What’s on the Other Side of Change?

Fresh Eyes on Modular By Jorie Wisnefski

Now that the cat’s out of the bag, I can talk more about why I’m excited for the Offsite Factory Roundtable that Gary Fleisher and I are putting together.

Gary recently wrote about the challenge of moving innovation from a great idea into an actual working factory. His article made me reflect on my own experiences with innovation—and, more importantly, about what I’ve learned from watching people react to change.

At Urban Machine, I experienced this shift firsthand.

We were working on a robot designed to remove metal fasteners from construction wood waste so that the lumber could be reclaimed and reused rather than ground up and buried in a landfill.

The idea is pretty straightforward.

But then came the questions.

“How do you use the wood with holes in it?”

“Why should we slow down our quick process of just getting rid of old wood?”

And, ultimately, “Is changing the process worth it?”

We actually set up the robot in a landfill to demonstrate what the model could look like. Instead of bringing the lumber to be ground up and buried, the material could be brought directly to the robot, have the metal fasteners removed, and then be sold as reclaimed lumber at a premium instead of paying to grind and bury it.

A financial opportunity lay on the other side of change.

But getting there required changing the process on the front end—and that meant cost, disruption, and a willingness to see beyond the way things had always been done.

I remember conversations where the immediate reaction was essentially, But the wood has holes in it.

And that’s fair.

If you’re looking at the problem from a single angle, the holes are the problem.

But when you step back to see that the holes aren’t the end of the story, you can start to recognize that they’re simply one part of a new process that creates a better outcome.

I’ve witnessed a similar dynamic in another part of my career.

When I worked with MaterialsXchange, we tried to change how lumber was bought and sold by creating a digital marketplace. Instead of relying entirely on phone calls and relationships to understand what was available and what it was worth, buyers and sellers could see pricing and availability digitally, in real time, from their phones.

Again, the technology wasn’t necessarily the hardest part.

The harder question for potential users was: Why should I change the way I do business when it already works and makes me money?

That’s a legitimate question.

And we have to wonder if innovation is just a shiny penny.

Not every new product is better. Not every new technology deserves adoption. And not every process needs reinvention.

But before we decide something won’t work, we need to ask a few more questions.

What are the pain points in your process today?

What would happen if you could eliminate them?

What would you have to change to get there?

And what would be on the other side of that change?

That’s what I’m interested in exploring at the Offsite Factory Roundtable.

Gary is bringing together people developing innovations with people running factories and dealing with the realities of production.

There will be plenty of products and ideas in the room. Uni-Frame is just one example, but I don’t see the roundtable as a place to promote one solution over another.

It will be a place to ask better questions.

If adding one step to your process creates a new capability, what does that really look like?

What does the financial picture look like once you’re on the other side of implementation?

What other parts of your operation must change?

And perhaps the biggest question I’ve seen folks not get past: Are we so accustomed to working around our pain points that we’ve stopped asking whether we could eliminate them altogether?

That’s what I want to bring to the roundtable.

Not expertise. Not a predetermined answer.

Fresh Eyes.

I’ve been fortunate to see innovation from a few different angles, and each experience has made me more curious about what happens between “This is different” and “This is better.”

Innovation starts with a product idea, but someone must be willing to look past the disruption, understand what has to change, and imagine what’s waiting on the other side.

A pioneer is someone willing to ask why they keep working around a problem instead of changing how they work.

 

Jorie's Fresh Eyes 

Today’s Fresh Eyes is about why people resist innovation even when it could solve real problems.

Before rejecting a new technology or process because it disrupts the way things are done, ask what problem it could eliminate and what opportunities might exist on the other side of change.

Drawing on experiences at Urban Machine and MaterialsXchange, Jorie Wisnefski argues that innovation isn't automatically better, but it deserves deeper questions before being dismissed.

She will bring Fresh Eyes to the Offsite Factory Roundtable and wants folks to ask better questions with a willingness to look beyond “this is different” to ask, “could this be better for us?”