食品界的探求 於意外處見創新

A few years ago, executives at PepsiCo gave the R&D department a challenge: Find a way to cut the sodium content of snack foods, while still keeping the salty taste consumers crave.

幾年前，百事可樂公司（PepsiCo）的高層給他們的研發部門出了個難題：想辦法降低零食中的鈉含量，同時保持消費者喜歡的那種鹹味。

After toiling away in their own labs and searching across the packaged-foods industry for ideas, the scientists found what they were looking for — in a global research lab that was studying osteoporosis.

爲了尋找思路，該公司的科研人員在自家的實驗室裏想盡了辦法，還把包裝食品行業翻了個遍。最終，他們在一家研究骨質疏鬆症的全球性實驗室裏找到了答案。

What do salty snacks and bone disease have to do with each other? Nothing, except when it comes to so-called open innovation. The osteoporosis researchers had developed a way to create nanoparticles of a low-sodium, salt-like substance by “smashing calcium into tiny particles and re-growing it,” says Andy Zynga, CEO of innovation firm NineSigma. That gave PepsiCo’s food scientists a whole new perspective on the task, so “the company went on to solve its problem in a truly innovative way.”

鹹味零食和骨質疏鬆有什麼瓜葛？如果不提到所謂的“開放式創新”，它們就一點兒關係也沒有。創新公司NineSigma的首席執行官安迪o辛加指出，骨質疏鬆症的研究人員找到了製造低鈉類鹽納米顆粒的辦法，那就是“把鈣碾成細微顆粒，然後讓它們重新生長”。這讓百事可樂的食品科學家對如何完成自己手中的任務有了全新的思路，就這樣，“該公司開始用一種真正的創新途徑來解決自己的問題”。

PepsiCo isn’t the only one to have based a big innovation on an idea that originated in a totally different business, for a different purpose altogether. Procter & Gamble, for instance, found a way to reduce the wrinkles in shirts fresh out of the dryer by starting with a polymer invented by a computer chip expert at a European university.

以源自不同行業、不同初衷的點子爲基礎而開展重大創新的企業並非只有百事可樂一家。舉例來說，寶潔公司（Procter & Gamble）找到了減少烘乾襯衣起皺的辦法，而其起點是歐洲一所大學的計算機芯片專家所發明的聚合物。

Zynga, whose firm counts Xerox, Pfizer, Kraft, Siemens, and many other heavy hitters among its clients, says any company can make profitable use of ideas from other, seemingly unrelated fields. The first step in what’s commonly called open innovation, he says, is to reframe the question of what you’re looking for.

辛加的公司服務於施樂（Xerox）、輝瑞製藥（Pfizer）、卡夫食品（Kraft）、西門子（Siemens）等諸多重量級公司。他說，任何企業都可以在看似不相關的領域找到可用於盈利的點子。這通常被稱爲開放式創新，而這項工作的第一步就是重新梳理你正在探究的問題。

“State the problem in its most basic form,” he suggests. In P&G’s case, instead of looking for ideas on, say, “how to make fabrics less wrinkly,” the company put the word out that it sought proposals on “relaxing surface tension of an organic material.” Expanding the definition of the goal “lets you cast a very wide net, so you can find workable solutions in places you might never have thought of looking,” Zynga says.

辛加的建議是“用最基本的形式來表述問題。”在上述案例中，寶潔在尋找思路時並沒有問“怎麼才能讓織物不那麼容易起皺呢？”相反，該公司尋求的方案是“降低有機材料的表面張力”。辛加說，擴大界定目標的範圍“可以讓人們廣泛撒網，從而在可能永遠也想不到的領域裏找到可行方案”。

NineSigma has built a database of more than 2 million companies, nonprofits, and university labs worldwide, where its teams of consultants search for useful technologies on clients’ behalf, but Zynga maintains that anyone with a tricky problem to solve can do something similar.

NineSigma建立的數據庫包含全世界的200多萬家公司、非營利組織和大學實驗室。該公司顧問團隊在這裏爲客戶搜尋有用的技術。但辛加仍然認爲，面對棘手問題，任何人都可以採用類似的解決方法。

“Start with a basic problem statement that doesn’t limit you to your own industry,” he suggests. “Then, go and talk to suppliers, customers, and universities. Some of our clients have technology scouts who are constantly going to conferences to talk with experts in other fields, to see what they can apply to improving their own products.” The more varied technologies you have to choose from, he adds, the better your chances of “advancing above and beyond what your competition is doing.”

他建議說：“從問題的基本描述着手，不要侷限於自己的行業。然後，和供應商、客戶還有高校進行交流。我們的一些客戶有技術偵察人員，這些人經常去參加會議，目的就是和其他領域的專家交談，看看有沒有什麼東西可以用來改善自己公司的產品。”辛加指出，可供選擇的技術越是多元化，就越有可能“達到比競爭對手更高的層次，走的比他們更遠。”

That’s not to say that an innovation from elsewhere will always be welcome in-house. One obstacle to open innovation is a cognitive bias that psychologists call “functional fixedness,” meaning that a company’s own R&D experts “can’t get past the way they have always looked, and where they have always looked, for solutions,” Zynga says. “Ironically, the more success they’ve had with their usual approach to a problem, the harder it is to imagine a totally different one.”

但這並不是說企業總會欣然接受源於別處的創新。開放式創新的一個障礙是一種認知傾向，心理學家把這種傾向稱爲“功能固着”，意思是說公司自己的研發專家“無法擺脫他們以往尋找解決方案的途徑和領域。”辛加說：“具有諷刺意味的是，通過常用方法成功解決的問題越多，想出一個完全不同的解決方案就會變得越困難。”

To change that, Zynga suggests appointing what he calls “a functional fixedness SWAT team — a group of innovators who embrace the idea of collaborating with others outside industry walls.” He’s seen such teams unearth enough helpful ideas from surprising sources that they’ve inspired their colleagues to “evolve from a closed loop to an open one.”

要改變這種情況，辛加建議成立一個他所描述的“功能固着‘特警小組’，也就是一個由創新人員組成的團隊，其中的成員願意和本行業以外的人進行合作。”辛加見過這樣的團隊從意想不到的地方發掘出了大量有用的點子，從而給同事們帶來啓發，讓他們的思路“從封閉走向開放”。