Pictures of the Future Fall 2006
Inventors & Innovators – Dr. Jun Kong
Siemens Shanghai Medical Equipment, Shanghai, China
Right Spirit for Hospitals
Few people can claim they are direct descendants of Kong Zi (Master Kong, or Confucius), whose teachings from 2,500 years ago form the foundation of the Chinese ethical system. Siemens researcher Dr. Jun Kong can make this claim. "The philosophy of Confucius has strongly influenced my management style," Kong says. "My main concerns in my daily work are honesty, trust and perseverance."
The success of the Somatom Spirit computer tomograph, which he and his team developed in China, seems to confirm this. Around 400 of the devices had been ordered by mid-2006, and three out of four orders are from abroad. Kong had previously proved himself by enhancing the image quality of the Spirit’s predecessor model, the Somatom Smile.
Later, he visited customers around the world, teaching them how to use the unit and helping them fix the mistakes they were making during its operation. This experience ultimately flowed into the development of the Somatom Spirit. Together with sales and marketing teams, Kong clearly defined the strategy for the follow-up device. The Somatom Spirit was to be cost-efficient, highly reliable, easy to use—and customers were to quickly recoup their investment costs.
"All the important hospitals already have high-end equipment, but they still often need to acquire lower-priced secondary devices for less complicated procedures such as lung examinations," Kong explains. The numerous small hospitals throughout China are also interested in obtaining an entry-level model so that they can perform CT scans themselves.
"Ultimately, the key to success is communication—with customers, within the team, and also with Siemens Medical Solutions headquarters in Erlangen and our top developers in Forchheim," says Kong, who manages his international team from an office in Shanghai.
He’s convinced the new Spirit unit’s success resulted from precise process management and the clear monitoring of milestones. Even more important, however, was the fact that both the Chinese and the German engineers involved in the development project spoke English and were able to overcome cultural differences.
Kong knows that "unusual paths often lead to special developments. When my employees approach me with a crazy idea, I allocate them a limited budget for a specific period of time," he says. He also comes up with creative ideas to get the best people into his department and keep them there. "We discuss the progress being made on all our projects at monthly meetings, because it’s important to have an overview of what’s going on throughout the department, rather than people who focus solely on their own individual projects," says Kong.
After the meeting, there’s a party in honor of everyone whose birthday falls during that month. "That’s really a big boost," says Kong, "because everyone is relaxed and has a feeling that is important for many Chinese people—the feeling that ‘my company is there for me.’"
Andreas Kleinschmidt
Innovators
How and Why Innovations Originate. Many management books focus on the theory of innovation processes, strategies and methods—but to what extent can such theories explain the origins of innovations? We’ve put together 14 brief portraits that present Siemens inventors and innovators and their experiences. We explored their personalities and examined the efforts they made to overcome obstacles. In the end, we found that there’s no standard recipe for innovation success. Some innovations result from the pure persistence of visionary pioneers who think out of the box, while others are born of a consistent approach that involves analysis and continual process improvement. Still others bear fruit because inventors incorporated customers into the process at an early stage, especially in their own regions, or worked together with external partners. What all our innovators have in common, however, is a propensity to think independently and the need for a culture that permits errors and promotes employee creativity. Above all, such a culture must always consider the utility of new ideas for customers.