futurethink had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Sandy Sanzero, Manager of Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Cybernetics at Sandia National Laboratories, a division which was spun off as a separate department of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration. In 1945, the forerunner of Sandia Labs was known as the ‘Z’ division of Los Alamos Laboratory. Sandia Labs received an official congressional designation as a separate National laboratory in 1979. Sandia’s mission is to develop science–based technologies that support the United States’ national security. Dr. Sanzero offers insights on the need for dynamic drifting, how innovation must happen, and why StageGate is inhibiting breakthrough innovation.

1. Sandy Sanzero
Manager of Robotics,
Intelligent Systems, &
Cybernetics
Sandia National Laboratories
the
innovator’s
interview
The Innovator’s Interview highlights unique innovations from a wide range of industries, and is an
opportunity for futurethink and some of today’s leading innovations to share insights and ideas.
May 2009
Turn innovation into action
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2. the innovator’s interview 2
Sandy Sanzero
the background
This Innovator Interview series highlights leading innovators at Fortune
500 companies. In contrast to past interviews, focusing on a single
innovation, this series examines the state of innovation at global
organizations. We spoke with both innovation leaders and practitioners,
within varying business units and organizational structures, across a
broad range of industries both for–profit and not–for–profit.
The interviews offer a unique insider’s view into the world of
innovation—what makes it work, what holds organizations back,
and what critical advice new innovators need to know to be more
successful with innovation overall.
the interview
futurethink had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Sandy Sanzero,
Manager of Robotics, Intelligent Systems, and Cybernetics at Sandia
National Laboratories, a division which was spun off as a separate
department of the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Nuclear
Security Administration. In 1945, the forerunner of Sandia Labs was
known as the ‘Z’ division of Los Alamos Laboratory. Sandia Labs
received an official congressional designation as a separate National
laboratory in 1979. Sandia’s mission is to develop science–based
technologies that support the United States’ national security. Dr.
Sanzero offers insights on the need for dynamic drifting, how innovation
must happen, and why StageGate is inhibiting breakthrough innovation.
Tell me a little bit about what makes Sandia Laboratories unique
from the other organizations we’ve interviewed.
Because we’re a National Lab, we can’t make a profit; we can’t
compete with industry by law. So, our role is to be a trusted agent that
does things for all the right reasons. There’s not a profit motive there.
Plus, because of our role as a National Laboratory and our focus on far
reaching research, we know where the world’s going to be a little better
than the average bear in 5, 10, 15 years. We examine what the threats
are going to be, what the potential is for new, cutting edge technologies
to actually be in the hands of users, and more.
So, how exactly do you go about the process of predicting the future
or figuring out where technology and innovation might be 10 and 15
years out?
We try to fit where universities and industry and others don’t fit. Our
goal is to prevent technological surprise from occurring to this country.
As an example, if you looked at World War II, we had tanks, our
enemies had tanks; we had airplanes, they had airplanes, right? In fact,
some of our enemies’ products were even better than ours. There was
a lot of death on both sides. It was a relatively balanced playing field,
from a technology standpoint. You don’t want balance. Deterrence is
based upon having a tremendous imbalance, and not being surprised. Anticipate. Innovate.
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3. the innovator’s interview 3
Sandy Sanzero
drive national security – or insecurity – and almost take it from an
industry standpoint. If you looked at Porter’s Five Forces on how you
study the structure of an industry, whether it be the Navy shipbuilding “A lot of people call
industry, for example, or an issue, a problem of the day such as anti–
piracy or the Artic climate change, and you take it at that macro level innovation things that create
and look at what’s in place now and then go to the intermediate level improvements by 5 or 10
and do the four corners analysis of motivators and potential actions
that individuals, or states, or companies, what might be their drivers percent. But, if I employ
for change? We then look at the disconnects between those motivators
and actions that are potential blind spots. new to the world, truly
We’re looking for blind spots. These blind spots, if detected properly,
disruptive technologies, then
would be the source of potential national security problems – or could I’m changing the paradigm
give insights on policy or technologies that might give us an advantage.
so that I see ‘orders of
You’re constantly studying these macro trends to know what the magnitude’ improvement.
implications are for various levels of government and national security.
That’s part of it. We look at what private industry does – what are they That’s a whole different kind
capable of doing, and what will they do – and what does this mean to
us? We look at universities – what can they do? Are there partnerships
of innovation.”
that – between what we are very good at the National Labs and
industry and universities – we can put together a dream team that can
take us quickly to a different paradigm and solve problems together?
