The innovation management method of the Skunk Works has profoundly influenced the management innovation of the whole world's technology industry for decades. On November 11, 2018, the closing ceremony of the Zhuhai Air Show. At about 10:55 in the morning, a formation of four J-20 fighter jets flew over the scene at a low altitude to present the 69th birthday of the Chinese Air Force. J-20. The innovation management method of the Skunk Works has profoundly influenced the management innovation of the whole world's technology industry for decades. On November 11, 2018, the closing ceremony of the Zhuhai Air Show. At about 10:55 in the morning, a formation of four J-20 fighter jets flew over the scene at a low altitude to present the 69th birthday of the Chinese Air Force. During the performance, the J-20 opened the bomb bay and showed the mysterious Pili-15 missile. This is also the first public demonstration of the J-20 opening the built-in bomb bay and showing off the new missile. Five days ago, the J-10B aircraft equipped with the first vector engine showed its super maneuvering at the air show, and completed flying movements such as falling leaves and cobra maneuvers, which also shocked the world. J-10B and J-20 are both masterpieces of Chengfei 611 Institute. Cheng Fei, who was dubbed "Cheng Loma" by military fans, has enjoyed great popularity in recent years. In addition to the limelight at the Zhuhai Air Show, it has also repeatedly won large orders in the international arms trade market. Some Jagged Army fans even rhetoric about wine, and now they look around the world and are qualified to rival Cheng Fei in the sky in the future. Skunk Works, this strange name comes from the working environment in the early days of its establishment. The 75-year-old Skunk Works has grown from 23 people to 45,000 people. It has developed the vast majority of advanced fighter aircraft for the United States, including a series of legendary aircraft such as F-80, F-104, U2, SR-71, F-117A, as well as F-22 and F-22, which are known as the benchmark of the fifth generation aircraft. 35. The Skunk Works has a restless gene since it was born in the past. The famous "14" management principles of Skunk have not only changed the organization of scientific research in the aviation industry, but also profoundly affected the innovation of the entire world's technology industry for decades. manage. 1. Create Skunk Good visibility at Leipheim Airport, Germany, on July 18, 1942. At 8:40 a.m., after all three failed test flights, Messerschmitt's chief test pilot Fritz Wendell began the fourth test flight attempt of the ME-262 jet. The daring Wendell came up with an astonishing plan: use the front brakes to force the high-speed taxiing plane to bow its head. It's a push-pull method of takeoff that, if it fails, will leave the German ace test pilot and the jet that has been secretly researched for years shattering the sky, but it's the only way to save the ME-262. Accelerate, accelerate...white line, hit the brake - the ME-262 really leveled up. Wendell, who was holding the joystick, obviously felt the increase in the stick force, but with a little stick, the plane left the ground effortlessly. There were cheers one after another from behind. This flight became the first successful test flight of ME-262, the legendary fighter jet that made the Allied forces change its color in the late World War II, and also the first successful test flight of a jet aircraft that could be put into actual combat in human history. Before that, the sky of the entire World War II battlefield was dominated by piston fighters. The successful test flight of the ME-262 jet opened a new page in the history of air warfare in the world, and greatly shocked the Americans on the other side of the Atlantic. At that time, the struggle for air superiority has become the key to the outcome of the war. In terms of overall technical performance, the ME-262, with its jet engines and swept wings, was a generation ahead of any other aircraft of World War II. If the Americans want to win the Second World War, they must develop an aircraft that can compete with the ME-262. But at this time the Americans have not yet decided whether to engage in jet planes. Americans were rather confused at first. Plans for an XP-38 aircraft were first proposed, using a piston-engine-driven contra-rotating propeller design. But when the flight speed was successfully increased to Mach 0.75, it encountered a problem of compressibility effect. Even if you find the world's leading experts in the field of pneumatics at that time - Professor von Karman and Professor Miliken of the California Institute of Technology, you can't solve this problem very well. After everyone agreed that this was an unsolvable conundrum, Americans finally turned their attention to jets. At the beginning, it was not a completely independent research and development route. First, it copied the jet aircraft imported from the UK in the early years to create a jet test aircraft numbered XP-59A, and then based on the XP-59A. Several jets