创新遗产与黎明斯特兰卡夫

“我们对新创新的重点是我们怎样才能去任何人之前的地方，而不是我们如何做得更好。”- 大斯塔产品公司的斯蒂康，Cio和Coo

为什么故事对创新过程很重要?哪些价值观可以灌输给分享故事的创新者?创新领袖如何激励创造者讲述和分享他们的成功和失败的故事?

我们与黎明斯特兰卡夫，Cio和Coo说话马萨产品公司这本书讲述了马萨从第二次世界大战期间的水听器到尖端声创新的历程。作为一家家族企业，马萨专注于增长的使命是通过传承和建立该领域创始人本人的知识来培养的。我们讨论了马萨在历史上对海军舰船、电影院和保龄球馆的影响，同时也触及了创新中的失败和合作的重要性。

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凯蒂:欢迎来到“不为人知的创新故事”，在这里，我们会放大关于洞察力、影响力和创新的不为人知的故事。由Untold Con乐动体育足球tent赞助，我是主持人Katie Trauth Taylor。我们今天的嘉宾是唐恩·马萨·斯坦卡维什。她是Massa Products Corporation的首席信息官和首席运营官，她和她的父亲Don Massa(总裁和首席技术官)领导着一个团队。马萨的每一代人都为公司贡献了自己的一份力量。他们的工作在电声学，超声波传感器和许多其他应用声学产品和服务。乐动体育娱乐道恩，很高兴你能在播客上谈论你们公司自1945年成立以来的创新故事是如何变化的，对吗?

黎明:是的。谢谢你们邀请我。我很高兴来到这里。是的，我们是1945年由我的祖父弗兰克·马萨创立的，他也是电子音响行业的先驱。在他创立公司之前，他从麻省理工学院的Swope Fellow毕业，拿到了硕士学位，然后他去了Victor Talking Machine工作，后来成了RCA Victor。当他在那里的时候，他在声音方面发展了很多关键的创新。他遇到了哈罗德·奥尔森，他是第一本工程学教科书的合著者，这本书讲述了如何将听到的声音应用到工程学原理中。这就是应用声学。从那时起，他们发展了很多基本的音频技术，从麦克风和扩音器到不同的军用音响设备，船用电话和类似的东西。当他离开那里后，他去了西部的布拉什发展中心。 When he was in Brush Development, he was the head of engineering there. And he first was working primarily with things like radios for cars, pickups, audio pickups and things of that nature. But then World War II started happening and he had already established himself as an engineer that is paramount in the design of all things acoustic. And the friend of his from his RCA days happened to be part of the Navy and asked him if he could help him out with something because they were trying to develop what is now called a hydrophone. But it wasn’t called that then. And my grandfather immediately knew how to make it so it will work underwater where this guy wasn’t able to get it to work properly. So he told his friend he’d take a look at it, asked his friend to send it to him. Went and talked to his boss at Brush and he said, no, Frank, don’t work for the Navy. You’ll never get anywhere because it takes so long with contracts and all this. So my grandfather felt bad, on his own time redesigned the item and sent it back to his friend. So then time goes on and the war is picking up. And as the war efforts were growing, the government cut off the use of vacuum tubes by commercial industry. And that was a big component that was necessary for all these, you know, developments that they were doing out of Brush. And they were at the moment when they’re trying to figure out how they’re going to, you know, close shop. My grandfather got a phone call from his friend that said, hey, Frank, you know, your now what we call a hydrophone works great. And he negotiated a multi-million dollar contract over the phone, went back to his boss and said, you know what? Maybe it’s time to work for the Navy. And when he did that, they — Brush shifted gears and did a lot of the development of all the hydrophones and sonars used in World War II, and my grandfather was at the forefront of all that. So through all of that experience, he decided that he wanted to start his own company. And so in 1945, that’s clearly, you know, after the war. But he was — his experience was as a developer, as one of the major people that helped redefine how sonar transducers are engineered and produced for use by the Navy. And he took that skill set and he started out just consulting and he was still in Cleveland at that time. So the company was founded in Cleveland. For five years he was consulting. And he had different family members working for him and friends he knew through, you know, his professional life. And when he was looking for a big enough place, because it was his dream to have a facility that he could not just design, but also incorporate all the lessons he’s learned, including, you know, how to produce something, a quality production piece. So he wanted a manufacturer, he wanted a big facility, and they needed to be able to have a test pond to do that. So he’s looking around for a place where he could have his own test pond and he could have his own building. And he had family still back here in the Boston area. And they said why don’t you come home, there’s a lot of water around here. So he did and he bought the land and he built the building. And we have a test pond here. And we’ve been in the same building since 1950. So it’s kind of a special year for us because it’s 75 years of the founding of the company, but it’s 70 years at this location.

