Creating a Lean R&D System

27

3

The Individual in the Lean

R&D Community

A research and development (R&D) community performs only

two things on the way to delivering useful knowledge packages: (a)

Individuals within the R&D community create bits of new, potentially

useful knowledge, and (b) the community itself integrates those bits into

coherent, denably useful packages of knowledge. e community and

individual are inextricably linked in this, as the individual gains per-

spective and direction as part of the community. e community denes

context; that is

• What is valuable

• e boundaries of what is known and unknown in that value space

• How members of the community are arrayed

• How the community creates and sustains its culture to nourish or

starve innovation

At the same time, the individual makes the community. It is through

the collective, aligned intent of each individual that communities exist

at all. Without envisioning and committing together to fulll a higher

purpose, individuals cannot coalesce into a coherent, operating com-

munity, let alone a well-functioning one. Individuals bring their own

paradigms and norms together, and, somehow, within their shared com-

munity, create common norms and viewpoints, paradigms, and mental

models that dene a culture or an environment in which individuals

exist and interact productively.

28 • Creating a Lean R&D System

THE INDIVIDUAL/COMMUNITY CONTINUUM IN R&D

Individual and community are inextricably linked—in particular, within

science, where the thoughts and ideas of the future depend entirely on the

thoughts and ideas built, winnowed, changed, and absorbed in the pres-

ent. A researcher cannot valuably function outside of the community, and

the community cannot function without the creative eorts of its indi-

vidual members. ey are one. erefore, if we want to create Lean R&D

communities that exquisitely serve their innovation purposes, we need to

consider the individual and community together.

With that in mind, the combined whole is somewhat intractable.

erefore, I will begin our discussion by splitting individual from com-

munity, separating the individual’s commitment, contribution, and skills

from the community’s contextual roles of (a) creating purpose, alignment,

and synthesis of individual contributions into the body of the whole, and

(b) synthesizing environmental and cultural factors into a cohesive, func-

tioning system. Since individual and community are inseparable in reality,

there will be signicant cross-fertilization of ideas throughout this book;

however, in Chapter 7, I will begin to put the two together again in our

discussion of creating and nurturing environments in which researchers

can ourish. at will lead us to the wider discussion of implementing

Lean R&D.

An Example of the Lean R&D Community

Some time ago, Jim Luckman showed me a video of a GM senior man-

agement visit to Delphi’s Rochester Technical Center where he had been

the senior executive. Leadership was coming to see something that had

grabbed their attention: an R&D organization that had tripled its output

in three years. But they were exposed to something beyond their origi-

nal expectation. e employees lined the oor and mezzanine level of the

atrium as the GM leaders came in, clapping in time and singing a song

they had written and practiced for the event. It seems that every individual

at the Tech Center had done something (including learning the song) to

make that visit a special one.

is video is amazing to anyone who has been around large corporate

entities for a while. It is true, of course, that people spend time and energy