Introduction:-
This case study is about the introduction of continuous-aim firing in the United States Navy. The system, first devised by an English officer in 1898, was introduced into US Navy in the years 1900-1902.
Turning problem to innovation:-
Into the history
· When armaments were short British made use of a venerable fieldpiece that were used from previous generation.
· it was felt that the rapidity of fire was a little slow
· A time-motion expert was then called, in a demo of firing practice noticed that it took a three-second interval extending throughout the discharge of the gun performing the loading, aiming, and firing routines.
· At the sea the gun is mounted on an unstable platform. This constant motion obviously complicates the problem of holding a steady aim.
The earlier solution to the problem:-
· Before 1898 this problem was solved in the following elementary fashion.
1) A gun pointer estimates the range of the target at about 2800 yards.
2) Raised the gun barrel to give the gun the elevation to the target the estimated range by turning a small wheel on the gun that operates elevating gears.
3) Waited until the roll of the ship brought the sights on the target. He then pressed the firing button that discharged the gun.
Further:-In 1898 telescope sights which naturally enlarged the image of the target for the gun pointer were used, but these telescopes moved with the recoil of the gun and Jammed back against the eye of the gunner.
Final overview of the overall problems:-
- Moving platform
- The rapidity: - Pointers had to wait for the one moment in the roll when the sights were brought on the target.
- Firing interval there was a time lag between the pointers impulse to fire the gun and the translation of this impulse into the act of pressing the firing button. So the pointer has to estimate the timing as fire a bit earlier when the sight is slightly off the target and this required a lot of practice and sense an individual artist.
Introduction of continuous aim firing: - (the gun, elevating gear, and telescope)
· To enable the gun pointer to keep his sight and gun barrel on the target throughout the roll of the ship, the gear ratio in the elevating gear was altered to permit a pointer to compensate for the roll of the vessel by rapidly elevating and depressing the gun.
· For maintaining the gun always on the target to improve the sight of the target the telescope was mounted on a sleeve that permitted the gun barrel to recoil through it without moving the telescope.
“The gunnery accuracy in the British and US Navy increased about 3000 percent in six years”
Origin of the idea:-
- The master mind behind this idea is an English officer, Admiral Sir Percy Scott.
The path of the idea:
- In 1898, Admiral Sir Percy Scott was the captain of H.M.S. Scylla For the previous two or three years he had been working on the means of improving gunnery.
- First, in all the guns of the Scylla, he changed the gear ratio in the elevating gear,
- Second, he trigged his telescopes so that they would not be influenced by the recoil
Of the gun.
- Third, he rigged a small target at the mouth of the gun, which was moved up and down by a crank to simulate a moving target By following this target as it moved, and firing at it with a subcalibre rifle rigged in the breech of the gun, the pointer could practice every day
- As a result the pointers turned from indivisual artists/estimater to trained technicians.
life@innovator:
- Admiral Sir Percy Scott had a certain mechanical ingenuity
- His personal life was shot through with frustration and bitterness.
- There was a divorce, and a quarrel with the ambitious Lord Charles Beresford—the sounds of which, Scott liked to recall, penetrated to the last outposts of empire.
- He possessed, like Swift, a savage indignation directed ordinarily at the inelastic intelligence of all constituted authority — especially the British Admiralty.
- Scott was not responsible for the invention of the basic instruments like the gun, elevating gear, and telescope of gunnery.
- Scott's contribution was to bring these three elements, appropriately modified, into a combination that made continuous-aim firing possible for the first time.
About Scott & Sims:-
Ø In 1900 Scott went out china as a commanding officer of H.M.S Terrible and he met an American junior officer William S. Sims who had little ingenuity of Scott.
Ø Slim had same intolerance for spit-and-polish and the same contempt for bureaucratic as Scott.
Ø Slim after careful investigation informed his superiors in Washington that he was not a battle at all—“but a crime against the white race”.
Ø After getting learned about continuous-aiming-firing. He &slim turned to the task of educating the navy at large.
Prepared mind is not enough:-
Ø Scott tried to increase the accuracy by practice and improvement of existing machinery, but not his own initiative, thinking, idea and modify instruments was able to fit this purpose.
Ø The intricate interaction of chance,
Ø The intellectual climate,
Ø Mind, favored the prepared mind to produce sudden changes.
Ø No intelligence can proceed above the threshold of existing data.
Original thinking:-
Ø The tendency of diverting from the process by which new ideas are really produced.
Results:-
Ø 1. The results were expected from method of instructions that implies great generalizations.
