Riding the cutting edge

Smart Business Columbus, Jun 2008 by Byron, Nancy

Companies expect innovation from Carl Kohrt. No wonder. The president and CEO of Battelle Memorial Institute oversees a workforce, which, over the years, has developed life-changing technology, such as the first office photocopier, automotive cruise control, UPC codes, compact disc technology and cut-resistant golf balls, just to name a few.

Naturally, Kohrt, who joined Battelle in 2001, hasn't been there for all of that, but as the leader of this Columbus-based innovation machine, he's come to appreciate what it takes to maintain a 20,000-strong work force bent on discovering the next great idea.

"It's really hard, and you have to have a thick skin," Kohrt says of managing innovative types. "They don't particularly care about titles. And generally, they think management is overrated. So the sense is that I, as the leader, have to find ways to help them have resources - appropriate resources - and help them facilitate their use."

You also have to be clear about what kind of innovation you are expecting.

"Looking for the unusual is only one part of innovation," Kohrt says. "You can spend all your time doing that and finding nothing. The second part of innovation is doing it with a purpose. Companies that know their business, that know their industry, that know their customers can innovate for product extensions or product improvements.

"Then there's innovation of looking for a new problem to solve or a new way of doing it. Many entrepreneurs work in those areas. They're looking for the pain in the industry and a new solution to that pain that someone is willing to pay for."

All three types of innovation-seeking go on at Battelle, which conducts $4.1 billion in annual research and development for government agencies, private sector customers and corporations around the globe. Last year, 13 of those quests were successful enough to be named among the 100 most significant scientific and technological innovations in the world.

Here's how Kohrt continues to build on Battelle's reputation - and how your company could develop a more innovative work force.

Seek ideas outside your company

The days of developing great new products or services exclusively within your own four walls are fading fast.

"The new wave of R&D is to not do it all yourself but rather to have core capabilities, and then to also have sophisticated ways of identifying, acquiring, supporting and bringing back ideas from others," Kohrt says. "It's an R&D network"

That doesn't mean you have to give away or farm out all your potentially great concepts. But being able to brainstorm with other individuals and organizations, whether they're across the street or two continents away, can help you develop better solutions more quickly.

"It's hard to go outside your own company," Kohrt says. "It takes different people and different management. You can't just take the same people who have done it internally forever and now expect them to be effective doing it externally without some help."

Kohrt suggests seeking out workers to lead up R&D networking who are naturally curious, good communicators and open-minded about where they look for potential ideas.

"They have to have fairly eclectic taste because the easy thing to do is to always look at the world through the same filter," Kohrt says. "They really need to be able to envision outside their experience base and have a willingness to engage with people where they don't know as much as the other person does. You have to strongly value - and demand - individual expertise and excellence but also seek horizontal networks across disciplines and across cultures.

"Can you value what others have done without judging? Because there's a lot of different ways of accomplishing the same thing. Some of those ways are not best done by how you do it in Columbus."

Look, for example, at water purification.

"We're used to an infrastructure here that others don't have in India, Bangladesh or other parts of the developing world," Kohrt says. "So proposed solutions for purifying water there can't follow the usual formula

"How do you do that in a town that has no electricity and shallow wells? Solving that problem there may give you a simpler solution for solving it here."

Case in point: hand-cranked radios and lights. Kohrt says this technology was first developed for use in African villages without electricity, but it has caught on in the United States, as well.

"I've got a hand-cranked radio down in my basement and one of those flashlights that you shake in every car," he says. "It's actually a fairly interesting market. Was there an impetus for us to do that here? No. But working in other cultures gives you opportunities to be innovative about how you look at a problem."

Respect employees - even in failure

"Innovation is a very human process," Kohrt says. "We take pride in that. It's gratifying."

Yet many CEOs tend to overlook the need for innovators to feel respected and honored for what they do - even when things go wrong.

"It is hard because they're all passionate about what they do and intolerant in your lack of interest or knowledge in what they do and yet want very much to be respected," he says.