Boeing's Collaborative Dreamliner.

Boeing Corporation is working with 60 partners at a total of 72 sites around the world to design and build its new '787 Dreamliner.' Boeing’s partners are scattered in what Boeing calls a 'global virtual collaborative environment.'

The Dreamliner is an ultracomplex Hyperinnovation which promises 20 percent better fuel efficiency, 40 percent more cargo capacity, a fuselage with a composite structure, and advanced flight deck and better performance engines. There will be innovative systems technologies, with an open systems approach, a new passenger cabin, advanced wing design, and an enhanced passenger and crew experience.

However, collaborative innovation has a legacy of failure. Complex systems innovation and integration projects are fraught with politcs, miscommunication, and lost information that gets lost in the sheer complexity of the project.

By putting the issue of ‘collaboration’ at the heart of the project, and by supporting this effort with new project protocols, supporting infrastructures, and collaborative communication/information technologies, Boeing are achieving a step change in project performance.

This is driving Boeing towards a new kind of project management model that will enable the design and delivery of evermore adventurous, innovative and super performance airliners... Go Boeing!

There’s plenty of value at the bottom.

Molecular manufacturing (MM) will account for much of the world’s economy by 2025. But an economy like none we have experienced before.

When full blown MM arrives the marginal cost of creating any possible physical product would be on the order of pennies per kilo: basically the cost of the raw material. Eric Drexler (see side bar) estimates total manufacturing cost for MM process in the range of 2 pence and 10 pence per kilogram, regardless of whether the products are clothing, massively parallel supercomputers, tomato soup, or additional MM systems (or Nanofactory).

The value-added, however, will be in the information expressing each product. That is, the software that selects the atomic weight, and defines the geometry and molecular assembly process. In other words, the market value of all manufactured material objects will be based on information content.

As this happens the ratio of value added per bit will rise significantly. This is obviously a trajectory we have today. More value-added comes from information-added products and services, because the order of information embedded within a new product or service is increasing over time. Thus the technological innovations of the future will (1) mostly be information added, (2) exceedingly more complex than today. These will be key economic metrics of the future.

Hyperinnovation Quotation.

'Breakthrough innovations rarely occur within a technical discipline, or within a market, but almost always where you create a novel intersections.'

Prof. Clayton Christensen, Harvard University.

Concurrent Engineering and Hyperinnovation.

Concurrent Engineering (CE) has moved on leaps and bounds since my first CE project back in 1984. Some of the most progressive stances today are looking at the Complexity Sciences and how thay can be applied to help understand the dynamics and improve the control of CE projects.

Hyperinnovation does just this: it moves on from multifunctional team based CE, to self-organising swarm systems based on the dynamics of complex adaptive systems.

The First Principle of Hyperinnovation.

Many moons ago, a tutor of mine gave up the fact that a student studying science at high school has the opportunity to learn more about the laws of physics than Sir Isaac Newton ever did, or could have known in his time.

Since that day, I’ve long wondered how knowledge develops, how ignorance can blossom to enlightenment, how seemingly mystical breakthroughs in understanding come from simpler, less structured understandings; but more, how complex innovations, such as the SpaceLab, originate from much lesser innovations?

After much thought and deliberation over the years, it became clear that the answer may lay in the ‘synergy’ that emerges from the many interconnections amongst ideas. In fact, we find that the output or whole activity is greater than the sum of individual agents: 1+1+1+1=6?

The secret: 4 agents in a network have 6 possible interconnections.

In math terms, for every agent that joins a network, so the number of new interconnection possibilities, and thus innovations, goes up geometrically. There is in fact a principle of innovation at work here. I call it the First Principle Of Hyperinnovation:

The potential for Hyperinnovation is proportional to the number of meaningful interconnections between agents. Meaningful as in those interconnections that hold a level of perceived or authentic value.

As an indication of the potential for Hyperinnovation, the number of possible (meaningful or otherwise) interconnections, is toward one half the square of the sum of agents in a network.

Thus, 10 agents in a network would have 45 possible interconnections. 100 would have 4,950 possible interconnections. 1000 would have 499,500 possible interconnections. 1,000,000 agents would have over 499 billion possible interconnections.

The payoff: for every new scientific discovery, consequent technology, every new idea, every piece of knowledge coupled to a network, so the number of innovation possibilities increase dramatically, so driving the synergy among ideas further and faster up-hill.

Hyperinnovation (Example 6): Multidimensional Learning:

In this rapidly interconnecting world, more and different problems need a network-knowledge approach. As processes and outcome become more interrelated with other processes and outcome, we need people that can break down the lines and borders of knowledge into broad interconnected wholes.

