Pictures of the Future Fall 2006
Inventors & Innovators – Dr. Robert Krieg
Siemens Medical Solutions, Erlangen
Total Imaging Revolution
Robert Krieg knows that workshops held in unusual settings with professional moderators spark ideas that would otherwise be deemed impossible. In 2001, Krieg, now head of Molecular Imaging at Siemens Medical Solutions (Med), met with developers, customers and suppliers at Wernberg Castle in Germany and devised a bold plan to build "the world’s best magnetic resonance imaging tomograph."
It was the birth of the idea behind the Total Imaging Matrix (TIM), a technology that makes possible magnetic resonance (MR) examinations in which the entire body can be scanned layer by layer in less than 15 minutes with a resolution of less than 1 mm.
TIM not only revolutionized MR tomography; the process used to conceive, develop and implement it was overhauled. Nothing was left to chance—everything was carried out according to a precisely conceived plan. Never before in the history of imaging technology development had the customers’ needs been as systematically taken into consideration as with TIM.
"I’m a big believer in structured approaches," says the 42-year-old father of three, who studied theoretical physics at the University of Erlangen and launched his career in the strategy department at Med before getting into development. It took three years to transform the initial TIM idea into a finished MR tomograph—too long for some critics, who felt that the effort put into such precise analysis and planning was excessive. Krieg disagrees. "The structured processes saved us time in the end," he says, adding that the important thing was that all decisions were documented. "That’s because project managers and staff move in and out. If you don’t document everything, nobody knows what’s going on after a couple of years, or why certain decisions were made and not others."
Krieg’s efforts resulted in the Magnetom Avanto MR tomograph, which contains up to 76 TIM coil elements, and other models like the Magnetom Espree with 102 coil elements, a diameter of 70 cm and a short bore measuring 1.25 m. With TIM, which has become a platform for the Magnetom system, several organs can be scanned simultaneously without having to rearrange coil elements—and Siemens has extended its technology lead in the MR tomography sector to at least two years.
Krieg says that being able to develop highly innovative technology within a company plays a big role in such successes. Manufacturers who outsource as much development work as possible end up struggling with increased attrition and longer development times.
The 2002 workshop participants seem to have achieved their goal of building the world’s best MR tomograph. A list of weak points, like those for previous models, has yet to be drawn up for the Avanto series.
Bernd Müller
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.