals) with long time frames, are clear, compelling and easy to understand, and connect to the core values of the organization.’

’3 interventions that will restore companies to vital agility and then keep them in good health: incorporating employees fully into business challenges, leading from a different place, instilling mental discipline.  This will help avoid ’Organization drift – in place of inquiry and experimentation, ideas get studied to death in hopes of ferreting out every possible weakness before making a commitment.  The precondition for action is certain knowledge.’

‘New approach to leadership – establish focus and urgency, maintain health levels of stress, and not feel compelled to come to the rescue with a lot of answers.  They learn to stay the course until guerrilla leaders at the lower levels come forward with initiatives that address the company’s shortcomings.’

There are several more cases but I think you get the picture. The book is a nice collection of easily digestible management techniques for handling change.  The diversity of thought is as refreshing as the variety of scenarios.  

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Book Review – Shift, Inside Nissan’s Historic Revival by Carlos Ghosn

This is the story of Carlos Ghosn and how he became the CEO that led Nissan’s revival.  The book is easy and quick to read – taking you from his childhood to the near present.  He shares many management insights but all are guided by his strong desire to be in charge and lead aggressively – preferring to be a big fish in a small pond vs. a small fish in a big ocean.  Here are some of the management techniques he shares in his book:

Make a significant contribution straightaway – do something so those around you can recognize and measure what you have done; Contribute quickly, set a fast pace, taking action, assigning responsibilities and setting deadlines; Prepare the ground for change by presenting all the facts and getting them out in the open; Establish cross functional and/or cross company teams with co-leaders from different functions to encourage managers to look beyond their functions and to break down inter-organizational barriers; Articulate the plan and state goals clearly and set timetables and deadlines and assign groups to do the work.

Here’s a good quote: ‘if  you’re focusing on speed, it’s not how quickly a decision is made that’s improtant, it’s how quickly the decision is carried out.  Similar to innovation equaling the application of creativity, what becomes important is the result.  Ideas, like decisions, are nothing unless they get applied. Regarding Mr. Ghosn’s leadership style, it can best be described as determined.  He does listen to others but only when they can offer constructive alternatives.  He supports active consensus building and doesn’t shy away from conflict – when it’s constructive and there are valid arguments to be heard.

He boils Nissan’s problems down to failure to concentrate on profit, neglect of customers, weakness in cross functional work, absence of urgency, and the lack of a common long term vision.  He then starts to re-evaluate every part for of the business – especially Nissan’s ownership in many of it’s suppliers. Purchasing costs (60% of expenditures for Nissan) are slashed.  platforms, powertrains, and administrative expenses are reduced.  And finally, if goals were not achieved, he and his executives would resign.  He clearly wanted to make public his commitments and goals.

His advice to other car companies considering mergers or alliances is to focus on performance advantages of the alliance by playing up each company’s strengths and not just focusing on scale economics.  For example, supplier development times are much shorter in Japan vs. North America and Europe.

Although Nissan did eliminate it’s debt and generated healthy profits, there were some problems that surfaced shortly after this book was written.  Poor quality plagued a U.S. plant during startup, the Titan Pickup truck never met sales expectations, and the Quest minivan was also a disappointment in terms of styling and sales.  As a result, Nissan remains in my opinion a solidly 2nd tier Japanese OEM behind Toyota and Honda.

But if you want to buy an interesting car book and learn about a very dynamic leader, I recommend Shift as a quick and fast read.  But remember, this book is more about the man and his management style and less about Nissan and their cars. 

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New Product Idea – Cupholder Shaped Tissue Box

When it’s allergy season, I bring out the full size tissue paper box for the car.  I always need a tissue and have a regular box of my good old 2 ply in the car.  But there’s really not a good place for it and pretty soon, the box gets destroyed after being thrown all over the cabin.  So if they can make french fry containers that fit into cup holders – why not a tissue box?  Imagine a cylindrical tissue container that sits in your cupholder always at the ready and within easy reach.  This is completely feasible given we already buy wet wipes in cylindrical containers.  This is truly a great product opportunity for the makers of tissue paper!

