Propelling Scientists Into New Problem Finding Territory

When I visited Japan, Toshiba Corporation told me, “When we hire new scientists and engineers, we keep them out of research and development for two years. Instead, we place them into the sales department to begin their careers. We want them to learn that their job is to learn the problems of the customer. We want them to know we are not going to hand them problems to solve. We want them to know that innovation begins with finding problems to solve.”

Problems to be solved can be found anywhere. The valuable lesson from Toshiba, and other Japanese organizations, was they engaged all employees in finding and solving problems in their work as a daily habit. New ideas were acknowledged and celebrated.