We are always exploring potential major paradigm changers that we’re
not reacting to right now, but are out in front of the power curve; for
example, the inter relationship of water and energy, how instabilities
and future wars can be caused by that. You might be able to wage
peace rather than war by taking care of water and energy problems
for people and nations. Food, population – we look at all those things.
To us, the question isn’t “can you build a gun?”, but “what are you
going to do with it when you do build it?” That’s what we’re interested
in: What’s Next. We have technology enablers provided by ‘centers of
excellence’ in different areas, such as microsystems, nanotechnologies,
modeling and simulation, etc.
How do you define ‘innovation’ at Sandia?
A lot of people call innovation things that create improvements by
5 or 10 percent. But, if I employ new to the world, truly disruptive
technologies, then I’m changing the paradigm so that I see ‘orders of
magnitude’ improvement. That’s a whole different kind of innovation.
And I suggest to you that what we have found is that the way you
manage those programs, if you are to be successful, is terribly different
than the way you manage the evolutionary programs.
Most people that do the evolutionary kind of programs, and have them
as a major part of their portfolio; will dip their toe occasionally into the
revolutionary, trying to manage it the same way as incremental ideas,
but they get burned and do not make money or aren’t successful. And
then they deem the revolutionary projects ‘too risky’. They don’t realize
that the risk was not in the nature of the program but in the way they
chose to approach it.
Anticipate. Innovate.
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4. the innovator’s interview 4
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or new product development through a Stage Gate process. So, the
marketers own this. You clearly have to be able to know what the
potential ROI is going to be, who’s going to be the customer. The more “If you’re a National
you acquire that kind of Stage Gate process, the more you will rule
out and be unsuccessful with truly innovative disruptive technology Laboratory, you have the
programs because everything needs to fit in a box or into a marketing luxury of doing a high
plan schema. The very nature of revolutionary ideas is that they are
paradigm changers, which means you don’t know the market. Imagine percentage of highly
back when trying to define 20 years ago what the market would
have been for the internet. If something is truly new to the world, the innovative projects because
marketers will say this is too risky, or can I dole out money in slight little you’ve got a mission space
increments and put you to a schedule.
that says if it’s evolutionary
To me, true innovation is the disruptive, not the evolutionary kind.
and industry can do it, you’re
For us, if we’re truly going to change the paradigm and prevent not allowed to do it.”
technological surprise, one of the metrics that you’re going to use is
that the innovation is not easily emulated or copied. The counter to it is
just too quick and too easy, right?
And how do you make this revolutionary innovation happen?
To be successful with this bold type of innovation, you absolutely need
to have a champion. And that person has to put together a team.
We have found that the real interesting problems that we tackle are
systems level problems that are interdisciplinary. So, you need to have
a diverse team by the way of not just having all mechanical engineers
or all electrical engineers or all material sciences. And that’s one of the
real reasons the National Laboratory has biologists and psychologists
and cultural anthropologists, etc. Because the real tough problems in
life, the ones that are really going to be disruptive, they require that kind
of interplay. It’s those edges of the different technologies. And so, you
need to allow a team to do a bit of dynamic drifting. You’ve got to give
them some space to not say here’s the schedule, here’s the cost. In a
month, come up with it. You’ve got to allow a little bit of freedom.
Of course, at some point, there has to be a convergence. And
sometimes, the convergence is because you’ve picked the right
partners and they bring something to the table that you don’t have?
Sometimes it’s just timing. When things get invented, there are different
pieces of the puzzle that when they’re all in place, you now are at that
convergence point and that’s why you need the champion to recognize
and push very, very hard for a prototype, and to create them very fast. I
mean orders of magnitude faster, because what you want to do is build
a prototype. Don’t worry about it being 100 percent. You want to get
it into the hands of users as quickly as possible so you can see where
people could use it and how they’ll use it.
How do you manage, timelines then? Do you build in extra time or do
you not really set deadlines for projects as they’re in play?
If you’re a National Laboratory, you have the luxury of doing a high
percentage of highly innovative projects because you’ve got a mission Anticipate. Innovate.
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to do it. However, all customers have milestones and deadlines. We
attempt to manage timelines by accurately evaluating technology readiness
levels (TRLs) and making realistic schedules based on those TRLs. “We’ve done a lot on modeling
If your boss wants a progress report on innovation tomorrow, how to
and simulation in the
you measure your efforts? What metrics do you use? National Lab here. We had to
So, for us, it’s real simple. What’s the impact on national security that
is a paradigm–changer. That’s number one. Number two, is there a
build nuclear weapons and
systems–level vector of differentiation? In other words, it’s not just an assure the President of the
interesting little widget. What’s the big hierarchical problem you’re
trying to solve and do we have a systems level vector of differentiation United States by letter every
in here, magic foo–foo dust, something nobody else has. And the third
thing is are there individual technology differentiators that can’t be
year and by fundamental
easily emulated that are imbedded in there. information data that by six
We’ve done a lot on modeling and simulation in the National Lab here.
nines, 99.9999%, those
We had to build nuclear weapons and assure the President of the things would never go off
United States by letter every year and by fundamental information data
that by six nines, 99.9999%, those things would never go off when when they’re not supposed to
they’re not supposed to and always go off when they are supposed to.
