When it comes to the innovation process, there may not be steadfast rules. There are, however, lessons to be learned from experience. Here we look at entrepreneur and inventor Dean Kamen‘s “rude realizations and somewhat serious suggestions” for innovation. These aren’t instructions, he said, as unexpected differences that work are what make innovations interesting.

Over the past year or so, one of the most striking developments in the area of innovation has been the creation of the position “Chief Innovation Officer,” or something similar, in many large corporations, Innovation-TRIZ‘s Jack Hipple recently told InnovationTools. Studies of similar past positions — “Discovery Director,” Innovation Manager,” etc. — mostly in Fortune 500 companies from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, have been documented. As have studies of the demise of such positions and programs.

After that timeframe, business and industry discovered Six Sigma and Lean and the like, until everyone began doing that, Hipple noted.

So once again, innovation has taken the spotlight as the miracle to save ourselves.

Perhaps one of the main drivers of such positions’ demise in the past was the fact that successful innovation requires inclusion of everyone in the company, in all facets and all levels — from the maintenance worker to the CEO — wherein innovation leadership failed. No one can be excluded and no one is exempt. Everyone must try to contribute, to think in newly developed ways to incubate creative processes.

EMEDCO‘s Darlene J. Waldmiller, at InnovationTools, thinks so:

This is how any company will continue to foster growth and a climate of interdependence. It can never be us vs. them, whether the “us” is hourly manufacturing workers and the “them” is salaried marketing exempts, or the “us” is the company and the “them” is the competition. We are interconnected and must innovate systematically, utilizing all the parts and making a new engine together.

“Systematic innovation” implies a framework, or rules.

At NI Week 2006, Dean Kamen gave his views on innovation in a keynote address, wrote Innovate Forum this week.

DEKA Research & Development Corporation, which Kamen established in 1982, lists the Segway Human Transporter among its innovative developments. Deka is organized to promote interaction between and within its electronics and software engineering groups. An on-site machine shop and molding facility is said to be central to getting the company’s ideas prototyped and tested as quickly as possible. A Kilby and Heinz award winner, Kamen is the inventor of the iBot, a founder of the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) organization, and has more than 400 patents to his credit. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1997, awarded the National Medal of Technology in 2000, awarded the Lemelson-MIT Prize for inventors in 2002, and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005.

In his keynote address, he disclaimed his speech by saying he couldn’t instruct the audience on how to be innovative, but could only share his experiences. The unexpected differences that work, he said, are what make innovations interesting.

In Kamen’s opinion, “Great technology alone rarely constitutes innovation.” It isn’t the technology that matters; rather, it is the way people solve problems that matter.

Moreover, he said, “It’s not what you don’t know that inhibits innovation, it’s what you do know that just ain’t so.” This relates to the pace of technological change. According to Kamen, technical truth changes faster than any other truth.

According to Innovate Forum, Kamen shifted gears and stated, “Invent as a last resort.” It’s risky and full of failures, and there is so much great technology already available that one should make use of it first and invent as a last resort. Risk, failure and unpredictability are unavoidable. Kamen’s suggestion? “Fall behind early; the sooner you fall behind, the more time you have to catch up.”

Another “rude reality”: To err is human, but it’s not company policy. Kamen meant that you must fail in order to make progress — and admitted of Deka: “Sometimes we crash and burn.”

He borrowed from Winston Churchill: “If you’re going through Hell, keep going.”

If innovation is so tough, why do it in the first place? Kamen’s answer is simple. “We do it to do things that haven’t been done before. When created properly, it can create entire industries.”

Concluding, he laid out what he sees as the Rudest Reality of innovation, which is borrowed from Margaret Mead, anthropologist and past president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. It is the only thing that ever has.

And that, dear readers, brings us back to including everyone in the company in the innovation process. Although innovation requires growth-oriented leadership that is focused, decisive and, at times, risky, such leadership must also be inclusive — from the top of the company all the way to the bottom.