凯蒂:哇,令人难以置信的。看到一个企业主的创业之旅是如何开始的，尤其是在全球危机中，他的创业之旅就是这样开始的。你知道马萨让我惊讶的地方是什么吗以及你所能影响的历史，如果不是你祖父所激发的创新，我们就不会有我们理解的电影中的声音。我们就不会有高质量的音乐和广播录音。这就是为什么我们也有先进的军事声纳就像你描述的从第二次世界大战开始。就这家公司产生的影响而言，这是一个惊人的广度。

黎明:是的。所以这是非常重要的，也是我们文化的一部分。有些事情对他来说很重要。他是在这些价值观的基础上创立公司的。所以，你知道，需要有一个高质量的产品，需要理解一些东西，需要跳出框框思考，这些对马萨来说一直都很重要。挑战的故事也很重要。你还提到了电影的声音。我都没提过这个。你知道，当他在RCA的时候，大萧条正在发生。唯一没有被裁掉的部门是他的团队，因为他们的工作是为电影和音乐行业录制音频。 And then also it was the speakers that were put into the movie theaters. And that was one of the only affordable luxuries that anyone could afford during the Great Depression. So it was — it’s interesting that even before our founding in times where a lot of difficulty was going on in the world, my grandfather was in the right place at the right time and had the creative thinking to be able to overcome challenges. And I feel like that aspect is still true for us today. And another thing, you know, he was born in an Italian immigrant family in Boston, and he learned English by going to school. And this was, you know, he was born in 1906. So he was in the north end at a time where Italians were very much discriminated against. You know, he didn’t pass the language of Italian down through the family, like a lot of families that have come after that era have, because he wanted to assimilate. And in fact, he was born Francesco Enrico Antonio Massa. But he changed his name to Frank, Frank Massa because he wanted to be American. He wanted to be seen as somebody that could rise through his ideas, his thoughts and his actions and, you know, what he did. And he wanted to make himself opposed to be described or defined based on where he came from. And, you know, we judge people by what they do, not anything else. It’s can you do your job? Are you good at it? That’s awesome. We love our job and we love to hire people that are really excellent and passionate about their jobs.

凯蒂:我很想知道 - 这个故事是令人难以置信的。你能和我们分享作为他的孙女，你什么时候来实现他的背景的这些方面以及他所要求的一些偏见，他需要克服？由于它没有来自他或者没有来自他所经历的故事，所以在你的生活中你意识到的哪一点，哇他实际上有这方面的其他挑战他真的没有谈论吗？

黎明:你知道，我从来没有机会直接问他。我刚满10岁他就死了。所以这不是，你知道，我在那种程度上，我在和他进行这种对话。所以如果他今天还在的话，我真的很想多听一些关于他实际经历的事情，因为我对此一无所知。他工作很努力。作为一个女人，你知道，我经历过一些奇怪的事情。我参加过一些贸易展会，也参加过一些会议，在这些会议上，人们没有意识到我可能是负责人或者是房间里的高层。我经历过。但那些人怎么想并不重要，因为事实就是事实。你知道，这很有趣。 It’s one of those side thoughts that, you know, seems relevant of the times. But the message that he taught me is that just stay focused and do what you need to do.

