Open to innovative ideas

Instead of developing everything from scratch, engineers at Rockwell Collins are realizing the importance of tapping into the talents of those outside of our own company.

By Jill Wojciechowski

David Baugh's eyes light up with enthusiasm when he talks about the manner in which he and his engineering colleagues at Rockwell Collins helped create one of the world's first radios of its kind for the military domain.

A principal engineering manager for Software Communication Architectures, Baugh was convinced that integrating commercial cognitive radio technology — invented and certified by a Florida-based company for use in public utility applications — with existing hardware such as the Talon panel-mounted radio could be done. He was right.

About four months after collaborating with engineers at Adapt4, LLC, the Florida technology company that had already received certification from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), Rockwell Collins successfully demonstrated this new technology that many previously believed was still years in the making.

"We have recognized for quite some time that (cognitive radio) is the radio of the future," said Raj Aggarwal, vice president of Global Technology and Special Projects at Rockwell Collins. "But in our minds, the technology and certification that were needed to bring it to life were still a few years away."

A smarter, faster and more efficient way to transmit information to and from fixed, mobile and other wireless communication devices, cognitive radio technology will ultimately help military pilots communicate more effectively and potentially keep them out of harm's way.

Many involved in the integration of Adapt4's technology into Rockwell Collins hardware believe that the continued use of external ideas and products will ultimately help our company create and market new capabilities and, in turn, provide better customer value.

"The whole point of open innovation is realizing that we don't have to do everything ourselves," said Baugh. "We need to start looking at what other people have used and try applying it to our products and market segments instead of doing everything from scratch."

Being smart innovators

With the global business climate changing at an unprecedented pace and customers demanding quicker and more cost-effective solutions, senior leaders at Rockwell Collins have realized the importance of adopting new ways of doing things.

Nan Mattai, senior vice president of Engineering & Technology at Rockwell Collins, encourages our employees to spend more time accelerating the use of technologies from external sources instead of reinventing wheels that others might have already developed.

"We have to be smart innovators," said Mattai. "We have to be willing to collaborate inside and outside of our own four walls in order to bring the best solutions to our customers. That's one of the ways in which we will continue to accelerate our growth and remain successful in this highly competitive marketplace."

Launched in November 2005, the Open Innovation initiative includes the use of global technology, innovative sourcing, and intelligence networks to provide our customers with solutions faster than ever before. Reduced cycle times for new product development also are a benefit of this major initiative.

Both Mattai and Aggarwal agree that this process complements and integrates well with our existing internal technology processes. However, getting more than 5,000 engineers from around the world to buy into this concept is a seemingly more difficult task.

"Our mindset at Rockwell Collins simply needs to change," admitted Aggarwal. "The idea of open innovation will eventually catch on because we have no other choice. No business is safe and, at the end of the day, it is our job to understand and anticipate what our customers' true needs really are; we don't have to be limited by our own brains."

According to Aggarwal, a recent survey of high-technology Fortune 500 companies indicated that about 25 percent of those questioned currently gather about 40 percent of their ideas and technologies from external resources. By 2012, it is anticipated that about 75 percent of those same companies expect 40 percent of their ideas to come from outside.

"Rockwell Collins hasn't even reached the first 25 percent, so we are definitely behind the eight ball," said Aggarwal. "We need to become more than a research and development company. We need to become a company that connects, develops and takes our products to the marketplace."

Tim Etherington agrees. A principal systems engineer in the Advanced Technology Center (ATC), Etherington has spent the past several years working on our Synthetic Vision technology, which provides pilots in low visibility conditions with a virtual view of what they would see outside the cockpit on a clear day.

While the transition of this technology from ATC to our commercial market segment resulted in three major avionics program wins last year, Etherington believes that success might not have happened without assistance from several external sources in the aerospace industry, education and government arenas. Among those companies were Max-Viz, Inc., the Air Force Research Lab, NASA Langley Research Center, Technical University of Delft in the Netherlands, and The University of Iowa.

"We might have been able to bring this technology to fruition without building those external relationships, but it would have taken us a lot longer and would have cost a lot more money," he said. "One could always argue that we could have done this on our own, but it really helped to be able to rely on the knowledge from each of those outside sources."

Broadening our portfolio

At Rockwell Collins Cabin Systems in Tustin, Calif., Principal Systems Engineer Paul Sapp is one of several team members involved with investigating new technology for the future of our airborne TV and broadband data systems.

Because of the different product lines and multiple areas of business in that facility, Sapp says relying on external sources for innovative ideas instead of always counting on internal development is commonplace in Tustin.

"Open innovation fits into the way we've been doing business in California, so it's not that much of a cultural shift for us," he said. "We recognize that this is about being able to play on a larger playing field because we're tapping into the brains of a lot of other people."

Like Baugh and Etherington, Sapp feels that the ability to broaden our portfolio by looking outside of our own company for essential technology is definitely catching on. To argue that open innovation is not a good thing, he said, is extremely difficult but he realizes that some people are resistant to change.

"Change is never easy, especially when a company is enjoying the type of success that we have been over the past few years," said Sapp. "But we have to remember that we can't become complacent."

For Etherington, whose Synthetic Vision team was recently honored with the 2006 Prometheus Award for Innovator of the Year from the Technology Association of Iowa (TAI), developing new technologies will only continue to become more and more expensive.

An alternative, he believes, is to have engineers take advantage of technologies that have matured past the initial start-up level, making the probability for success much higher than if they tried to invent everything on their own.

"Engineers like to solve problems — that's why we chose this career — so there tends to be a lot of that 'not-invented- here' syndrome," he said. "Our world is continually shrinking and is becoming very competitive … we need to stop and think about how much more we can accomplish when we don't have to do everything ourselves."