were copied, but failed repeatedly for technical reasons. In May 1943, the U.S. Army and major aircraft companies held a conference in Washington on the direction of future aircraft development. At the meeting, Hall Hibbard, head of Lockheed, believed that jet engines were still in their infancy and could not compete with piston aircraft, and publicly expressed support for the development of piston aircraft. But with the strong desire of the military and young designers, Hall Hibbard and another enlightened leader, Robert Gross, made a favor that would change the history of world aviation in the future. The genius and eccentric designer Kelly Johnson is still allowed to continue his research on jet aircraft, provided that Kelly Johnson has to find a way to form his own engineering department, find a way to find production staff, and find a way to find office space [2]. So Kelly Johnson, 33, hand-picked 23 familiar engineers and 80 skilled workers to build a secret beside a foul-smelling plastic factory, using packing boxes of idle engines and tents rented by the circus Temporary building - this is the original Skunk Works. On June 15, 1943, Lockheed submitted a design proposal to the U.S. Army Air Corps Air Tactical Service Command (ATSC) based on the L-140 jet development program. Two days later, Lockheed was officially authorized to design an aircraft under the scheme, designated XP-80, and the design work had to be completed within 180 days. This is Skunk Works' first order. 180 days to develop a brand new replacement model is almost an impossible task in the aviation field. So, Kelly Johnson and a group of young designers who had long been tired of the red tape in the system and wanted to break the rules made a decision that broke the boat: Subtract everything unnecessary. In order to create a new and efficient way of collaboration, Skunk Works has issued 10 management rules. These 10 rules were later refined by Kelly Johnson until they became the famous "14 rules" that influenced the management world. In the end, the Skunk Works, which got out of the system, completed the development of the XP-80 (the official military designation F-80) in only 143 days, 37 days earlier than the time specified in the contract, setting a new record in the history of aircraft development. The development of the XP-80 also made the nascent Skunk Works famous. 2. "Come Loma" 27 years later, thousands of miles away in Southwest China. The birth of another research institution that will influence the world aviation community in the future, has many similarities with Skunk Works. In 1970, the fourth year of the Cultural Revolution. In order to deal with the threat from the north, the central government decided to resume the J-9 project that had been shelved for several years. Considering the geographical location and many other factors, the J-9 design team of the 601 Institute left Shenyang for this reason. More than 300 technicians, government officials and workers He went to the southwest with a large number of documents and drawings, including Song Wencong, the chief designer of the later J-10 aircraft. They were originally called Chengdu Air Force 13 Aviation School, and later changed their name to Chengfei 611 School. More tortuous than Skunk Works, Cheng Fei's first work was unsuccessful. The J-9 left the 611 Institute with only pain, experience, and nostalgia. From J-9-IV to J-9VI-II, more than 500 models, test pieces and test equipment have undergone 12,000 high and low-speed wind tunnel tests, 258 structural, strength, system, and special material tests, and 154 calculations. program, more than 15,000 hours of calculation and analysis, but in the end, the J-9 was dismounted. The early 611 had to rely on the transformation of the old-fashioned J-7 to maintain its sense of existence. But from another point of view, without the ten-year experience of the J-9, there may not be the fruitful achievements of Chengfei. Chengfei's J-10 is a milestone masterpiece in the history of Chinese aviation. From the test flight of the first prototype in 2011, the J-20 has become the top of the world that can rarely compete with the fifth-generation aircraft such as the F-22. fighter. The impressive duck-style layout from the J-10 to the J-20 was originally an innovation born out of the J-9. In 1970, in order to meet the Air Force's "Double 26" requirements (the maximum operating Mach number is 2.6 and the static ceiling is 26 kilometers), Song Wencong and a group of young J-9 designers innovatively proposed a duck layout plan. In the design process of the J-9, the 611 has done all the canard + main wing matching schemes that can be done. This understanding of the layout of the canard is second to none in the world. It is no exaggeration to say that without the failed J-9, there may be no later J-10 or even J-20. Speaking of Chengfei 611 Institute, we must mention another old friend who fell in love with each other, Shenfei 601 Institute. Since the 611 Institute stepped out of the shadow of the failure of the J-9, and the Xiaolong and J-10 