Thus the coalescing a variety of knowledge-bases and concepts from narrow subjects and disciplines, into synthesised arenas and cross-interrelated pools becomes preminant.

Core-subject are still abound, but they are evolving at warp speed. The goal is to become Hyperskilled, Hyperknowledged: So an Engineer need not only be studious in electronics, software and mechanics, but also become a Businessman, an Ecologist, a Behavioural Psychologist, a Biologist, a Chemist and Physicist, all at once. A Nurse, a competent Medical Technician, a Counsellor, a Social Worker, a Communication Specialist, a Computer Technician, at one and the same time.

One organisation enabling the emergence of Hyperleanng is Rice University's 'Connexions' (see Blog Friends Sidebar) an open source environment for rapid collaborative development, free sharing, and rapid publishing of scholarly content on the Web.

Most textbooks are a mass of information in linear format: one topic follows after another. However, our brains are not linear - we learn by making connections between new concepts and things we already know.

Connexions mimics this by breaking down content into smaller chunks, called modules, that can be linked together and arranged in different ways. This lets students see the relationships both within and between topics and helps demonstrate that knowledge is naturally interconnected, not isolated into separate classes or books.

One consequnce here? We will see the narrow specialist begin to disapear, and the rise of the multidimensionalist rapidly emerge.... Go figure! Go Hyperinnovation!!

Understanding the question gives the answer!

I have a friend that keeps asking ME the same question over and over.

'Chris,' he says 'how do you do it. How do you know all this stuff. How comes you know what I know, even though it's not your field?'

Well, I'm - ME - fed up with him asking this question (which has been going on for 15 years and more now!).

The answer is this:

If you keep asking the same question over and over, you simply don't understand the question in the first place.

Learning and innovation are two sides of the same coin:

A really acute definition of innovation is learning beyond knowledge, learning beyond what we currently know or understand. Thus, without rapid and continuous learning, we'll never achieve any breakthroughs in ideas.

Further, successful innovation requires learning before output. That is, understanding the behaviors of a particular innovation in all its dimensions before its launched into market. If we don't learn before output, then there may be trouble ahead.

To accelerate learning before output, one must accelerate feedback from both tests in the lab and trials in the market. To do that, one must accelerate the design-prototype-test (DPT) feedback-cycle by investing in DPT productivity tools and processes.

As the DPT productivity increases and the cycle-time shrinks, so feedback is amplified and learning before output accelerated. Thus innovation cannot exist without learning, and learning cannot exist without eventually yielding innovation. In other words, innovation and learning are two sides of the same coin.

What is Hyperinnovation
(example 5)?

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Now, what about hybrid fruit?

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The ‘Grapple’ (grape+apple).

The ‘Peacotum’ (peach+apricot+plum).

The ‘Necaplum’ (nectarine+plum).

And such Hyperfood is in the laboratories of C&O Nursery and Monsanto right now. Fruit and vegetables with surprising, but pleasing shapes and colour, which incorporate all manner of health enhancing vitamins and minerals
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The message here: as genetic engineering and information technology continue to combine with agriculture and pharmaceuticals, n-food production will be the most multidimensional of all.

What is Hyperinnovation (example 4)?

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Hyperinnovation refers not merely to the incredible speed and magnitude of innovation, but the enormous interconnectivity of new ideas, technology, markets, even whole industries.

What is Hyperinnovation (example 3)?

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‘Hyper’ in the context of innovation, means 'many interconnected dimensions (not unlike Hypertext or Hyperlinks).' One good definition of 'Innovation' is 'The successful introduction of novel ideas.' So 'Hyperinnovation' means the 'Multidimensional interconnection and successful introduction of novel ideas.'

What is Hyperinnovation (example 2)?

Worldwide sales of so-called 'Hyperphones' accounted for 48 percent of total worldwide mobile phone sales in 2006, growing to 81 percent by 2010, according to new forecasts from Gartner Inc. This trend is set to continue, leading to sales of one billion Hyperphones by 2010.

What is Hyperinnovation (example 1)?

Think of the latest Nokia cellphone, the N95 (See picture). Is it a video camera or personal assistant; a music centre or communications tool; a games consol or dictaphone; a book or television; a musical instrument or credit card; a remote controller or word processor; a front door key or portal to the world?

Ask Nokia....In fact ask Sony… Ask Apple... Ask Virgin. And they will give you the a similar muse:

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'As bandwidth grows and technology shrinks toward the invisible, both concept and functionality increasingly interconnects and expands toward the multidimensional.