凯蒂:绝对地。我很乐意听到，如果我们缩放一点点。今天，你和你父亲一起经营着公司。您能否告诉我们，多年来每个人都有一些不同的优势，对公司的战略方向的不同观点来说？

黎明:是的。所以让我刚刚开始我的祖父主要开始执行声纳传感器。作为我的父亲 - 在他身上，他的兄弟在这里工作，我的叔叔弗兰基。但在我出生的意外，他去世了。所以他也是一名工程师，他们做了很多声纳传感器。然后在一段时间内没有完全出售，但部分销售，百分比所有权由另一家公司拥有。那时，还有一些事情不太好。我父亲参与其中，他在这里和祖父一起工作。当他们不喜欢发生的事情时，他们决定了，你知道什么？我们将自己脱落，我们的方式做事，因为你开始将我们的公司拆除并与您拉下来。 And we don’t want that to happen. So they actually left this building that we’re in now and went to Randolph for a little bit, started another company that was in parallel, still Massa. So it was — there were two Massas running at the same time with a slight difference in the name. And then when the massive division was not doing so well by the people that were running it, my grandfather and my father still owned all the patents. So the people that were not doing well with the company and were screwing up, they were starting to go bankrupt. At the same time, they were guilty of patent infringement. So my dad and my grandfather sued them. And at the time, it was kind of funny because they’re like, yeah, sure, the old man and the young kid, they’re going to run out and start their own company. Well they did, they did well. They got a few deals that they were working on because people would rather go with them for their innovations and their ideas. And then these other people were ruining things. So my dad and my grandfather won, kicked them out, came back to the building. And that’s the birth of Massa Products Corporation. So, it’s always been Massa. It’s always been my family involved. But there was a small period where they overcame this big challenge. And right at that same time, that’s when my father became president. And he was very much involved with some of the big deals that we had at the time. And it’s where we started to move away from just transducers and do a little bit more in systems. So a system is like when the transducers are paired with electronics to become a more cohesive system. And sometimes that’s a sensor, sometimes that’s a whole array with the electronics and whatever. So one of the deals that they had that was his innovation was the automatic bowling scoring system for AMF, where we designed that and manufactured it and outfitted all of those bowling alleys. So it’s hard to imagine that the same company that revolutionized sonar transducer design through, you know, history also did bowling alleys. And there was no scoring system before us. We also at the same time we had a design for the first ultrasonic intrusion alarm that didn’t have any false alarms. So we were selling that at the same time. So those two things were pretty big that came out of that era. And then that just led and grew to other things, because once you opened the door to doing a little bit more, you open yourself to business. And what’s really interesting about that is that the spirit of innovation has been with us from the beginning. It’s shifted a bit, but that’s what innovation does. You know, we’ve always stayed strong with what our core capabilities are. But we’ve grown upon that so that what our core capabilities are have also grown.

凯蒂:是的,没错。是的。当你审视一家有75年历史的公司时，这真的是一个令人难以置信的机会，你可以看到你曾经转向或扩张过的地方，以及在此过程中所学到的一些经验教训。我想我们看到的大多数公司都是这样的，你知道的，和Massa一样有悠久的历史，他们确实有收购或转移的时刻，他们会回头，追求一些新的机会，然后回到他们的根源，这很吸引人。我很想知道，你有没有讲过一些关于创新的内部故事关于如何将历史和机构知识呈现给新员工?

