We hear Jobs, Jobs, Jobs; we need jobs. This blog brings to the table a view that we must have a proactive approach to creation of jobs.
Drawing on
Metaphors from M21C thinking, the concept of planting PIE Teams is a proactive way to get people thinking about the primary functions that create Things and therefore Jobs. The graphic expresses this with emphasis on hands and fingers. A new metaphor for the six hat team is presented using the fingers of a hand and the arm.
Earlier thinking had been to plant PIE in Schools but later thinking focuses on also planting PIE in the Jobless Networking groups. Rather than calling it Pre-college Innovative Engines (PIE), maybe we should call it Productive Innovative Engines (PIE) which would apply to Schools as well as Jobless Networking groups. Both would benefit from PIE Team thinking.
In the previous metaphor of a PIE Team, a room was used with the Entrepreneur (Business Hat) in the center and four corners representing the Marketplace (Customer Hat), Production/Service (Technologist Hat), Design/Development (Engineer Hat) and Research (Scientist Hat). The hall represents Global Supply Chain (Logistics Hat) which connects rooms together with channel for flow of supplies and goods between rooms. The Entrepreneur (Business Hat) manages the resources of all hats toward a productive, efficient and profitable enterprise.
Recent thinking has evolved another metaphor which uses the fingers of the hand and arm to denote another view of the PIE Team. In the hand graphic the PIE Team is represented by the fingers as follows:
• Thumb – Business (Entrepreneur)
• Index – Customer (Marketplace)
• Middle – Technologist (Production/Service)
• Ring – Engineer (Design & Development)
• Little – Scientist (Research)
• Arm – Logistics (Global Supply Chain) – Moves Stuff
Bringing all five fingers together is the PIE Team. This metaphor gives flexibility to show the Business – Entrepreneur (Thumb) interacting with the other fingers either individually as shown by the thumb and index holding a product that is of interest to the Marketplace. In other cases it may be focusing on the Production/Service, Design & Development and Research. In this metaphor the arm is the Logistics which moves stuff in the global supply chain. One thing to note, the focus shifts dependent on the product development cycle.
In one of the videos of Partners for the 21st century education there is a young person that says "I am learning my fingers are the gateway to my future." She is probably thinking of a musical instrument but the words also apply to the PIE Team Fingers Metaphor.
Recently when I was sharing this PIE Team concept with Dr. Margaret Arbuckle - Guilford Education Alliance and Mr. George Clopton - Polo Ralph Lauren, George said it sounds like the “Skunk Works”. I had not thought about it like that but it does fit. I suspect they had PIE Teams in the Skunk works”.
Wikipedia cites “Skunk Works is an official alias for Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Development Programs (ADP), formerly called Lockheed Advanced Development Projects. Skunk Works is responsible for a number of famous aircraft designs, including the U-2, the SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117 Nighthawk, and the F-22 Raptor. Its largest current project is the F-35 Lightning II, which will be used in the air forces of several countries around the world. Production is expected to last for up to four decades.
The designation "skunk works", or "skunkworks", is widely used in business, engineering, and technical fields to describe a group within an organization given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects”
More information is available at
“Skunk works”.
In the graphic of all hands out represents PIE Teams working together to create Jobs in an enterprise environment.
I summit this to the table which is thinking about how to best create jobs. It may not create the jobs immediately but would provide a strong position for future product development that requires people with appropriate skills and entrepreneurial thinking from being part of a PIE Team.
Post Script 12/7/2010
Continued thinking of the PIE Team hand metaphor today expands the palm to include the following:
- Products, Processes and Service (Triggered by "What Grows an Economy" blog)
- Appropriate Resources
- Skill Sets & I-STEM
Appropriate Resources and Skill Sets & I-STEM are mashed together to get the appropriate Products, Processes or Service solutions.
Adding the palm strengthens the PIE Team Metaphor. Feedback is welcome.
In the http://bcswonline.blogspot.com/2008/03/innovation-customer.html blog the ISCORPIO Metaphor was introduced with emphasis on Innovation and Customer. Also in that blog a diagram of “Thinking Phase Views” ( shown below) was described that shows degrees of freedom of innovation beginning wide with outward thinking, then progressing to critical and then inward as the solution options become narrowly defined. This metaphor of the “Fish-Hook-Fry” was an early metaphor thinking that illustrates this narrowing of the degrees of freedom in the innovation development process. 
