As creator of the Segway "human transporter," a wheelchair that climbs stairs, and other groundbreaking inventions, Dean Kamen is widely recognized as an innovator. In a keynote presentation kicking off the InformationWeek Spring 2003 Conference on Sunday evening, Kamen offered his thoughts about why innovation is lacking within so many companies and what they can do about it.

Riding a Segway scooter onto the stage and slowly cruising back and forth as he spoke for more than an hour, Kamen discussed innovation's "rude realities" and offered suggestions about how businesses can improve their innovative capabilities.

Innovation "is a tough game" that's hard to describe and even more difficult to develop as a strategy, Kamen said. Daily agendas at his Deka Research and Development Corp. don't say "10:00: Innovate," he said. And he presented several tongue-in-cheek development process charts with steps like "Dark night of the innovator" and "Then a miracle happens."

Risk, failure, and unpredictability are unavoidable, Kamen said. So he suggested that projects should "fall behind schedule sooner so there's more time to catch up." While that initially sounded like more of Kamen's humor, he made the point that the time to take chances and experiment is early in a project when there's time to recover from missteps, not later when specifications are set, customer expectations are high, and correcting problems carries a higher price.

Because the brightest, most innovative people push boundaries more than other employees, Kamen said, it's inevitable that they will also have failures. In many companies where failure isn't an option, these best-and-brightest are punished for their failures. Failures should be celebrated to encourage innovation and risk-taking. "Most big companies haven't yet figured out how to make failure a part of the process. To err is human. Unfortunately, it's not company policy," he said.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to innovation is when companies have become so good at what they do that innovating becomes difficult. "It's hard to change. We all get stuck in the way we think," Kamen said. As examples, he cited circuit-board makers who sought better ways to drill holes in the boards while others were developing surface-mount technology, and manufacturers of complex adding machines, none of which made the jump to making calculators. It's the myopia of experience, not a lack of knowledge, that limits innovation, he said.

Kamen's other bits of wisdom included:

-- "Great technology alone doesn't always constitute innovation. Technology is one piece of it."

- "Projects need management. People deserve leadership."

-- The time to innovate is during the good times, not when the competitive pressure is on. Unfortunately, Kamen said, businesses are reluctant to change when things are going well.

-- Kamen concluded with an appeal for support for the U.S. Foundation for Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST), an organization that creates programs to motivate and inspire young people to pursue careers in technology and engineering, the very people needed to help spur innovation, he said.