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Citroen C-Cactus Concept Car

Here’s a clever Citroen concept called the C-Cactus which you may not have seen in North America.  It’s a very Earth friendly concept.  The green theme permeates every aspect of the car with many interesting details – from the negative floral patterns on the interior trim and seats to the minimal, exposed climate control unit.  It’s a car that communicates a ’oneness’ with the environment and a gentler co-existence with our planet – in contrast to other technology over-kill ‘green’ cars… 

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Brainstorming 101 – After the Brainstorm… Picking up the Pieces

A brainstorming session is like a real storm in many ways.  Things that have stood for many years are toppled over.  Everything around us is battered and left in pieces.  All is exposed, everything is vulnerable and nothing goes unscathed. And after the storm passes, we are hopefully left with a field of debris… or ideas!  

The next step is to gather all of this debris and start to cluster like ideas.  Group the ideas in logical clusters and then relate these back to your initial scenarios, trends, customer needs and wants, etc.  See which clusters of ideas are most compelling and relevant.  Once you’ve prioritized the clusters, then it’s time to develop each cluster into a more detailed concept of the product or service.  Instead of just a simple sketch or word description, it’s time to flesh out the idea and build it up into a living concept.

Start to question and test each maturing concept.  Try them out as prototypes, simulations, models.  Show them to customers and get their feedback.  By now, you’ve developed several strong proposals.  Continue to develop these as long as you can feasibility do so.  Delay having to choose until you absolutely must so you can keep testing and improving each alternative.  This will give some options because the market, the competition and the customer are constantly changing so you need to stay a little fluid. And once you’ve decided – get it to market FAST before things change again!

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An Interesting BMW Concept Car

Here’s a very interesting new BMW concept car called GINA.  It’s very human and organic in design but also somewhat robotic and artificial in feeling.  Similar technology has been used on experimental aircraft.  Instead of separate control surfaces, the wing itself would curve and the wing’s skin would stretch and contract as the shape of the wing changed.   I also remember several art school projects where fabric was stretched over wire frames but this time we have a full size model that is extremely well executed! 

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How to Save Money and Improve Fuel Economy Instantly

If you want to improve your fuel economy and save money, just slow down on when you’re cruising on the highway.  You can usually and easily improve your highway fuel economy by 5-10% by cruising at or slightly below the limit.  Most cars seem to do the best around 60 mph.  If your car has a mileage computer, try driving at different speeds until you can optimize the fuel economy vs. speed tradeoff based on your situation.  Don’t forget the other things you can do such as ensuring proper tire air pressure and reducing weight. For more ways to improve your fuel economy, click here for Ford’s eco-driving tips.

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Innovation: Revolutionary and Evolutionary

The home-run, game-changer or killer-app product gets all the headlines, but your overall portfolio may need to be more diverse to support long term and steady business results.  In order to do this, we need to split innovation into 2 areas:

1.  Revolutionary Innovation such as Apple’s iPod

2.  Evolutionary Innovation such as continuous improvement (Kai-zen) or similarly, my own FPS Strategy for Innovation  

Revolutionary Innovation concerns breakthrough concepts, out-of-the-box ideas, and paradigm changes.  These types of innovations are rare but they do occur given the right environment.  Much as been written about the success of 3M for example with the Post-it or Masking Tape products.  Organizations may require a formal internal process for generating Revolutionary Innovation such as 3M has.  Employees are given the chance to experiment and develop ideas as part of their regular jobs – and to take some risks.  Management is there it guide and listen.  For more on internal processes to sustain innovation, see a paper called ‘Innovate or Die: Is that a Fact?‘.

Evolutionary Innovation concerns incremental product or process improvements.  These are the small scale ideas that together can sustain a company for many years.  I think Toyota is a good example of this.  The philosophy of continuous improvement (Kai-zen) is about active problem solving.  They use this philosophy in manufacturing and product design.  There’s nothing glamorous about their work n general but as a whole, you can see the continuous and consistent improvements in their product design and processes.  The hybrid technology which Toyota helped pioneer is however an example of Revolutionary Innovation so one company can do and probably should do both!