Ø Ex: - when class saw Scott reading Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks dismissed the author as he know no more mechanics than one wit in the class.
Ø 2.Of chance
Ø Ex:-an apple falling in an orchard
Ø 3. Towering intelligence preceding some prefigured idea.
Ex like evolution, Scotts chance discovery of continuous aim firing.
Over a period of two years. Slim reiterated three principles (defects):-
Ø First:-By continually citing the records established by Scott’s ship, the Scylla and the terrible supported these data from his own test on an American ship.
Ø Second:-Slim described the mechanism and training procedure instituted by Scott.
Ø Third:-Slim explained that their mechanisms were not adequate to meet the demands of continuous-aim firing. Like elevating gears to fix the position for the proper range, telescope sights of our ship are useless, their cross wires were so thick that they obscured the target, and the attachment of sight to the gun that the recoil system of the gun plunged the eyepiece against the eye of the gun pointer.
Response from Washington (innovation):-
Ø First stage: - no response.
Ø Slim directed his comments to the Bureau of Ordnance and the Bureau of Navigation, in both there was dead silence.
Ø Later discovered to Slims delight, were half eaten by cockroaches.
Ø Second stage:-rebuttal.
Ø Slim felt ill. In his later repots he not only used accumulating data but also changed his voice to clinch the argument.
Ø Equipment used in gunnery practice-as follows:-
Ø (1) Their equipment was in general as good as the British.
Ø (2) As their equipments were good, the trouble must be with the men, nut the gun pointers and the training of gun pointers were the responsibility of the off course on the ships.
Ø (3) Most significant –continuous-aim firing is impossible.
Experiment had revealed that five men at work on the compensate for all of five degrees in ten seconds. By this experiment doubted that Scott’s system of gun firing was not possible.
Ø Difference between standard British equipment and the standard U.S. equipments:-
1. The instruments on Scott’s two ships, the Scylla and the terrible were far better than the standard equipment on our ships.
2. Men could not train in continuous–aim firing until equipment was improved throughout the fleet.
3. The experiments with the elevating gear had been at the Washington Navy Yard. Thus the Bureau of Ordnance calculated, to dispense with the Newton’s first law of motion, which is operated at sea to assist the gunner in elevating a gun mounted on a moving ship.
Ø Third stage:-name calling.
He was told in official endorsements on his reports that there were others quite as sincere and loyal as he and far less difficult; he was called a deliberate falsifier of evidence.
Technological changes in Innovation:-
Ø Steam turbine
Ø The electric motor.
Ø The rifled shell of great explosive extraordinary changes in ship design
Overview:-
Ø 1. The essential idea for change occurred in part by chance, but in an environment that contained all the essential elements for change, and to a mind prepared to recognize the possibility of change.
2. The basic elements –gun, gear and sight.
3. The elements were brought into successful combination by minds not interested in the instruments for themselves. They may be interested in good gunnery, overtly and consciously, their temperaments and aims support this view.
4. Three considerations-
A. Honest and disbelief in the dramatic but sustained claims of the new process.
b. Protection of the existing devices and instruments with which they identified
themselves.
3. Maintenance of the existing society with which they were identified.
5. Dead lock: - between who sought to change and who sought to retain things
Force removed from an unidentified with the mores, conventions and devices of the
society.
Personal identification: -
This purely personal identification with a concept, a convention, or an attitude would appear to be a powerful barrier in the way of easily acceptable change. In Years from 1864-1871 companies were trying to make their personal reputation.
For Ex: -
· Cambria Company started making steel with the help of Bessemer’s process and had obtained a commanding lead over all competitors.
· The British laborers of Cambria's competitors, secure in the performance of their own original techniques, resisted and resented all change.
· The Pennsylvania farm boys, untrammeled by the rituals and traditions of their craft, happily and rapidly adapted themselves to the constantly changing process. They ended by creating an unassailable competitive position for their company.
The danger of limited identifications:-
The different companies did not have the common aim to give a proper output. They were working for different causes even if they were specialized in different field and hence were in danger of limited identification.
Similarly Innovation organizations should combine wok for a common aim rand with good communication rather than trying to make own identities within the organization.
There can be an alternative for this and i.e. “adaptive”. One must be adaptive to different environment of work place such that He/she can work with the organization members.
Inadequate solutions:-
· We are not yet emotionally an adaptive society, though we try systematically to develop forces that tend to make us one.
· Encourage the search for new inventions; we keep the mind stimulated, bright, and free to seek out fresh means of transport, communication, and energy
· There are lots more solutions one can keep his organization running in good environment.
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