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Seeing everything even the naturally invisible:
optimum vision for plastic and reconstructive
surgery is provided by the OPMI Vario surgical
microscope by Carl Zeiss.
convinced it will remain the driver of our success.”
For Carl Zeiss carefully listening to its customer’s
needs and expectations is a key success factor. This
proactive approach may go as far as actually accompanying
on the spot a medical eye procedure to fully
understand why the accuracy and high definition of
colours are so important for a specific lens in the
medical equipments used during operation. Carl
Zeiss publishes its own customer magazine,
“Innovation”. Each issue contains 60 fascinating
pages of texts, photos and illustrations. The subjects go further
than seeking to sell our products. “We’ve published a whole series
of articles on technologies that could serve to forewarn us of seismic
movements. We’ve included remarkable articles, for example, on
the fabulous progress that optics is making possible in eye and brain
surgery. Our message is clear: innovation lies at the heart of progress
for humanity.” At Carl Zeiss innovation is a state of mind, with
an objective that goes beyond short-term profitability. It is part
of the search for well-being in general. “We want to avoid falling
into the trap of purely profit-motivated creativity”, Thomas A.
Louis says approvingly.
Celebrating innovation
Every year, Carl Zeiss brings together 250 or so employees for
three days in a European capital to celebrate their creativity initiatives.
Innovation is broadly defined to include products, technologies,
management approaches and new commercial ideas.
Hundreds of proposals are submitted through the new business
generation process, additional ones come up through the famous
electronic “ideas box” which the company has recently developed.
“This Internet based form which allows any Group employee
to propose an idea that he or she finds creative and value-creating
– both key criteria! Several individual are working full-time to
manage the innovation pipeline and making sure every idea is
© Digital Vision/John Cumming
Customer oriented projects
Let’s encourage
communication
about failures!
At Carl Zeiss they not only celebrate
successes, but also award sharing
the essence of failures. The company
even has a dedicated ‘most successful
failures’ trophy. These are projects that
seemed to have everything going
for them, but at a certain point in their
development ran up against an
unexpected and irremovable obstacle.
By celebrating project teams who
successfully shared their learnings from
failures and giving them a certain
visibility, the company hopes to avoid
repeating the same mistake
a few years on. In one example,
a new technology did not make it
to the market and failed to generate
the expected added value. But it did
allow the company and its customer
to gain precious know-how.
The company and its partner also
came closer together. Success is not
always where you expect it most.
correctly evaluated and followed up. We really do try to prevent a
good idea being snuffed out through routine processing, simply
because it sounds crazy or because it has never been done before.”
Less than a dozen projects received funding in the first year of
the innovation award. Last year, the number ran significantly
higher. In each of the six innovation award categories two or
three finalists are presented. Many of the award-winning projects
are carried through to the project stage. In fact, the point
in the development process at which the award is given illustrates
the company’s willingness and ability to take calculated
risk. Thomas A. Louis: “Rewarding too early is not being serious.
Rewarding too late is a sign of timidity. We want to reward
ideas before we are really certain that they will make it. To share
in its employees’ efforts, the company also needs to share the risk.
Creativity, ingenuity, commitment and courage are needed to
foster a culture in which good ideas are relentlessly turned into
valuable new products and services.”•
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