series have been continuously launched, the 611 Institute, which was spun off from the 601 Institute, seems to have been walking in front of the big brother on the road of independent innovation. From the J-11, J-15 to J-16, Shen Fei has been working hard to imitate the Su-27 series. So much so that "Cheng Loma" and "Sukhoi" in the military fan circle became a temporary ridicule. But from an objective point of view, Shen Fei had his own difficulties. In 1989, the central government organized a military delegation to visit the Soviet Union. During the inspection, the Su-27 left an extremely shocking impression on the Chinese Air Force. The international situation at that time was turbulent, and our vast land and sea frontiers urgently needed more large-range aircraft like the Su-27. Under such a background, the country only needs Shenfei to produce more J-11s, redesign new aircraft, or wait for the J-10, which had been researched for nearly ten years, to be put into production. The Air Force cannot afford to wait. . So Shenfei 601 started from imitating the Su-27, and started a long road of magic reform from J-11, J-15 to J-16. Gemini, both owned by AVIC, have very different development paths. The innovative development of Chengfei 611 Institute is similar to Skunk Works, and it has its forced factors. The "conventionality" of Shenfei 601 is also out of the helplessness of history. The Chengfei team, who left the old system, started from scratch to create a new platform, and naturally they can jump out of the shackles of some original rules. Innovation always has to bear great risks. Perhaps, if there are not many accidental factors, the J-10 is almost a masterpiece of Shenfei. However, history has no ifs. 3. Skunk genes 611 young designers have been trying to build a Chinese-style skunk factory. Academician Song Wencong, who passed away in 2016, once recalled, "At an aviation development symposium in 2000, many aircraft designers felt that in order to speed up the development of new aircraft models, there must be a flexible and quick-response trial production force. Over the years, the road to Skunk Works has been continuously introduced to China, but due to various reasons, the beautiful dream of Chinese aircraft designers is neither qualified nor supported by all aspects in reality." [2] In fact, the famous "14 Rules" of Skunk Works has always contained a very important hidden premise: "Stakeholders such as users, contractors and even employees must agree to and abide by these principles", otherwise the almighty 14 Articles will become empty talk. The famous 14 rules of Skunk Works 1. The Skunk Works manager must be delegated pracTIcally complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a divisionpresident or higher. (It is essenTIal that the program manager have authority to make decisions quickly regarding technical, finance, schedule, or operaTIonsmatters. ) The project manager should have full management rights of the project, and he should be accountable to the department head or above. (The project manager must have sufficient authority to make decisions quickly, whether technical, financial, time-cycle, or administrative.) 2. Strong but small project offices must be provided both by the military and industry. (The customer program manager must have similarauthority to that of the contractor.) Both the military and the contractor side need to prepare small and sufficiently empowered project teams. (The project team on the contractor side has a high degree of autonomy, and the project team on the customer side has a high degree of autonomy.) 3. The number of people having any connection with the project must be restricted in an almost vicious manner. Use a small number of good people (10% to 25% compared to the so-called normal systems). (Bureaucracy makes unnecessary work and must be controlled brutally.) The total number of people involved in the project should be strictly controlled, using fewer and better people (compared to traditionally, only 10% to 25% of people). (The bureaucracy creates a lot of unnecessary work that must be strictly suppressed.) 4. A very simple drawing and drawing release system with great flexibility for making changes must be provided. (This permits early work by manufacturing organizations, and schedule recovery if technical risksinvolve failures.) A simple mechanism for drawing design and release must be provided, with the flexibility to modify the design through it. (This can fully reserve the advance amount for factory processing, and if there is technical risk, it can also be prepared in advance to minimize losses.) 5. There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly. (Responsible management does not require massive technical and information systems.) Fewer reports are better, but important milestones and work must be documented from start to finish. (Responsible stewardship doesn't mean extensive documentation.) 