TAKE TIME- Be innovative (End-user/Incremental innovation)
The story of Rolls Royce Part one

Radical innovation is concerned with exploration of new technology and is fundamentally different from End-user/ incremental innovation that is concerned with exploitation of existing technology. End-user innovation involves interaction the consumers have with the products they buy and how they might improve a product they are frustrated with. The story of Henry Royce the founder of the Rolls Royce Car Company is one of the best stories I could find to illustrate End user/ Incremental Innovation. It is said that Henry Royce started making one of the world’s most luxurious cars with an investment of £30. If you can recall watching a movie set in the late 19 century early 20th century you will notice that most of the cars from that period were very noisy and Smokey.

Henry Royce owned one of these cars at the time, and was determined to make the first car without a noisy and Smokey engine. Cars in this period were fitted with two cylinders, but Sir Royce dreamed a way of fitting six cylinders and having a creative engine to eliminate the noise and smoke.

Royce had always worked hard and was renowned for never eating proper meals which resulted in his being taken ill first in 1902 and again in 1911. Ill health had forced his move away from Derby in 1912. In the same year, he had a major operation in London and was given only a few months to live by the doctors. In spite of this he returned to work but was prevented from visiting the factory, which had moved to larger premises, fitted out to detailed plans by Royce, in Derby in 1908. He insisted on checking all new designs and engineers and draughts men had to take the drawings to be personally checked by him, a daunting prospect with his well-known perfectionism.

If you ignore the fact that he never had proper meals and focus on his passion and determination to see improvements, then you will realize at the heart of end user innovation is passion and determination. Tomorrow I will be finishing the story of Henry Royce in the mean time I want you to think if of any products that you dislike at the moment? How might you improve it for us and you to like it?