SAMPE Journal - September/October 2013 - (Page 46)

PersPectives Steven Rodgers SAMPE Past President and Consultant, EmergenTek LLC Steven.R@EmergenTek.com The Heart of the Next Big Business Revolution “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra There are a lot of books, magazines and blogs out there that will tell you how to improve the way you do business. Sometimes they contain meaningful new information or insights that are invaluable. At other times they simply remind you of things you have known all along but may have forgotten. These lessons from the past are often the most valuable keys to sorting our way through the present to get to the future. They are lessons already learned but somehow they have gone neglected. So I want to take a moment to remind you of some things you probably already know. With all that has been said about how to succeed in business, these are things I think we collectively need to reconsider in order to lay a viable path forward. The Secret to Innovation. Business was once a local phenomenon. However, business has increasingly become a global competition. Innovation is the differentiating element that allows companies to compete. It may be innovative technology or innovative systems or innovative business culture that enables a company to compete effectively. So what is the common unifying thing that allows companies to innovate? Innovation comes from people. No matter how modern the equipment is, no matter how state-of-the-art the machinery may be, innovation is always a result of human endeavor. The machines may be useful but at the end of the shift, they are merely tools. It is people who innovate, and innovation occurs at many levels from the Boardroom to shop floor. Of course, we recognize this, sometimes in an off-handed way. We refer to “human resources” and “human capital”. However, there can be a tendency to view the company as an entity and discount the contributions of Great Human Innovators: individual people within the organization. In some ways, I suppose that is natural. After all, (Incomplete List) the origin of the word “incorporate” means to give a body to the creation of a new person • J. Gutenberg in a legal sense. • G. Marconi When it comes to recognizing the importance of people to the process of innovation, • W. E. Deming there is something that has always been a puzzle to me: A company has proven itself to • L. Pasteur be innovative. As a result it becomes so successful that it attracts attention from another • N. Tesla corporation. That corporation then acquires the company and proceeds to eliminate • Numerous others the very innovators who established the company’s success. They fail to recognize that the value of the company is not simply in the equipment. It is in the innovation that was Great Machine Innovators: brought about by people. (Complete List) • None known A Fundamental Problem. People innovate best in an atmosphere of trust in which they feel that the value of their contribution is appreciated. Not too many years ago, loyalty to a company was often rewarded by a level of financial security; the opportunity to retire with a pension after decades of loyal service. Today that loyalty is not as ubiquitous as it once was. Companies are often maligned in the media for moving operations offshore and doing all that they can to reduce expenses. Of course, companies make their share of mistakes when dealing with their “human capital”. One large corporation recently pulled out all the stops to help solve a catastrophic technical problem. After the crisis had been averted, the CEO sent out a memo thanking the employees for taking time away from their families and friends to work evenings and weekends to solve the problem. Then at the end of the same memo, he announced that the company would have to lay off several hundred employees. Suffice it to say that the memo generated very little loyalty among the employees. 46 SAMPE Journal, Volume 49, No. 5, September/October 2013

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of SAMPE Journal - September/October 2013

SAMPE Journal - September/October 2013
Contents
President’s Message
Technical Director’s Corner
Manufacturing Overview of a 2.4 Meter (7.9 Foot) Composite Cryotank
Welcome SAMPE’s Newest Members
SAMPE Proceedings
Corporate Partners
SAMPE On-Site Training Seminars
CAMX–The Composites and Advanced Materials Expo
Europe News & Views
SAMPE Europe’s SETEC 13 Wuppertal, Germany
Tech Tidbits
Thermoplastic Composites Technologies for Manufacturing Nose Fuselage Structures
Materials & Products
SAMPE Tech 2013|Wichita, KS
Perspectives
High Temperature RTM370 Polyimide Composites Fabricated by RTM: Characterization and Impact Testing
The SAMPE Foundation
SAMPE Tech 2014|Call for Papers
Industry News
Advertiser’s Index
SAMPE Journal Editorial Calender
Resource Center
Membership Application
SAMPE Proceedings Order Form
Industry Events Calendar
Chapter Contacts

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