Goodyear

Fun and Challenge

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By Jim Euchner, VP of Global Innovation, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., RTM Editor-in-Chief

My grandfather was an inventor. He worked at Kodak during its golden years, where he invented a variety of still camera devices, including an early stereo-imaging camera. When I got to know him, he was already retired, but he was still inventing. I remember, in particular, a sundial he designed and built that was precisely engineered to give the proper time in Peterborough, New Hampshire. I recall checking the time on it one sunny summer day and finding that it was correct. This desire of my grandfather to make such a device was interesting to me, and a little strange. Where had this obsession come from? I had not yet come to know the mind of an inventor.

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Building a Culture of Innovation

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By Jim Euchner, VP, Global Innovation, Goodyear, and RTM Editor-in-Chief

People will work long hours, climb over steep obstacles, and endure a lot of frustration to innovate if they believe they have a real chance to create something new. An organization can be said to have a culture of innovation when it supports those people and makes it possible for bold new things to happen with some regularity. Alas, in many organizations, it is almost impossible to be truly innovative. There are too many layers of organizational defense preventing it.

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Declining Barriers to Innovation

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By Jim Euchner, VP, Global Innovation, Goodyear, and RTM Editor-in-Chief

Barriers to innovation are declining. It is easier today for an innovator to get into business than it has been at any time in history. There are many reasons for this, but most are driven by some aspect of the digital revolution. Today’s digital tools help the entrepreneur on every step of his or her journey, from funding to marketing to product delivery.

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Innovation Engines

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By Jim Euchner, RTM Editor-in-Chief and VP, Global Innovation, Goodyear

“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.”

—Steve Jobs

Successful growth companies are powered by effective innovation engines. Each of these has its own logic and its own sources of competitive advantage. P&G, for example, is well known for its Connect + Develop open innovation program. What makes the innovation model successful for P&G, however, is not just open innovation, but its fit with the overall profit engine of the corporation. Continue reading →

Digitizing and Informating

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By Jim Euchner, Editor-in-Chief, Research-Technology Management Journal, and VP, Global Innovation, Goodyear

Twenty years ago, Shoshana Zuboff published In the Age of the Smart Machine, a seminal work on the nature of automation. Her focus was on the capability of machines that automated work to also informate their environment, a term she coined. Informating is the generation of information as a by-product of an action. Zuboff observed that “the same systems that make it possible to automate office transactions also create a vast overview of an organization’s operations, with many levels of data coordinated and accessible for a variety of analytical efforts” (p. 9).

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