黎明:是的。所以这是一个巨大的作品。所以让我继续下去，因为我正在接受我的回答，它完全融入了这一点，因为你知道，我的父亲带来了更多的系统，然后我进来了。我刚从高中毕业后, I wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted to do. I thought I knew, but I didn’t. And I changed my major a few times. And I studied lots of different things. And all of those things I brought back here. And I actually, after I graduated in New Jersey from Fairleigh, from Fairleigh Dickinson University with my master’s in psychology with a focus on systems dynamics, I had two children, I was home. And my dad was saying, you know, it’s a family company. Why don’t you come and, you know, join us on the board. So I was coming up for board meetings and I learned a lot. And before that, I did study some engineering, enough to know that I’m not an engineer, enough to know also what we can and cannot do and what things fit for our capabilities. And what I realized when I was on the board was that we had some problems here. And then I decided, you know what? There’s also a lot of really special things here that I wanna make sure I preserve. And I have two boys. They’re both very science minded and creative. And I’m thinking, oh, my God, these guys might grow up and be engineers or, you know, they might complement each other the way my father and I complement each other, where my dad’s kind of like, you know, he’s a brilliant scientist, he gets really focused on whatever he’s working on, but sometimes because he’s so in the weeds as to what each program is, he’s not aligned with where can the business go. And I realized, oh my gosh, that’s my strength. So I came aboard and I started — the company where it was, we had a management team in place that didn’t quite understand innovation the way this company needed innovation to be understood. And what they did was they saw our past innovations as just being that, something that was in the past, opposed to something that is still the life blood and necessity for who we are. So their focus for how they wanted to have new innovations were more along the lines of “me too” products. And they’d look around to see what other people have and then say, OK, well, how can we make that better, opposed to how can we go where no one’s gone before? And I realized that and I started working here and I saw that even more and more and more. And then I also realized that there was a culture here that I knew from my growing up and my history with the company that was not what newer employees knew or experienced. But some of the long term employees saw that that was what we used to have and no longer had. And it became a big problem. So we tried to focus on culture and train people because we’re a family company and we care a lot about every employee and their families and everything. We never would want to harm anybody by letting them go without giving them a fair chance. So we really tried for about three years to pull these people up and get them in line with who we are, where we’ve come from, what we’re capable of doing and where we would like to go. And they just couldn’t, they weren’t capable of understanding that. And the culture here at that time was kind of tense. And we weren’t able to achieve things. And there was a lot of trouble between the departments, opposed to having everybody cohesive and working together. And we decided, you know what, we just can’t do this anymore. And we let the two people go that were a big source of the problem. And as soon as we did that, we had put all our energy into culture up to that point. And then we realized, you know what, the culture corrected itself. People were automatically on board and things started to go smoother. And there were a few other people that were still here from that era, and they naturally started to not be here anymore either. And it wasn’t a bad thing. It was a very healthy thing. Some people left on their own. Some people were let go. But it was for their happiness and for our health. So what we found was by focusing on culture internally, allows you to receive whatever business you have coming your way and on the horizon. At the time, we knew we had to clean house because we had a lot of potential and a lot of opportunities that we wanted to go after. And we knew we couldn’t do that until making sure that we were strong enough internally to do so. So once we did that and we started going after new business, everything started to kind of fall in place. And we’re very fortunate that we’ve got a really strong team here. We have a lot of people that have dedicated their entire professional lives to us. Also, you know, once you set something in place like with clarity and goals, you find that other things just start to happen that fit that goal. It’s a really amazing phenomenon. And if you read about, you know, other people, and I’m sure you’ve interviewed several people, they’ll tell you the same thing. Once you have that clarity, it’s like, you know what to do and everything just happens. That’s not true for every detail. But, you know, for the big things where it matters, that’s what we experienced. And we had some people that used to work here that went off and did other things, and then all of a sudden they came back. So we have people that are so loyal and so wonderful here. And we really have a happy environment. We’ve changed the layout of our engineering department. We made everything stronger focused. We started hiring co-ops again. And we really grew, both from a business standpoint and from an internal standpoint. And now through the whole COVID craziness, we’ve had people that never worked remotely before working remote. But we know that everyone’s doing what they need to be doing, where it would have been much harder to manage that if we had a different team. So we’re very, very happy right now. We’ve been strong. We’ve been moving forward. We’ve been essential. We’ve been open this whole time. We’ve been putting more precautions in place for as far as safety and masks, cleaning surfaces, all of that stuff to make sure everybody’s safe and doing what they need to do. We’ve been in full production this entire time and luckily, you know, no one’s been been sick either. And if anyone thought that they were, we would like go above and beyond to make sure, like, well, why don’t you take a couple days off, check with your doctor and then come back. And we’ve been very careful with all of that. And we’ve been very fortunate that we’ve had no cases, thank God, up to this point. And I hope that we don’t have any. So, it’s been a wild ride.

凯蒂:是的，我的天啊。所以我们有很多不同的方式来进行对话。但我认为，我最重要的是——首先，感谢你们在这场危机和疫情期间所做的所有重要工作。我很高兴听到每个人都是健康和安全的，你们能够实施新的工作流程等等。在文化方面，我很想听听你的观点，你知道，你在哪里听说故事在创新文化的创造中扮演着一个角色?因为它听起来好像在这个进化的公司,最近,当你改变了文化动态,你可以创建一个更加开放的文化思维创新,特别是关于渐进式创新或模仿的好,你知道,改善风格创新,但突破。你能给我们讲讲故事吗以及故事在创新中扮演的角色?

