At its boldest, the concept of innovation, if fully applied as a philosophy, may well transform the world and the way we think about it.
In its more minimalist mode, innovation is an incremental approach seeking hundreds, even thousands, of improvements which, arguably, add up to substantial change over time. Kate McGrath, Professor of Chemistry at Victoria University of Wellington, Director of the MacDiarmid Institute and a passionate advocate of innovation as a transformative tool, glides easily along the continuum from scary big picture change to the less threatening step by step improvements.
“I am definitely at the transformative end and I am there because I want to build something better. But if I can get people [to adopt innovation] by explaining how they can do it, I’ll do that.
“Whenever you put forward a new idea, you want to inspire people and you don’t want to scare the hell out of them so that they don’t participate, or don’t get any value from it.”
She argues that it is time to abandon much of our traditional thinking about how to create the things we want in society.
Engineers, builders, architects and planners, take note. “Obviously we can’t change the fundamental and immutable laws of physics and other branches of science, but we can change the ways we do things.”
Innovation for Professor McGrath is about making the same things differently, or about making different things.
“If we carry on doing what we have always done in the same ways we have always done them, we will not move forward. We will tread water at best, and more than likely go backwards relative to other countries, because they are innovating, changing and getting better faster than we are.”
Professor McGrath has an honours degree in chemistry from the University of Canterbury and gained her doctorate in the Department of Applied Mathematics at Australian National University.
After post-doctoral work in Paris and Princeton, she taught at the University of Otago, and was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Victoria in 2011, also becoming head of the MacDiarmid Institute which specialises in the study of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. Innovation, McGrath style, is not just something new,
but also something that is both “useful” and “wanted”.
“New isn’t enough; new alone doesn’t mean it’s useful, or that anybody wants it.”
Looking well beyond science and engineering Professor McGrath believes that our future as a country depends upon on our ability to innovate.
“Our environment is changing very rapidly. Ever since the introduction of personal computers 30 to 40 years ago,
there have been massive scientific and technological changes compared to what has happened in the same periods of time in the past.
The implications for engineers and the training of engineers are also serious. Being slavish to traditional concepts like the production line (even when enhanced by robotic technology) and focusing on traditional materials like concrete and steel, locks users like engineers into a mindset.
So is she arguing what we know is redundant?
“Redundant is probably too strong because we are in the transition phase. It’s learning how to couple the traditional sense of what engineering is to what it will become: how do we marry the two? Many of the underlying principles are still the same.
In the end whatever it is that you are producing has to have the characteristics that it needs – durability, strength, flexibility and so on. It will just be processed or manufactured in a different way, but the thing still needs to function in the way you want.”
Nonetheless, she says her view of innovation amounts to an intellectual revolution.
“I think that fundamentally the way we will do things and the way we will approach functioning will change. The fundamental basis of our economy will look vastly different in 20 years from what it is today, just as our economy looks different from what it did 20 or 50 years ago.
“Things do happen as a result of isolated moments of genius. But if you think of the process of innovation you can see each of the steps involved has a knowledge and a skill associated with it – and that means you can bring those together and ensure that innovation isn’t left in the realm of the random ‘genius moments’.
“Some innovations are really small, but they do move us forward. Others are catastrophic and change the whole viewpoint.
Dolby noise reduction was a massive step change for audio technology and arguably that was the result of a genius moment.”
At the other end of the scale she cites Drop Box, “a tiny but very important innovation, which makes it possible more easily to send material to a wide range of people who can access it at their convenience.
“Ten thousand little changes add up to one massive step change. If we can get many changes happening and get people to explore the culture of change, then hopefully we can precipitate more massive changes.”
Professor McGrath argues that innovation can be taught, learned and practised.
“3M, Google and Facebook are exemplars of this. They have done it differently, but they have tried to get people involved in the process of innovation
There is growing evidence that having people trained in the knowledge and skill bases required to be innovative ultimately results in more innovations.
Innovation may be this decade’s favourite buzz word – equivalent to customer service in the 1980s or quality in the 1990s – but she sees important differences from the earlier concepts.
“Innovation is an enduring way of approaching how we function, in a way that customer service is now one component of what we do rather than an underlying principle that can be applied to everything.
She believes that innovation can be systematised, developed, taught and become part of an organisation’s core processes and culture. The teaching of engineering will change.
“Like most structured programmes engineering does not teach criticality of thought. It does teach how to assess whether something is good and bad, but it’s not enough anymore.”
What’s needed is to critique what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and for what outcome.“It’s an approach in which the student is encouraged to question, rather than just to apply a formula. If you lock yourself into a formula, then all you will get is the same outcome.”
She agrees that she is advocating the supremacy of method, of teaching concept over content. That may not sound like a massive paradigm shift, but Professor McGrath differs.
“The major difference is the acknowledgement that innovation can be taught.”
And on popularising the message of innovation: “You have to inspire people to show them what it could be, and then you have to show them how they can do it.