6. There must be a monthly cost review covering not onlywhat has been spent and committed but also projected costs to the conclusion of the program. Don't have the books ninety days late and don't surprise the customer with sudden overruns. (Responsible management does require operation within the resources available.) Do a cost calculation and a cost estimate for the entire project every month, and don't surprise the client with a project that's far beyond the budget. (Responsible management includes operating within limited resources.) 7. The contractor must be delegated and must assume more than normal responsibility to get good vendor bids for subcontract on the project. Commercial bid procedures are very often better than military ones. (Essentialfreedom to use the best talent available and operate within the resources available.) Carefully screen subcontractors, and tenders are often better than those designated by the military. (Find and utilize the best within limited resources.) 8. The inspection system as currently used by the SkunkWorks, which has been approved by both the Air Force and Navy, meets the intent of existing military requirements and should be used on new projects. Push more basic inspection responsibility back to subcontractors and vendors. Don' t duplicateso much inspection. (Even the commercial world recognizes that quality is indesign and responsible operations not inspection.) Existing inspections at Skunk Works have been certified by the Air Force and Navy to meet existing military standards and must be carried over to the new program. Leave the basic inspection to subcontractors, do not repeat so many inspections. (Even in the business world, everyone agrees that quality comes from design and responsible operation, not from inspection.) 9. The contractor must be delegated the authority to testhis final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn't, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles. (Critical, if new technology and the attendant risks are to be rationally accommodated.) The supplier must be responsible for the testing of the product he supplies in all phases of the project, up to the test flight. He can and must test from the very beginning of the project, and if he doesn't, the next tender will be out of his business. (Very important, if there is a new technology, the attendant risks must be reasonably transferred.) 10. The specifications applying to the hardware must beagreed to well in advance of contracting. The Skunk Works practice of having a specification section stating clearly which important military specificationitems will not knowingly be complied with and reasons therefore is highly recommended. (Standard specifications inhibit new technology and innovation, and are frequently obsolete.) The technical indicators of the hardware must be clarified before signing the contract. Skunk Works will pre-clearly list reasons and recommendations for which military specifications will and will not be adopted. (Standard metrics inhibit new technology and innovation, and they are often out of date.) 11. Funding a program must be timely so that the contractor doesn't have to keep running to the bank to support government projects. (Responsible management requires knowledge of and freedom to use, the resources originally committed.) Funding a program must be ongoing so that suppliers don't need to always go to the bank to pick up government programs. (Responsible stewardship includes discretion over previously committed resources.) 12. There must be mutual trust between the military projectorganization and the contractor, the very close cooperation and liaison on aday-to-day basis. This cuts down misunderstanding and correspondence to anabsolute minimum. (The goals of the customer and producer should be the sameget the job done well.) There must be mutual trust between military project companies and suppliers. Trust built on a day-to-day basis can minimize misunderstandings. (Customer and manufacturer goals should be unified to get the job done perfectly.) 13. Access by outsiders to the project and its personnel must be strictly controlled by appropriate security measures. (This is a program manager's responsibility even if no program security demands are made-acost avoidance measure.) Whoever has external access to the project must be strictly controlled, and security permissions to respond need to be set. (This is the responsibility of a project manager, even if no project has pre-set security permissions due to funding.) 