At our MBA lecture last week we were introduced to the concept of "Skunk Works" which Lockheed have used to dramatic effect. This article details how IBM are using Skunk Works by placing some of their most talented executives in their risky startup ventures.It is interesting to see that a huge organisation like IBM is using Skunk Works to become a more learning organisation and develop new ideas outside the main business.
5 comments:
That's a good find.
Lockheed-Martin captured the high ground & the publicity with their Skunk Works, but I agree with the many commentators that say lots of businesses have deployed similar strategies at certain times. Indeed, IBM's invention of the PC was through a Skunk Works like organisation. However, the historians report that Skunk Works declined after the 1970s when a tougher protect-the-bottom-line culture cut at R&D and other 'fancy' functions. Now, my argument is, the age of disruption is bringing them back. How else do you compete with .coms & the mobile, global world of innovation & open source except through Skunk Works?
Finally, I like William Livingston's argument that the golden age of American business was linked to many companies use of Skunk Works to provide rapid, convincing innovations. Most other commentators would say that it was the rise of the East that saw the decline of American business and the ending of the post-war golden era. Livingston, however, makes a subtle distinction. He says that the rise of the East was not the direct cause of this decline. Instead he argues that the East affected a decline in confidence in America which in turn led to the rise of an Accountancy culture. It was the rise of the Accountancy culture that killed the Skunk Works and that, in turn, ended the ability of American business to lead the world in innovation.
Whatever .... it is good to see Skunks are back.
We've been living and breathing a skunkworks in the project we are currently undertaking. I don't think for a second that we'd have managed to gain acceptance of our ideas without operating somewhat clandestinely.
We've not entirely been in secret, but shielding the project owners from some of the 'wacky' stuff that we know is absolutely the right thing to do, from them, has helped improve our chances of success.
I dread to think what we would have constructed without this strategy...
Not all skunks stink.
It is surprising to find people who have not previously come across "skunks works" R&D.
The concept goes back at least 50 years. The origins had nothing to do with setting up internal offshoots. It was about R&D folks subversively stealing time and equipment in a company to do stuff that they want to do.
Peter may be right in suggesting that the concept faded away when companies concentrated on the bottom line. In doing so, they pushed their researchers so hard that they had no free time to be subversive. They simply clogged up the researchers' timesheets, and budgets, with stuff the affected the bottom line.
The definition we are offered "a group of people who, in order to achieve unusual results, work on a project in a way that is outside the usual rules" is only a part of it. This implies that such activity has a goal in mind rather than simple curiosity.
The notion that it is "a small team that assumes or is given responsibility for developing something in a short time with minimal management constraints" misses the point, which is that management never gets to find out about genuine "skunks work".
And to say that "A skunkworks project may be secret" implies that management may be in on the secret. The "moonshine" origins tell a lie to that one.
More interesting is its formalisation. You could say that even acknowledging that it happens in a lab renders the notion redundant.
It is not the same as giving R&D folks freedom to spend, say, 20 per cent of their time on unguided projects of their own making. Or setting up teams with a licence to thrill.
The rise in interest in the concept may reflect the poverty of imagination, and the short-term fixation, of many modern R&D operations.
An observer of corporate R&D for longer than I care to remember, I have seen the decline of long term thinking over the years. That's why companies now have to take academic research more seriously than was once the case. Rare is the corporate lab that can math the best of academia. Twenty years ago, it was the other way round.
The IBM example is flim flam. It is not skunk works. Just a different way of doing R&D.
Why quibble over definitions? Because you need both. Management sanctioned R&D that breaks out of the immediate needs, and subversive "skunk works" stuff that leaves researchers free to play with their toys with no aim in mind.
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