As a sponsor of the BQF Excellence in Innovation Award, MSC R&D been represented on the judging panel and experienced the curious balance between proposal submission, published criteria and organisation presentation skills. The BQF Innovation award has a clear set of criteria on evidence for innovation, credible measures of the advance to be achieved and the impact of the innovative development.
The awards programme received many fantastic proposals for great projects, yet obviously great ideas were not backed with a solid baseline against which to assess the innovation or well grounded innovation lacked quantification of impact. The underlying danger is “assumption”; a great idea will have great impact. The problem is that while this is obvious to the proposer, the reviewer, who is a novice in the field, needs explanation and verification. The questions posed by the brief clearly ask for this, but many proposals assume their case is irrefutable and fail to provide evidence on these issues.
The BQF Innovation Awards have an interview stage where award candidates can present their case and answer questions. This process introduces another factor; some presenters have the skill to demonstrate the innovation and significance of apparently basic and run of the mill projects. Other presenters of what on paper are great innovative projects lose momentum because they emphasize the logical development rather than the disruptive change or the presenter is not intimately involved in the project and gives a superficial presentation which glosses over the necessary detail. When questions are asked presenters answers can demonstrate the richness of the proposed project or reveal the many aspects of technology, competition and the end user not addressed clearly by the project team.
Both stages of the assessment process involve several reviewers who following good practice meet to discuss their thoughts and findings. All reviewers bring their particular strengths and weaknesses to the party. The recent BQF panel demonstrated the openness of the panel to hear and accept the views of colleagues. As in any such process there may be divergent views, my focus might be technical while a colleague may have a much better understanding of markets. What we should seek to avoid in a “lowest common denominator” approach, but rather try to find a consensual view. As a collective we can assess my view that there are technical weaknesses against the fact that there is a strong market demand for a better product. We discuss whether one overrides the other or whether one moderates the other.
MSC has been privileged to contribute to the BQF Innovation Awards reviews and has benefited from the interaction with colleagues with great experience in other aspects of innovation, product development and quality management. The active sharing of ideas and knowledge enhances and reinforces any assessment process.
