Innovation’s Power and Innovation Services Available
Innovation is the life-blood of commerce and the fuel of business competition. Without it, business becomes a thankless and dull struggle for crumb-size shares of commodity-markets. With it, businesses thrive and their employees are inspired, proud and excited to work.
Today, innovators and inventors are almost a luxury in business. Focusing on health and even survival, business strategies typically concentrate myopically on safe, low-risk, high-yield application of resources. Riskier, advance-development projects are either put on hold or eliminated. Because of the yield-risk of such work and the expense associated with this (both salaries and a necessary invention-fostering working environment), inventors often look like “the main drain” to business managers, their accountants and their expensive Professional Management Software packages.
Smart businesses, however, are preparing their competitive edges for better times ahead and innovation is the key ingredient to being ready.
The professional and engineered sound business looks very commodity-like. Products in every class, from ceiling speakers to concert and arena-size systems (Line-Arrays R Us) have little to differentiate them from one another. Some say this is a “matured” industry. The result is that many businesses rely on using nothing more than reduced profit margin, a fragile dealer loyalty and an established brand name.
Cliff Innovations offers the independent creative services of Cliff Henricksen to help generate innovative ideas based on your company’s unique business culture and core competence. A proven and steady “track record” shows I can help you invent unique technologies and products that will create true proprietary competitive advantages for your company’s business. Here are some examples of the impact I have made for former employers:
- By the late 1960’s, Altec-Lansing had declined from a truly dominant player in the engineered sound industry to a tired collection of dated, old-school audio gear conceived in the 1940’s and ‘50’s. Altec was mostly relying on a still-enthusiastic-but-crumbling contractor network and on its famous-but-rusting brand names. More modern products had clearly overshadowed the “green” electronics line (some still with vacuum tube circuitry) and ancient loudspeakers were being out-performed by innovating and business-hungry competitors. Altec was no longer a monopoly. Responsible for Altec’s first R&D function, my invention of the “Manta Ray” horn breathed new competitive life into Altec’s engineered sound business. The “Tangerine” phase plug resuscitated an ancient compression driver line, and both inventions were proliferated into a new line of consumer hifi speakers that drew on successes in the professional business. Manta-Ray and Tangerine became the new Altec hood-ornament. When Altec wanted to make a line of aftermarket speakers for automobiles, I used a twist of their iconic name, calling them “Voice of the Highway”, thus giving them a strong identity with their famous “Voice of the Theater” brand. My innovations, both technological and brand-enhancing, left Altec employees proud and smiling, contractors were professing ever-stronger green-allegiance and Altec was enjoying a surging new competitive advantage.
- When SPL Ltd (now SPL/AVI) contracted to put a new sound system in Meyerhof Symphony Hall in Baltimore, they had a problem: Available speakers that would do the job were simply too heavy for the installed lifting mechanism for the existing system. Replacing the existing lifting system would put the project impossibly out of budget. But recently becoming a US Sound contractor, Fred Curdts soon realized that the new-technology “Coherent Zone” speakers, half to a third of the weight of normal speakers, would cover the room with consistency and authority and would not overload the Meyerhof’s winch system. Our collaborative design was a complete success to the delight of this high-profile customer. This innovative approach to making speakers, my invention and patent, was the only solution available to do this job. This is the same as saying “monopoly”. This is innovation’s most powerful result.
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- At Bose Corporation, after studying the problems that the “triple amplification system” (monitors/backline/mains) had been causing literally every amplified musician (including myself), I invented a sound system that the musician, bandmates and audience could all hear approximately the same. With every musician using such a system on the back-line, the musicians could now all hear the mix that the audience was getting. This eliminated the triple system as well as the “house mix engineer” that even small wedding bands were using. And it empowered the players to hear and play together, at long last, with confidence. As a service to musicians everywhere, this invention is now changing the entire culture of live amplified music. But the benefit to Bose Corporation was far greater. Because of its consumer focus and “nerdy” MIT-centric reputation, musicians and pro sound users dismissed the company as “clueless” and engaged in a particularly vicious sport called “Bose-Bashing”. Today, as a result of the L1™ and the company’s direct engagement with both musicians and prestige instrument makers, Bose enjoys both a greatly-enhanced reputation in the pro and musician community as well as the attention of an entire customer base that heretofore was totally “off the radar”.
Services
Cliff Innovations™ provides concentrated invention and collaboration services, put to bear on any problem or need. Such work often uncovers surprising “latent needs”. (For instance, electronic designers using vacuum tubes never knew they “needed” the transistor until it was invented). What I deliver is the core-basics of inventions, new ideas and new concepts, created and defined as efficiently and as quickly as possible. This work will be your exclusive intellectual property to do with as you please and I will honor this exclusivity with the rock of my personal commitment. I only require being credited with such creations, this also being a patent-office-requirement in any patent applications (assigned to you). It is my intention to turn such ideas over to product designers and manufacturing engineers to make into manufactured products, if that is the required result, and to remain as an advisor to make sure the core of the invention(s) stays on track. My expertise is invention and innovation. Those skilled in the detailed work of engineering, industrial design, manufacture, advertising, marketing and sales will take such inventions or technologies to market and make them compatible with the requirements and culture of your business. I will provide the basic diamond and you and your staff will polish it and make it sparkle. This is the very best and most efficient use of everyone’s specialty. The following are examples of the kinds of services I can provide:
• Brainstorming and collaboration with your company’s executives or staff
• Creation of working prototypes in my shop
• Voicing and diagnostic listening evaluation of complete systems or products to make them sound right
• Advice on driver design, performance, enhancements or cost-reduction
• Creation of copy of all kinds and even personal appearance to support advertising or other promotion.
• Training and education of your staff
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