Summary from The Front End of Innovation Conference-Europe 2008

Mike Hatrick and David Wootton jointly presented Bombardier’s approach to foster innovation by initiating a major cultural change in the company. The need for change became apparent when the management of this airplane and train manufacturer analyzed the company’s future after several years of redundancy threats. The business environment seen included a difficult marketplace for airplanes after the September 11, 2001, the prospect of rising fuel prices, criticism from environmentalists on air traffic, as well as upcoming competition from low-cost suppliers. To sustain leadership, it was decided to spur innovation by a corporate-wide cultural change project.
Mr. Hatrick outlined the comprehensive approach towards this cultural change, organized like a major development project. Communication campaigns addressed employees at all levels, promoting a quest for continuous improvement to achieve excellence in a wide range of business processes.
Becoming more innovative was just one of the initiatives. Comparatively little progress was achieved in this field, less than in the improvement projects to gain excellence in other business processes.
The engineering organization then took initiative to speed up the transformation, putting first priority on the innovation focus. The project plan to achieve this, as shown by the presenter, was impressively detailed, encompassing virtually every aspect one would imagine to be relevant. The results, however, did not meet expectations.
From an analysis after the first year, the major reasons found were that the transformation was promoted as having highest priority, but implementation was essentially lacking resources. Also milestones and deadlines were not put in place. The change project remained a spare-time activity of those who were motivated to spur innovativeness. But this was not enough. It became clear, that continuing in this way would mean the final goals were many years away.
The project was then re-designed to focus on five key elements of innovation: Business Strategy; Collaboration & Teamwork; Creativity & Innovation; Knowledge Management; Environment. For these elements, ambitious targets were defined. Also, more support from the CEO was deemed necessary, as well as a defined budget and a dedicated core team.
More details about the ongoing project were shared in the presentation, revealing an impressive number of sub-projects and coordinated activities. As the presenters clearly showed, Bombardier is still on its way to achieve the cultural transformation target. It would be highly interesting to watch future progress and get further insight into the lessons learned.

by Ulrich Spalthoff