Manufacturing Smart Ideas -- New Ideas on Moving R&D Innovations to Manufacturing Faster and at Higher Value

The purpose of this talk is to frame the moving of R&D-to-manufacturing as a type of “chemical process”. That is, we first must “manufacture the innovative ideas and designs”, before we manufacture the products themselves. Framing new product development (NPD) innovations in manufacturing language and measurements enables dramatic improvements in NPD or development throughput, value of products and services for customers, speed from idea to market, and improved sustainability. In this talk we analyze the innovation process at three levels: 1) The system level (e.g., operations like stage-gates, business cases, R&D, regulatory issues), 2) the flow level (e.g., customer needs, potential inputs, recycles and purges of ideas), and 3) the “knowlecular level” (e.g., details like the particular questions, hypotheses, measurements used). These three levels have important similarities to how we analyze chemical plants more generally. This talk will show a dollarization of the benefits, and provide specific recommendations for action.