Now, because of the Salt Treaties, we could actually never set one off.
and always go off when they
How do we know we can guarantee this? Through our modeling and are supposed to.”
simulation.
Now let’s take this further. Say that you’re building a product – you’re
building a car. You have to assure that it will always work to six nines,
but you can never turn the key on. How do you do that? Our solution
would be to create an awesome modeling and simulation capability to
ensure success.
To give you an example, a company comes to us and says we’ve got
a fighter jet. We always used to test this by going to China Lake and
shooting 20 millimeter high explosive incendiary HEI rounds into the
wing box and we just shoot hundreds of them – to test that our planes
are safe. And we say, yeah, but that doesn’t tell you enough. You need
to shoot millions. We can do that in modeling and in simulation that
most organizations . We will model that wing box and we have hydro
dynamic RAM effect because it’s a wet wing. The bullet goes in this big
and it goes out like a grapefruit, right? And we can simulate further, too.
There’s fire when you get in there. There’s structural dynamic effects.
So testing can be derived from modeling and simulation for the worst
case scenario.
I’m going to give you an example of how we helped one company,
Goodyear. Goodyear was the last US tire company that was in existence.
You say, well, what do you guys care? Well, from a national security
standpoint, tires are a war material. You don’t want to count on a
foreign government for them necessarily. And basically, the French,
Michelin and the Japanese, Bridgestone, were putting Goodyear out
of business. And the government asked us: would you please go look
at their factory and see how they can improve their business; they just
assumed that it was a manufacturing problem. Well, when we looked
Anticipate. Innovate.
at it, we said what their problem is really a design problem. Because
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6. the innovator’s interview 6
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new designs every one or two years. And then, there would be a lot of
iterations before the original equipment manufacturer, or car company,
would even approve it.
We showed them the knowledge of how to do this modeling simulation
for tires and transferred the technology and the process knowledge to
them. Now, what was good for us is we got all that rich experience that
they have in polymer science and we got rich, rich data we can use for
the future. And for Goodyear, rather than one to two per year or two,
they now do eight to ten designs per day. That’s a paradigm change.
And that was basically an introduction of software.
Software and hardware because you also need the hardware to be able
to support the simulations. Goodyear is getting the R&D 500 Awards
for their run flat tire and all the kind of innovations that are occurring
now as part of how they can do things in a different way. Even better,
about a year ago, the French and the Japanese realized this change
and actually created a consortium to try to emulate a little bit of what
Goodyear was able to do. Sandia has a role to make US industries more
competitive, to prevent technological surprises. But, they’ve got to go
do it on their own. We just get them started.
Do you find that companies traditionally approach you, are you going
out and seeking partners in industry that you can basically support?
Do you seek out opportunities for improvement?
It’s both. If we see a problem set and we know that we have some
gaps where a company would be a beautiful part of our dream team,
we’re going to approach them. But, we’ve got to be sure that we do that
such that there’s a fairness to the opportunity. We can’t introduce an
unfair opportunity into an industry. We have to be sure we approach
everybody in an industry do this in an open fashion. If industry
approaches us, there has to be a national security issue or problem for
us to be involved. But, national security issues are far reaching if you
really think about this. Is food a national security issue? Absolutely. Is
cyber security? Absolutely. Are transportation and water? Yes.
It seems as if the health of the overall economy in general is a
security issue.
Absolutely, it is, and that’s why we also have economists on our teams.
What do you think is the number one indicator of a healthy
innovation program?
There are several indicators. Dynamic drifting must be allowed and in
evidence. Strong multidisciplinary teams that constantly interface with
each other. Open competition of ideas. And finally – leadership. A team
without a leader is useless. The military knows it. Everybody knows it.
There needs to be a champion.
As far as research and opportunity identification all the way to
prototyping and launch and then post–launch analysis, where would
Anticipate. Innovate.
you say it is that Sandia excels?
