Louise Francesconi
Vice President Raytheon Company, President Missile Systems |
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Recently, Technology Today talked with Louise Francesconi about technology and innovation at Raytheon Missile Systems (RMS). She discussed such topics as her approach to creating a technology vision and direction, the importance of disruptive technologies and radical innovation, and ways to foster tomorrow's technologists.
TT: What are some of the attributes you believe are essential to effective technology leadership?
LF: Technology has to be based on a desire to learn, invent and to focus on the future. I think encouraging people to be entrepreneurial in their thoughts and to explore their thinking are critical parts of technology leadership. Clearly, people who are leaders in technology have very rich technical backgrounds. They are people who wake up every day inspired by technology, and I believe that's required for the job.
TT: How has your past experience prepared you for your role here at Raytheon?
LF: I came in through the finance side of the business and I've been here for 33 years, so I've become very connected to what we do from a technology perspective. I became particularly interested in the match between technology and business success very early on, when I was responsible for helping shape where we spent our money in research and development (R&D), and in bidding expense. I had to get very involved in the programs, the technologies, and how it would shape our future. Additionally, I got to sit in on a lot of meetings where there were huge debates about technology investments. This is when I began to understand the tradeoffs between technology, investments, business growth and skills.
TT: What people or programs influenced your career?
LF: My dad was an engineer in the missile business for 40 years, and he's very much a Renaissance man. His deep reflection and involvement in technology was always an inspiration to me. Likewise, I got interested very early on by the competitive nature of our business. I was interested in where you spend your dollars, where you get your competitive edge, and how it affects the shaping of your future business potential. It was not one program or one event; it was this mix of technology, of products, of incredibly smart, committed people. That's what has kept me here.
TT: In your role, you're responsible for developing and executing RMS' integrated technology and research vision and strategy. How would you formulate a vision that encompasses RMS' wealth of technologies, programs and priorities?
LF: Most importantly, you have to understand where the customer is going; understand the problems that are really on the fringe and understand what they're trying to solve. What are the requirements, what are the new solutions which are going to come into play to fulfill those requirements, and then what do you need to do within industry to map technologies forward to that?
In a business like ours, where we buy a fair amount of our product, technology is not just in what we do, but is in what our supply base does. Having technology road maps that are richly partnered between the customer's needs and requirements, where we're investing our dollars, and where our suppliers need to invest their dollars is the real interplay for me in terms of an integrated technology road map.
TT: One of your responsibilities is RMS' research and development efforts. How do you foster those programs?
LF: First of all, we have a sort of growth mantra here that says we're going to continue to grow. This forces everybody to really have a spirit of innovation. When you have a spirit of innovation, you have to be focused on what that's about, and R&D is a critical piece of that. Now, we're structured with very active advanced-programs organizations. I have three advanced-programs organizations right now.
I have a group focused on advanced programs, a group focused on advanced programs in missile defense in space, and a group focused right now on NASA's series of advanced programs. I would be excited if I could get 10 more of those advanced programs, because it would show our focus on investment and commitment in a lot of areas of the marketplace. I am a believer that structure is a critical part of making sure you have the right amount of money, and I am willing to invest in the future, not just the short term.
TT: This year, Raytheon redefined its core markets and targeted strategic business areas for growth. Can you tell us about your role in this process and which areas you believe RMS' technology and research can influence most?
LF: It came out of the strategic planning process, and it really came around our discussions of refining these core markets and core capabilities.
Traditionally, our core capabilities said "missiles." We refined our core capabilities to include the word "effects." This broadened the concept of where we are going and where our customer is going.
Our business is all about effects; whether that is information effects, hard energy effects, or electronic kill. So, I think it's great that the company broadened its definition to consider the nature of effects.
What's been exciting for me, having been in the missile business for a long time and seeing this movement toward broader effects, is how it plays in total weapons systems — in this netted battlespace — which intersects with so many aspects of Raytheon. For example, sensing; command control, communications and intelligence (C3I) systems; and of course the mission support aspect of it. But those first two — sensing and C3I — how do the effects interplay with those two and give a much bigger, broader solution to our customers? You can see some of them and they are very exciting.
We need to know how our weapon or the effect we are trying to put in the battlespace is affected by both the sensing network and the command and control network. And how do we play on that? It has opened up tremendous new areas, and our technology has been very focused on things like autonomous target recognition and seeker technologies to track moving targets.
Our core skills are very applicable and transferable to what we're doing in some of these other areas. So, what we're finding is that Missile Systems is being used more in the company and we're able to provide solutions in a broader way. So it's very exciting.
TT: There's a new emphasis on radical innovation and emerging disruptive technologies. Can you tell us a little more about these concepts and how they can influence our future success?
LF: Let me go down two paths. RMS is leading the company in aspects of directed energy, which is really a disruptive technology to the missile business. Early on there was some debate about whether Missile Systems was the right place to do directed energy work. I'm very proud because we now have the lead on directed energy in the company, and the company recognizes that we are interested in disrupting ourselves. That's just one example of many places where I believe we need to disrupt ourselves in the future marketplace, because we're the biggest player in the missile business.
The second side is on the process side, and what we're trying to do with innovating our design through the manufacturing process — digital manufacturing, modeling and simulation all the way from the concept to the first cut of the project and the ergonomics of how it gets manufactured. So disruptive innovation, to me, plays on the product side and on the process side. The intersection of those can make you a world-class company.
TT: In what ways is RMS nurturing the culture of radical innovation?
LF: I'm a believer that we need to work collaboratively. I don't believe innovation comes from one thought, one person. I believe it comes from the intersection of minds from different backgrounds. We are trying very much to encourage diversity in thought and participation. The ability to allow people to take risks — for people to see that you as a leader are willing to take these risks, that you as the leader are willing to go into a future that maybe isn't completely clear to you either but you're excited about moving into it — is creating an environment where people are more excited about the future than they are about today.
TT: You touched on diversity in your last answer. Would you be willing to expand on that concept? The diversity of our workforce continues to grow along with opportunities to broaden our scope of expertise, so how do you foster that productive, diverse technology development team?
LF: So many things have come from single bright minds, and I don't want to discount that, especially in the world of technology. However, our future lies in innovative disruptive solutions, which in many cases are the innovative use of mature technology or the innovative use of newer technologies. Innovative disruptive solutions provide an answer to a customer that the customer never could see before.
It takes a certain level of thinking to develop innovative disruptive solutions, and that level of thinking comes from having people look at a problem from many angles, many backgrounds, and many perspectives. We have to have diverse teams in order to really come up with those ideas. Now, you might come up with one brilliant idea as an individual, but to really mature it, really grow it and bring it over the line, you have to have a diverse team of thought around you.
TT: How can we, as professionals, help youngsters get excited about math and science?
LF: As a community, we need to talk more about what we do, and we need to volunteer and get into the schools. There is a huge group of people at Raytheon who are engaged in volunteering in the schools, and Bill Swanson is leading the initiative with MathMovesU.
Those of us who are in this industry, or have the enthusiasm for math and science, have a social obligation to this country and to our children to stimulate interest in what math and science can do for their life and career. I don't think young people have any clue what math and science can mean for them, but they need to know it's important. I have to tell you that when I was in fourth grade I had no idea that I was going to run a missile business so rich with technology, but I knew I needed to do well in math and science.
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