CONFERENCES
Convergence 99
ABB Case Studies Featured at Global Creativity
& Innovation Seminar
by Alex D'Anci
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*** Dieter Ettl, a consultant of the Finnish Process Technology Organization, represented ABB at a recent Creativity Seminar in London, chaired by Dr. Edward de Bono. Dieter presented two case studies of how the use of thinking and creativity tools has made a positive business impact within ABB.
The Finnish Process Technology Organization and Corporate Research Center have been learning and applying Dr. Edward de Bono's thinking tools Six Thinking Hats and Lateral Thinking since 1995. The tools help users clarify, amplify and focus their thinking and creativity. When Dr. de Bono organized the seminar Advanced Thinking in a Changing World - How to Release Your Organizations Unused Brainpower last December, he invited Alps Electronics, ABB, British Telecom, and Siemens to present success stories of innovations directly attributable to thinking tool use.
ABB has been using Dr. de Bono's Six Thinking Hats tool for meeting facilitation, and his Lateral Thinking for creativity. The first case Dieter presented was a powerful application of the Six Thinking Hats tool; improving the effectiveness of international project workshops. The case described a High Impact Project (HIP) kickoff workshop as a problem in international communications and how the Six Thinking Hats created a uniform culture for interaction.
The principle HIP members came from several different cultures, France, Germany, Sweden, Finland and USA. Communications styles can be very different, even for neighboring Scandinavian countries. The Six Thinking Hats methodology served to break through these cultural communications barriers. Corporate Reasearch Director Juhani Pylkkwho participated in the workshop, was pleased with the power of the tool and remarked, "With Six Thinking Hats we gain results in two days, which with old methods would have taken at least a month." Effective communications was realized in minutes, and consensus reached quickly.
Dieter also presented his consultant team's results using Lateral Thinking tools in process re-engineering in two European Transformer factories. "First we used traditional brainstorming to get ideas from the group. When they were out of ideas, we would use various Lateral Thinking tools like Random Entry or Provocation to get more ideas from the group. The ideas from Lateral Thinking would often double the impact of the brainstormed ideas. In one case, the documented business impact form a single Lateral Thinking idea exceeded 300kUSD."
The Six Thinking Hats method is used frequently in the Finnish Process Technology Organization, both internally and with clients. In Finland, we felt that the Six Thinking Hats was such a good tool, we took the initiative to translate the course material into Finnish. In ABB, over 150 have taken the Six Thinking Hats training and about a third of those have also attended Lateral Thinking classes. In ABB, we feel that thinking tool training is an excellent investment.