PRIZ Innovation Platform Benefits The Engineers And Their Managers

In today’s world, businesses must innovate to maintain a competitive advantage. If we think about it, even the simplest conventional projects require innovative, or, out of the box, thinking. But when we deal with the more complex matter, like product design, excursion prevention, cost reduction, production yield improvement, or many others, innovation is the only way forward. For these types of projects, the managers need the appropriate tools to operate efficiently and remove destructions.

In general, the process of innovation project management is quite typical. Managers with the team define the targets and expectations on timelines. The whole team builds a list of tasks and assigns them to the team members (for example engineers). The engineers then start working on a project while the manager waits for reports on project status.

Spot the paradox? I’ll highlight it for you.
From the very beginning of the project, both, the engineers and the managers, are working to push it forward. But at the same time, both become the blockers to project success.

Why is the engineer a blocker?

First of all, an engineer is a human being that wants to be recognized as an expert. So, he is trying to complete and report on his part of the work as fast as possible. As a result…

An engineer does not use any systematic approach, but rather “thinking” about a possible solution. He believes that this approach can bring faster results and he will be the first to come up with a good solution
He does not want to use any creative thinking tools, also, because he believes that it will take much longer
An engineer refrains from involving some other experts, so he can keep the ownership of the solution
An engineer actually focused on the final result and not on the process

Why is the manager a blocker?

A manager wants to be a part of the project and stay up to date at all times. He is sure that the engineer cannot complete the project or part of it without his directions. Eventually, the manager is more of destruction, than a help.

A manager requests systematic reports from engineers and wastes their time
In most cases, the manager demands innovation, but in reality, expects for a standard solution that he understands
A manager expects for a solution that he can easily use for reports to his managers, the actual result is not important

An engineer and his manager are contradicting parts of the innovation project because the manager wants to be fully informed and involved in the project, while the engineer wants to be left alone to work on the project.

As a matter of fact, engineers and manager are 1 + 1 that is less than 2:

1 + 1 < 2

PRIZ Innovation Platform benefits both engineers and their managers

PRIZ Innovation Platform solves the problems we described above and flips the equation to 1 + 1 > 2. The advantages of the platform are as follows:

The platform is created for innovation projects and fully supports its model
PRIZ integrates the work of engineers and managers ensuring efficient progress without unnecessary destructions
The platform empowers teamwork with full transparency for both engineers and managers
The platform enables innovation in remote teams
A manager can track and get involved in the project process flow if he deems necessary, but without adding workload to on the team
An engineer can use different creative thinking tools as part of his process to achieve even better results
The platform exposes the entire process of the innovation, and that helps engineers to be recognized
The platform allows the manager to be an active part of the innovation process. This will help him to accept the results regardless of how crazy it might be

PRIZ innovation platform provides the tools to succeed in innovation project and we are continuously improving it. Some of these, we have described in the past: Project’s tasks management with PRIZ Innovation Platform and The art of innovation project.

What to now more? Ping us or simply try PRIZ Innovation platform for your next project.