Fostering Invention: Keeping Innovation Ahead of the Curve
When the idea hit Pete Pupalaikis, he had to pursue it. At the time, he was heading a small team of engineers preparing a new product for market at LeCroy, a leading oscilloscope and measurement equipment maker based in New York. Launching the new product was the job he was asked to do.
"In the middle of preparing this product to ship, I had an idea that I couldn't get out of my head," says Pupalaikis, now vice president of strategic marketing, who completed Wharton's Advanced Management Program (AMP) in 2007. As holder of a dozen patents for his work at LeCroy and Honeywell, Pupalaikis knew the power of pursuing an idea.
His concept involved a new way to increase the bandwidth of the oscilloscope. While he hadn't been asked to solve this specific problem, he knew the value of bandwidth. Customers in his industry would pay about $9,000 per gigahertz of bandwidth. "I worked on it for about a month, increasing the bandwidth of the box while we were preparing this other product to ship. I split my time between the management job and playing around with this idea."
When Pupalaikis's team was just about to release the product, the CEO decided they needed more bandwidth for the unit to be competitive. He said they had to find some way to boost the bandwidth by 500 megahertz. This was the question that Pupalaikis had, without knowing it, been preparing to answer.
"I said, give me three days to look over the stuff I had already worked on," he recalls. "The unit came out with 25 percent more bandwidth, because of this idea that got patented. I had taken the time to work on something they had not told me to do. Because of that, we were able to build a unit that met the market objective. The way the CEO phrased it, we need more things sitting in shoeboxes on the shelves that can be deployed when needed."
Removing Constraints and Asking the Right Questions
Pupalaikis went on to develop a newer invention known as "digital bandwidth interleaving," which is now a widely used concept in the field that doubles and triples available bandwidth. Pupalaikis leads a team at the company helping to fill up the "shoeboxes" with more innovations.
Typical product development begins with constraints. Management specifies what the product should do and then engineers make it happen. "Usually engineers are constrained on every axis conceivable, including time and resources," he says. "Because of these constraints, engineers often take the least risky approach." They design based on tried-and-true existing products, a process that rarely results in radically new ideas.
If instead of specifying the detailed requirements for the product, managers can describe in broad terms the challenges they would like solved, this can lead to fresh approaches. For example, Pupalaikis knew that bandwidth was important so he focused on that challenge. Inventors like to solve problems. Managers need to make sure they are solving the most important problems for the company.
Inventors can supply answers, but managers need to pose the right questions. "If you have a bunch of creative, really smart people and don't give them any feedback on things that are important, they will satisfy their own creativity by creating all kinds of things that interest them," he says. "My company is filled with people who have unbelievable ideas. The key is focusing."
After returning from the Wharton AMP last year, Pupalaikis was charged with helping to create a broader "roadmap" for innovation. "The problem is that we are really good at building things, great things, but we have to know what we want and why we want them," he says.
Factors for Successful Innovation
Pupalaikis said there are several factors that contributed to his own successful innovation, including:
- Taking a broader view: Being able to see the real business and market challenges and then address them through innovation requires a broader view of the business. The Wharton Advanced Management Program helped Pupalaikis develop this view. "Wharton helped me understand the business implications of what we do."
- Being fearless: In pursuing an answer, innovators often have to be prepared to do the impossible. Sometimes the most serious obstacles are self-imposed. "I was unafraid. I didn't have it built into my psyche that we couldn't do this." As reinforced by management guru Russ Ackoff during the Wharton program, "a lot of what we cannot achieve is built on limitations we put on ourselves," Pupalaikis says.
- Cultivating curiosity: Pupalaikis will pick up books on unfamiliar subjects or go to others for help. "I am not afraid of looking stupid," he says.
Leading Innovation
As he has moved into more senior positions, leadership has become more important to Pupalaikis. This was one of the biggest lessons from his experience at Wharton. After spending his early career in the Army, he had a military view of leadership. Leading teams of creative people — and empowering them to be creative — required a different approach. "Engineers cannot be managed the way blue-collar electricians are managed," he says. "You can only guide them and lead by communicating and aligning a group of people to a task. You can't tell them. If you tell them, they won't believe you. They want to make up their own minds."
The challenge for the leader is to articulate the market needs and focus the creativity of the engineers on his or her team. In particular, managers must offer a clear view of messaging and branding — how the innovation would play out in advertising or demos. Turning great engineering into successful products depends on understanding the market. "My role now is to communicate the needs of the market to the engineers," he says. "Once they understand that, they will know why we need to make products a certain way."
The Wharton program was valuable in cultivating a broader perspective on leadership and Pupalaikis's business. "I can't always point to the exact things I got out of Wharton; all I know is that I left there better equipped to do my job." He said he initially thought it might be a crash-course MBA, but it was something much broader. "It changed entirely my perspective on things. I would recommend it to anyone. It is a fantastic program."