14. Because only a few people will be used in engineering and most other areas, ways must be provided to reward good performance by pay not based on the number of personnel supervised. (Responsible management and technical & operationalpersonnel must be rewarded. Responsible management does not permit the growth of bureaucracies.) Since the number of engineers and other personnel involved in the project is relatively small, bonuses and salaries are paid on the basis of performance rather than number of personnel. (Managers, technical and operational staff must be rewarded, and responsible management does not allow bureaucracy to flourish.) The core feature of the skunk management method is to establish a highly autonomous R&D team, with the project manager fully responsible for all issues, fully realizing small team, flat management, and allowing customers to participate in project communication in advance. This way of working by focusing on the target without the tedious transactional work has indeed brought great freedom to the R&D personnel. But this relative freedom is limited. All "skunk management methods" aimed at reducing complexity and improving R&D efficiency will be trapped once they are not recognized and cooperated by customers and collaborators. There are several very clear conditions for the establishment of the 14 regulations of the Skunk Works: One is the first leader of the Skunk Works, who must be someone capable of dealing with senior government officials. Kelly Johnson even had direct calls to Wright Field, Dayton, and his equivalent of the military program office leadership when he was working on the Air Force program in full force. This allows for quick decision-making on any issues that arise. The second is to focus on the best people possible. Skunk Works projects are organized around project managers who have full control over everything. Therefore, the project manager or chief designer of Skunk is often not a specialist in one aspect, but an all-rounder who understands products, technologies, and management. Skunk engineers must also be compound talents who are good at communication and take charge of their own work. Another phenomenon is that none of the top executives at Skunk Works have a Ph.D. or a management degree, but all have a BS or MS in engineering. In other words, Skunk Works is completely product-oriented. It doesn't need eloquent sales elites or shrewd and experienced management experts. It only needs excellent products that can coordinate the design progress, control the R&D pace, and maintain a balance between risk and innovation. manager. The third is small teams and flattening. Skunk Works' R&D team never exceeds 30 people, and sub-teams are less than 8 people. Skunk Works believed that too many people, cumbersome processes and bureaucracy would slow down projects, increase costs and reduce product performance. "There is no need to pull in anyone other than the absolutely necessary. The number of people who really effectively serve the innovation stage of the design work is precisely inversely proportional to the complexity of the product." Another successful condition of Skunk Management is that it creates an energetic environment that stimulates innovation and creativity in employees, and even contractors. Skunk leaders believe, "As long as you're doing everything you know how to do, it doesn't matter if you fail. The most important thing is to learn from failure." This culture has become one of the most important organizational characteristics of Skunk Works. 4. Reshape organizational culture Although Kelly Johnson himself admitted that the skunk management law has restrictions on the environment and conditions of use, the impact of the skunk management law is far beyond the meaning of an innovation sample, and has long inspired innovation in the larger environment. Lockheed Martin's main competitor, McDonnell Douglas' Goblin Factory (later merged into Boeing), was set up in homage to Skunk Works. Companies such as Ford, IBM, and DuPont in the United States, Dassault Breguet in France, and Canon and Honda in Japan have also developed "Project Skunk" in their company operations. AT&T Bell Labs, IBM's The "Deep Blue" project and BMW's i project are all business practices born out of the skunk management law. These small teams, headed by senior product managers, selected from talented young people, were given the goal of developing a new product and told to ignore any company norms and standards that might hinder their innovation. In 1982, Jobs gathered 20 talented designers, left the Apple system, and founded his own "Skunk Works" behind the restaurant in Silicon Valley. Their goal was to make the first Macintosh computer (Macintosh). Two years later, the launch of the Macintosh (Mac for short) became an epoch-making masterpiece in the history of personal PCs. In 2002, a special team under Alibaba settled in Hangzhou Lakeside Garden, the hometown of entrepreneurship. After 391 days and nights of secret development, it finally launched a website that changed the way Chinese people shop - Taobao.com. The innovation management principles of the Skunk Works have been replicated in every corner of modern business, and the "Skunk Team" has become the standard for many high-tech companies to incubate innovation projects. But we must understand that for a unit like the Chengfei 611 Institute to drive skunk-style innovation, the situation is much more complicated. Different from the research and development of consumer technology products, Chengfei is faced with a huge super system. From customers to collaborators, the extremely complex communication system has already locked many processes, and the innovation of the program needs to be understood