CUSTOMERS.COM® RESEARCH FROM THE PATRICIA SEYBOLD GROUP
MAKING TEAM INNOVATION WORK
Learning from FIRST How to Inspire Inventors and Build an Innovative
Culture
By Patricia B. Seybold, May 1, 2008
One of Three Winning FRC Teams!
Photo by Akill11, Flickr
Illustration 1. Three members of the ThunderChickens: one of the three
championship teams. The Winning Alliance of the FIRST Robotics Competition
Championship
was: Team 148 “Robowranglers” of Greenville High School from Greenville,
Texas; Team 217 “ThunderChickens” of Utica Community Schools from
Sterling Heights, Michigan; Team 1114 “Simbotics” of Governor Simcoe
Secondary School from St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
HOW TO FOSTER INNOVATION AND GRACIOUS PROFESSIONALISM
How do you build a culture that nurtures repeated success in innovation?
1. Give a really hard problem to solve to multiple teams of smart, motivated
people.
2. Give them unrealistic deadlines, too little money, and not enough resources,
so they have to become inventive in creating their own conditions for success.
3. Give them, as a reward, the opportunity to compete against and to learn
from other teams who are working on the same problem.
4. Provide each team with many opportunities to test and refine their solution
in real world conditions in competition with others who are solving the same
problems.
5. Provide each team with mentors—knowledgeable experts who don’t
have the answers but who are willing to learn and explore with each team.
6. Celebrate all aspects of success, including teamwork, learning, community
service, mentoring, marketing, and entrepreneurialism.
7. Provide a framework for them to do this over and over again, year after
year, and to spawn and mentor new teams.
That’s what FIRST has done with kids. Can we do it with our own employees?
As Woodie Flowers reminds us (see below), “Societies get the best of
what they celebrate!”
CELEBRATING SMART KIDS’ INVENTIVENESS, CREATIVITY, & TEAMWORK
We held our Spring Visionaries’[1] meeting in conjunction with FIRST’s
annual world robotics championship in Atlanta, Georgia. FIRST, which stands “For
Inspiration and Recognition in Science and Technology, is a not-for-profit
organization founded by Dean Kamen in 1989 to inspire kids to excel in science
and mathematics. FIRST’s selection of the Georgia Dome sports arena as
the venue for its world championships is not accidental; Dean Kamen’s
vision is that smart kids who excel in math, science, engineering, and computer
science should be celebrated in the same ways that we celebrate athletes or
rock stars. So these competitions—both the regional play-offs and the
world championships—take place in sports arenas, complete with cheerleaders,
referees in uniforms, professional announcers, and video coverage—filmed
and broadcast over the NASA channel.
Each year, there’s a set of regional robotics competitions that culminate
in this annual world championship. This year, close to 125,000 kids from 38
countries participated in these regional robotics challenges. Several thousand
kids from the winning teams competed in the World Robotics Championships.
The Audience for the 2008 FIRST Championship in the Georgia Dome
Photo by Dominique, Flickr
Illustration 2. The audience waits in anticipation for the opening ceremonies
of the FIRST Robotics Championship at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta
on April 18, 2008.
There are different leagues for different age groups (see Illustration 3).
•
FRC. Young people from 16 to 18 compete in the FIRST Robotics
Competition—the “Varsity
Sport for the Mind.” This year, there were 15,000 young people in
1500 teams from all 50 U.S. states and 8 countries (including Brazil and
Israel).
They competed in 41 regional events around the world to qualify for the
world championships.
•
FTC. Junior High school kids from 14 to 16 compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge.
This year 8,000 kids in 800 teams competed in 30 regional events in 26 states,
Canada and Mexico.
• FLL. Middle School Kids from the ages of 9 to 14 (up to age 16 outside the
U.S. and Canada) compete in the FIRST LEGO League. This year there were over
106,000 kids in 10,000 FLL teams in 45 countries and 64,000 mentors and volunteers
who participated. The finalists in the FLL world championship teams included
teams from Mexico, China, Pakistan, South Korea, South Africa, Kenya, Israel,
Holland, Germany, and many others.
•
Jr. FLL. And there’s even a feeder program—the
Junior FIRST LEGO
League teams for kids from 6 to 9 years old. This year, 60,000 kids in 1,004
Jr. FLL teams participated.
The Four FIRST Robotics Leagues
Photo by Jonathan Clark
Illustration 3. There are four leagues in FIRST.
Each one has a slightly different robotics kit. The youngest members who
compete in the World Championships are 9 years old. The oldest are 18.
Each team of up to 10 kids spawns its own ecosystem of mentors, teachers, parents,
and corporate sponsors. This year there were over 72,000 adult volunteers
participating as mentors, coaches, and sponsors.
Each team is given the same challenge on the same date, with the same supplies,
rules, and guidelines. Each team has the same amount of time to design their
robots and get them ready to compete in the regional competitions.
Each team of kids is responsible for raising the money to fund their own
operations (usually by recruiting corporate sponsors, but also through
other forms of
fund raising), crafting their own team identity (name, logo, themes,
costumes, etc.) and setting themselves up for success (roles, structure,
etc.). Some
teams are set up as after-school programs in local schools. Others are
created as clubs in community centers or as sponsored activities for
a kids’ organization
(like a scout troop). Many teams are created by college students in their
communities as a way to engage and inspire kids in the college’s
community.
Fire-Breathing Rubber Duckies’ FLL Team
Photo by Jonathan Clark
Illustration 4. This was one of our favorite FIRST LEGO
League teams—called
the Fire-Breathing Rubber Duckies; it was one of many girls’ robotics’ teams
competing this year.
Each team is given the same challenge on the same date, with the same supplies,
rules, and guidelines. Each team has the same amount of time to design their
robots and get them ready to compete in the regional competitions.
Teams compete for many different prizes. In addition to winning the robotics
competition by scoring the most points, they also have the opportunity
to win prizes for their engineering designs, industrial design, breakthroughs
in safety, for their community service, their teamwork, their marketing
and
brand prowess, their creativity, and for their gracious professionalism.
The most coveted award is not winning the world championship; it’s
winning the Chairman’s award. The Chairman’s award celebrates
the team that represents a model for other teams to emulate by inspiring
young people beyond the team’s members to excel in math, science,
engineering, and technology.
This report continues...
*ENDNOTE*
1) Patty’s Visionaries are hand-picked customer-centric executives who
are transforming their businesses and their industries from the outside
in and who are willing to share their experiences and learnings. If you’d
like to nominate yourself or a colleague to join this group as a member,
please contact Kerstin Delaney at the Patricia Seybold Group, at kdelaney
AT customers.com.
*ENDNOTE*
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