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7. the innovator’s interview 7
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research – great. Idea generation – great. I mean, if you hire as many
Ph.D.s as we do from the best universities in the country, they ought to
be some of the best idea generators and thinkers, right? I mean, we’ve “When they say R&D – is it R,
got about 8,000 people that work here of which we’ve got about 4,000
Ph.D.s in engineering science, etc. That’s enough to staff about 150 or is it really D? If you really
universities. did portfolio management
Concept development is good, but market analysis, absolutely not and looked at their portfolio
– terrible at that, business development – terrible at that, technical
development – great, market development – terrible. We don’t hire and said I want to know
marketers. That’s not what we’re about. Launch – if it’s a onesy or a
twosy, or small quantity. If it’s a specific threat, a specific problem,
what is big R – truly concept
then our launch is excellent because we have a level of expertise that development, new to the
nobody else has. But, if you’re thinking about like a new product launch,
terrible at that. And that’s why we need those partnerships. We need to world– what they’re doing is
get somebody who’s good at that in industry so that we can transfer the
technology to them and let them help us in turn.
D. That’s not innovation.”
And in terms of just resource planning, do you think that’s a function
of the fact that you’re not a profit driven entity, so it just doesn’t
come into play as often?
Well, yes, but the other thing is if you look at large companies like let’s
say Lockheed Martin or Boeing or any of those companies, I mean,
they’re spending about 15 percent on R&D. But don’t get fooled.
When they say R&D – is it R, or is it really D? If you really did portfolio
management and looked at their portfolio and said I want to know what
is big R – truly concept development, new to the world– what they’re
doing is D. That’s not innovation.
Exactly, which is one of the biggest challenges that companies have–
public companies especially – to overcome.
It’s about overcoming an aversion to risk. Any risk. So basically, why do
they do Stage Gate? Stage Gate is a risk averse process for risk averse
people. And as long as they hang onto that risk aversion, they should
not do innovation. If they say I’ve got to do it by Stage Gate, they are
so risk dominated, they are not in the innovation game. It’s too rich
for their blood. They want the margins they get from it, but they’re not
willing to pay the penalty.
So, how does one build a culture that’s comfortable with risk and
that’s taking the right kinds of risk?
Well, that’s a very good question. You need leadership that allows
you to take risks so you can anticipate change and survive. You start
asking yourself of the Fortune 500 companies over the last 50 years,
how many of them are still in existence? About two. And you ask, why?
Well, part of the equation is that the structure of the industry changes.
We’ve watched the structure of the automobile industry change before
our eyes. We’ve watched them have blind spots. Certain innovative
things that they should have been doing, they didn’t do. They didn’t have
innovation from the standpoint of what Toyota did, for example, in the
hybrid market or in the reliability market. US car makers didn’t produce
Anticipate. Innovate.
many innovations in these key areas. That represents an aversion to risk.
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8. the innovator’s interview 8
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What would you say is the best way to maintain energy at a
cultural level on innovation, getting people inspired, engaged and
participating in the innovation process?
So, my best thing is champions always have passion. Passion doesn’t
come around profits as much as it comes around mission space.
Don’t give these people so much profit motive as give them a mission
space motive.
What skills or what qualities do you think make an individual good
at innovation?
Broad inter–technical competencies, a strong team player, and by
that I mean someone who can work with someone outside their own
social style. Because they’re going to be on a team with all kinds of
different people. They all have to complement each other – people who
are analytical that are really the foundation of data; people who are
the expressive–types who are very creative and very people oriented
rather than product oriented; people who are drivers that are extremely
options oriented and going for a product and show me the options and
I have the authority to make a decision, I will pull the trigger; whereas
the analytical guys will always say they never have enough data to
make a decision; and also the amiable types that really pull the team
together and solicit everyone’s input. You need to have all those kinds
of people on a team and every one of them has to be somewhat flexible
so that if I’m an expressive, I don’t insist that you interact with me in an
expressive manner.
What can you learn from the team at Sandia to better innovate?
• Better anticipate the future and identify opportunities for growth: What methods are you using to
keep on top of long-term trends and the driving forces shaping today’s business landscape? Are there
processes or resources in place to identify and focus on new growth areas for the business? Is there a
shared vision for where the organization will be in 3 years? 5 years? 10 years?
• Enabling ‘Dynamic Drifting’: How are you giving teams the time – and permission – to explore
innovative opportunities? How are you letting them get away from typical process and out of their
comfort zone to learn something new?
• Defining your level of acceptable risk: Have you defined and communicated what an acceptable
level of risk is in your organization? Do employees know what it’s OK to take a risk – and when it’s not?
To learn more about the research, tools and training you need to better anticipate change and move innovation
forward, visit us at getfuturethink.com.
Anticipate. Innovate.
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