and It is not easy to cooperate. Consumer technology companies face many individual customers, and the main innovators can rely on their own appeal to achieve traction on customer behavior. From a successful sample to the transformation and innovation of the entire huge system, the process is extremely difficult and long, but we cannot say that it is the relocation of high-level decision makers. In fact, the achievements of Chengfei's efforts in recent years are obvious to all. From the first J-10, Xiaolong, and then to the J-20, Cheng Fei Ren has been exploring an innovative road to rapidly develop aircraft. When necessary, organize a flexible and fast R&D team, or set up a new professional research room, and entrust the technical director with heavy responsibilities. These are the inspirations Chengfei designers got from the Skunk Works. Skunk Works has reshaped the organizational culture, but some of the details of the Skunk Management Act are also fading away in today's aerospace industry R&D environment. First, the design of modern high-performance aircraft is much more complex, the size of the design team is 10-20 times larger than before, and the number of collaborative units has also increased exponentially. The Skunk Works team of 30 theory no longer applies in some scenarios. The coordination, discipline and rigorous requirements of a large team will conflict with free innovation to a certain extent. The second is the extensive application of CAD and CAE software. Aircraft design has fully entered the computer-aided era. Under the intelligent collaborative process, the skunk management method is facing redefinition and positioning. From the secret first flight of the first U-2 aircraft in 1955, to the F-117A stealth bomber in the 1970s, to the F-22 in the late 1980s, and then to the F-35 in the late 20th century, this stage can be said to be The golden age of Skunk Works. In 2000, Lockheed Martin announced a large-scale organizational restructuring, and Skunk Works was restructured into Lockheed Martin's Advanced Research and Development Programs division. With the transformation of Lockheed Martin's platform-centric business to a new defense enterprise combining system synthesis, IT field and traditional business, Skunk Works, as Lockheed's core competitiveness, enables the company to move from platform to system , the ability to bid on any defense project from traditional to "network-centric warfare" based. The reorganized Skunk Works, in addition to continuing to undertake the exploration of Lockheed Martin's new generation of fighter aircraft, has also extensively expanded new research fields such as unmanned aerial vehicles, new generation airships, and cruise missiles. Today's Skunk Works is standing on a higher historical starting point, writing a new legend. end If the Skunk Works of the 1990s was still centered on Lockheed Martin's aerospace division, today's Skunk Works in California is engaged in a high-investment, high-risk innovation that breaks the rules and discards the Stick to the rules and become a paradise for creative elites to give full play to their abilities and realize their dreams. Skunk Works never wanted to be famous. But Skunk Works became very famous in the early 1990s [3]. The F-117A's elusive strike during Operation Desert Storm shook the world, and the Pentagon released footage of the attack on Baghdad, which quickly spread around the world via cable. Skunk Works is no longer a top-secret organization, and even gradually began to actively promote its products at major airshows to win more external recognition and seize the opportunity of the future aviation market. From the first president Kelly Johnson, to the second president, "Father of Invisibility" Ben Ritchie, the third president Sherman Munning, the fourth president Jack Gordon, the fifth president Frank ·Cappuccino, to current president Alton Romig, the top leaders of Skunk Works, has never stopped promoting innovation. Academician Yang Wei, chief designer of the J-20, said in a speech in 2018: "We are a large-scale system project, and real innovation cannot come from the top, but must be found from the bottom, from the part to the whole. Only integration It takes a collection of innovations to truly contribute to the entire equipment, including the system.†And the innovation pace of Chinese aviation industry people has never stopped, they let China's blue sky continue to bloom with new surprises. The advent of almost every new work is a strong push for system innovation. Of course, the force driving change is not only the Chengfei 611 Institute. There are many more stories here. 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German ME-262 jet
Skunk Works' first workshop
The J-10B Cobra maneuver at the Zhuhai Air Show
Su-27 fighter
President Reagan presents Kelly Johnson (right) with the National Security Medal in 1953, with Mrs. Johnson in the center
Engineer of the XP-80 aircraft
Jobs and the early Macintosh computers
Jack Ma and the Taobao development team of Lakeside Garden
F-117A "Nighthawk" fighter