Alibre Blog:

There is a lot of talk about innovation in the manufacturing community these days, and in fact, innovation in general. Do a Google search on innovation” and you get 775,000,000 results. For “manufacturing innovation” you get 67.5 million; “mechanical design innovation” yields 15.7 million. There’s lots of thought on innovation going on, although how innovative some of the thought itself is is subject to question.

Innovation was a key theme of the COFES (Congress on the Future of Engineering Software) gathering last month in Phoenix , a gathering of insiders involved in CAD, CAE, CAM and related software and services.

Topics discussed included:

Innovation: What is it and how do you do it?
The Age of Innovation? Says who?
A Model for Applied Innovation
Relentless Innovation
And, of course, the always exciting, “Innovation Infrastructures.”

The discussions were interesting – well, some of the discussions were interesting. Some of the speakers were incredibly skilled in the art of talking for an hour and saying nothing. Others were good.

One of the better presentations was given by Joel Orr in which he discussed something called the “innovate button.” In other words, what if there was a button you could just push and innovation would occur. I guess this was taken from the “Easy button” advertised by Staples, the one where that guy accidentally sits on the button and all these ink jet cartridges fall from the sky.

Joel went on to discuss some innovate button technologies, such as “Genetic Programming.” With genetic programming you create a “fitness function” that helps define what you are looking for. Then the software generates large numbers of arbitrary combinations, applying the fitness function to each, and you do this until it hits upon something you like.

I suppose the more specific you are the better the results. Sounds like an incredibly sophisticated version of the 8-ball. Remember “Signs point to yes,” or “Outlook good?” But there was also “Better not tell you now,” or “Concentrate and ask again.”

Who knows though, maybe starting with “make more money” or “dominate my industry” would deliver interesting results. It would probably come up with a recommendation like “invent an innovate button.”

Seriously, Joel went on to quote a statement from Robert M. Price's "The Eye for Innovation," in which he says that innovation is simply problem-solving.

Thomas Edison had lots of good quotes about his approach to Innovation. Some I particularly like are:

Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.
Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.

So here one of the most prolific inventors in history and his key to innovation is basically hard work. Along this line of thought, there is an old quote I like that I have seen attributed to a Chinese philosopher named Wu Li, and also generically as a Zen or Buddhist saying. It goes, “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” Hard work again, damn.

So in the end it isn’t all that fantastic, in fact, “it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.” I truly believe that is what Alibre is all about; we work hard every day, converting one person at a time. Usually, our customers are those who are not valued by the competition; everyone counts to us. Our customers might buy one copy, or they might buy ten, but there are a lot of them.

By enabling anyone – everyone -- to utilize the same class of 3D technology available to only large enterprises or those with thousands of dollars to spend, we’re driving innovation all over the world, one customer at a time, through a lot of hard work chopping wood and carrying water.

By the way, did you know that Alibre Design ships in 14 languages now – we’ve even got Slovak!

On that note, check out what one of our customers in Germany is doing with Alibre Design –This is a cool example of someone doing some measurement and reverse engineering using a FARO inspection device.

Just one more example of the thousands of people who are innovating every day through hard work and an affordable, easy to use 3D CAD system called Alibre Design.

Jens Meyer taking measurements