Capturing the real value of innovation tools

When Intel announces yet another breakthrough in chip technology, the triumph is as much a testimony to the rapid advances of modern development tools as it is to the skills of the research and development team. Indeed, the exponential performance gains of integrated circuits have fueled dramatic advances in computer simulation and tools for today's design teams. This progress has now come full circle: Today's complex chips would be impossible to design and manufacture without the tools that they helped to create. Not surprisingly, companies in many fields have invested billions of dollars, expecting that these innovation tools will lead to huge leaps in performance, reduce costs and somehow foster innovation. But tools, no matter how advanced, do not automatically confer such benefits. In the excitement of imagining how much improvement is possible, companies can easily forget that these artifacts don't create products and services all by themselves. People, processes and tools are jointly responsible for innovation and development. In fact, when incorrectly integrated into an organization (or not integrated at all), new tools can actually inhibit performance, increase costs and cause innovation to founder.(1) In a nutshell, tools are only as effective as the people and organizations using them.