Jim Euchner

Fun and Challenge

Industrial Research Institute1 Comment

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.

Continue reading →

Advancing the State of Practice

Industrial Research InstituteLeave a comment

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

This issue begins RTM’s 60th continuous year of publication. Originally called Research Management, it was founded as a journal by and for practitioners of research and development in order to share lessons learned and build best practices. The journal, renamed Research-Technology Management in the 1980s, has now served several generations of R&D and innovation leaders, and it will help executives and practitioners manage through many changes in the future.

Continue reading →

The Medium is the Message

Industrial Research Institute1 Comment

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

When Marshall McLuhan wrote, “The medium is the message,” he meant to emphasize the implications of any new technology (or medium) beyond the specific context of its use (or content of its message). The import of any medium inevitably goes beyond its contents to its effects on the work in which it is embedded. This message can be summarized, according to McLuhan and his son Eric, in four “laws of media”: each new technology, or “extension of man,” 1) intensifies or enhances something in the world, 2) makes something else obsolete, 3) retrieves some attribute of the past, and 4) at its extreme, reverses into a caricature of itself (McLuhan and McLuhan 1988).

Continue reading →

Declining Barriers to Innovation

Industrial Research InstituteLeave a comment

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.

Continue reading →

Innovation Engines

Industrial Research InstituteLeave a comment

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

Industrial Research InstituteLeave a comment

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).

Continue reading →

Which Box Are You In?

Industrial Research InstituteLeave a comment

By Jim Euchner, Editor-in-Chief, RTM

Constraints are funny things. They can box you in, or they can inspire you.

A Shakespearean sonnet is constrained by the dimensions of its form: 14 lines, iambic pentameter, clear rhyme scheme, closing couplet. Yet it has consistently led to beautiful poetry. Has the form contributed to the beauty, or would it have emerged just as beautifully from blank verse?

Continue reading →

Shaping Innovation Success

Greg HoldenLeave a comment

By Jim Euchner, Editor-in-Chief, Research-Technology Management

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”

– Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.”

– Ken Olson, president, chairman, and founder of DEC

Continue reading →

Opportunity Finding

Greg HoldenLeave a comment

By Jim Euchner, Editor-in-Chief, Research-Technology Management Journal

“The medium is the message.”

                  – Marshall McLuhan

Marshall McLuhan theorized that every new technology (or medium) carries with it an implicit meaning, a set of implications that go beyond its direct, utilitarian purpose. The meaning of the technology plays out over time and shifts the ways that we think about and interact with the world. Thus, technology not only fills needs in today’s world, but also sows the seeds of new needs and desires.

Continue reading →