Risk, unpredictability and even failure are unavoidable in the process of innovation. In fact, a key part of the innovation process is the ability to experiment, process failures, learn from them and turn them into beneficial experiences.

In a recent Q&A with the Chicago Tribune, Dyson Ltd. CEO Max Conze offered some insight into company founder James Dyson and the roles of both experimentation and failure in the innovation process.

Today, one-third of Dyson’s 4,500 employees are engineers, who are encouraged to look at problems that are often ignored by others and the available solutions, which are “pretty frustrating.”

“Our approach is best described as problem solving,” Conze told the Tribune. “James and everyone is a big believer in, you pose a problem, you think about possible solutions, and you prototype that solution, and then you iterate, you iterate, you iterate.

“So often the first time that the engineers think about a solution, it may literally be as crude as taking some paper and some tape and just building something and saying, if it looked like this and did this, wouldn’t that be great?” Conze continued. “And then we’ll take it into 3-D printing, and we iterate and iterate, we iterate.”

Of course, just as innovation requires taking some risks, trying something new always involves some level of uncertainty. The new idea or next iteration might work or it might not. Learning from failure is a key part of the innovation process.

“If you want to invent, you have to live through failure,” Conze said. “How many failures does it take before success?”

James Dyson is familiar with both innovation success and failure. Before his company became famous for designing and manufacturing innovative vacuum cleaners, hand dryers, bladeless fans and more, the industrial designer famously created 5,127 prototypes of his first machine, the vacuum cleaner, in a workshop behind his house, before successfully developing one that he believed worked to his standard.

“I think that’s the spirit that we’re instilling in young engineers: You’ve got to go after ideas, stay with them, failure is good,” Conze told the Tribune. “For every great machine that we can come up with, there’s hundreds of prototypes that we have discarded and thrown away along the way.”

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The future can be unpredictable, particularly where business processes and disruptive technologies collide. In a recent series of 30 interviews with CIOs and chief innovation officers from such enterprises as Dell, SAP and AT&T, all respondents said they felt they are facing “once-in-a-lifetime change” and that “the changes would continue at pace.”

A new paper, titled The Fluid Core: How Technology Is Creating A New Hierarchy of Need and How Smart Companies Are Responding, aims to explain both the nature of these changes and how leading enterprises are responding to them.

Forbes recently laid out the six core findings from these interviews with transformational leaders:

1. The Fluid Core – Smart companies are now looking beyond the rigid “core competency,” instead defining a fluid core that allows them to pursue new markets and opportunities.
2. A new service infrastructure – This is where cloud and mobile are a new enabling infrastructure, enabling rapid new service development and accelerating a number of new innovation paradigm shifts.
3. Radical adjacency – Defined as the pursuit of new products and new markets, “radical adjacency” occurs when adventurous companies step outside their core competency or core markets to innovate or grow in adjacent markets.
4. Personal innovation drivers – Human innovation drivers tend to be left out when we think of what actually drives innovation, but individuals’ desire to do things differently can make an impact today, disrupting systems and organizational expectations.
5. Externalization – A global and transformative labor ecosystem has emerged, and it requires companies to strategize around where and how to secure skills and creativity, and for how long. In this new environment, companies outsource functions that are central to their identity and success.
6. Strategic options portfolios – Based on research published in The Elastic Enterprise, which the Forbes writer co-authored, this is the idea that companies must plan a wide range of innovative initiatives knowing that a chunk of them won’t be enacted.

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After analyzing the mineral components of a concrete breakwater sample dating back to 37 B.C., researchers have discovered that the secret to superior Roman concrete – one of the world’s most durable construction materials – lies in its unique mineral formulation and production technique.

“The Romans made concrete by mixing lime and volcanic rock. For underwater structures, lime and volcanic ash were mixed to form mortar, and this mortar and volcanic tuff were packed into wooden forms,” according to an announcement of the findings. “The seawater instantly triggered a hot chemical reaction. The lime was hydrated – incorporating water molecules into its structure – and reacted with the ash to cement the whole mixture together.”

Today’s concrete and the one that’s been in use for nearly 200 years, doesn’t utilize the Roman mixture of lime-and-ash that made their formula a unique and stable binder.

It’s not that modern concrete from today’s cement isn’t durable. In fact, it’s so good that, according to International Cement Review, we used 3,312 Mt in 2010, up 10.4% from the year before. Over 2011 and 2012, global consumption of cement rose to 3,585 Mt and 3,736 Mt, respectively.

The issue, as the researchers’ findings indicate, is that cement manufacturing accounts for 7% of the carbon dioxide that industry puts into the air. Using much less lime and making it from limestone heated at a much lower temperature, the Romans required less fuel. Scientists believe that if the cement industry adopted these Roman materials and techniques it could revolutionize the building industry by producing a sturdier, less CO2-intensive concrete.

Of course, should we adopt the materials and techniques utilized by the ancient Romans, efficient industrial vacuum systems will remain a key element in cement manufacturing, especially when the world uses billions of tons of the material each year.

Cement and dust, or more appropriately particulate matter, can easily invade machinery and equipment, leading to machinery malfunctions and breakdowns. At the least, this causes downtime, an inefficient product line, and more repairs. Worse, failing to keep a work environment clean can lead to poor employee health and lower quality of the final product without contamination. Industrial vacuum systems are critical to keeping a plant clean, thereby reclaiming product while meeting health and safety needs.