黎明:是的。所以它真的 - 对我来说是第三代，我重视我在生活中学到的一切以及我从家里学到的一切。我从许多不同的角度看着公司偷看。我觉得回到一个孩子，成为你所知道的，我的家人与很多家庭不同。当我们在海军上有一定的人时，我们会有商务晚餐时，那些是来自D.C.或其他国家的特定的人。我们有各种商业交易，有时家庭也会参与其中。所以我们会出去吃饭，我会去，你知道，作为一个孩子。或者我会加入商务旅行，我们会做一些事情是生意，我不会在哪里。但随后为晚餐，家庭将永远是事情的一部分。每当我问任何问题，在我的家庭中，它都不喜欢，你知道，我只是一个孩子还是被关闭。 They loved that. And my grandfather loved it. My father loved it. And they’d tell me anything I wanted to know at any time. And I was taught that my questions are meaningful and learning is important and who we are as important. They always had that inclusion before I could even realize the importance of something like that. But I did realize that other families didn’t have that same attitude because I saw it with friends and other, you know, other branches of family where not everybody was always welcome when it was time for the adults to talk. Sometimes the kids needed to go, right. So I feel like that was one perspective. Another perspective is as I grew up and tried these different things, and then I was looking at the top level from the board, I had that perspective and then I had the perspective of an employee. And I also had the perspective, okay, I’m third generation, where do I want this to go? And it’s kind of a culmination of all of those things that made me think, you know what? I understand the founders mentality. Dad’s still here. He understands that. And I had a lot of chats with him privately about how I would like to see the company grow into the future. And I’d bounce those ideas off of him. And he loved it. And he got all energized and excited. And my dad’s in his 70s. He’s still here. You know, so every moment with him, I’m learning from him and it’s so meaningful. And that’s part of what happened to me when I was living in New Jersey when I was coming up for the board meetings. And when my first born was about he graduated kindergarten, was going to go into first grade, and I said you know what, it’s time to move. And my husband started his own business, so it worked out perfectly, so he could do that from anywhere. And I was like, I really want to — I really want this. It was a drive that I can’t even explain. It was just something I had to do. And I’ve loved every moment and every single thing that seemed unrelated started to pull into place. So all my creativity in terms of, you know, I studied, you know, art for a while. I did engineering for a while, and then I finished up with psychology. And then I went to Harvard for an executive class, I got a certificate in finance. So I have all of these little pieces that I use on a daily basis. So we look at things creatively here. I said, I want to focus — you know, we built this business. Our founders mentality is, it doesn’t matter if there’s something out there, we can go where no one else can go. We understand this core technology better than anybody. Nobody’s designing transducers today the way we do. And nobody has the lineage that we have in terms of the founder of the field passed on his — like almost like an apprentice would learn in the olden days — craft. Right. So we have that cultivated here. We have over 165 U.S. patents.

凯蒂:太棒了。

黎明:我们还在增加这个数字。现在，我们正在进行两项主要的商业交易，我们是在mnda下进行的，这两项交易都是突破性的技术。当他们发布的时候，他们将与Massa的标志联合品牌，以及我们的客户和合作伙伴的标志在他们的产品上，这些东西将会成为特色。所以我们对这些即将到来的东西感到非常兴奋，因为它们是非常不同的领域和非常不同的地方——超声波从来没有进入过，声纳，换能器等等，你知道。所以，我们对创新非常兴奋，自从我回到这个职位，我们就一直专注于这一点，并真正把公司带到一个我们的团队强大的地方。我们喜欢合作学校，合作学校的学生，因为声学工程，电声工程不是一个常见的专业。它确实存在。但这并不是，我们做事的方式和我们的竞争对手做事的方式不同。这里有很多我们认为是我们的IP和知识。我们希望能有一个有基本工程基础的人，一个有创造力的人，这样我们就可以培养他们，让他们学习我们是如何做事的，然后我们就可以创造新的东西。 And it’s our whole team that’s strong. We have acoustic engineers, we have production engineers, we have electronic engineers. And then we have a production line and we have, you know, the basic business people too.

凯蒂:哇。我喜欢的是你的祖父和你的父亲总是把你拉进商业战略的谈话中让你觉得你的问题是有根据的。在我看来，这是一个有力的教训，你知道，你在生命早期学到的价值可以从中得到。现在你们已经在你们的文化中灌输了这一点，并且，你们也在努力创建像你们的合作项目这样的结构来继续灌输这一点。我知道作为一个母亲，我将继续把这一经验运用到我的生活中，同时作为其他寻求职业生涯成长的人的导师。所以我很感激你跟我分享的故事还有你参加那些晚宴并试图，你知道，真正成为对话的一部分。

黎明:是的，这是你在经历它时没有意识到的那些事情之一，但你回头看，你就像是哇。这就像学习一种语言，对，就是你正在学习它，但你没有意识到这一点。这不是正式的，但它是 - 我被教导了如何表现，以及如何与某些类型的人们从一个非常年轻的时候与某些类型的人交谈，其他人并不总是得到这种类型的曝光。所以我非常感激。

凯蒂:当然是。黎明，我很感激，我们有这段时间在播客谈论。当我们包装我们的谈话时，我很想知道您是否对Sonic Engineering或者超越的创新者有建议，您可以在获得他们的大想法和帮助他们的创新工作中创造良好的讲故事方面。

黎明:是的，我认为我学到的是，一个公司必须克服的挑战和成功同样重要。这两方面的知识都是很重要的，因为你的公司需要充满真正相信你是谁，你有什么能力，你要去哪里的人。他们需要感觉自己是团队中一个有价值的成员。因为没有它，就没有创新，就没有增长，就没有成功。有了它，你就有了一切美好的东西。人们在一个地方享受他们的工作。他们热爱自己的工作。感觉不像在工作。祝你和大家玩得开心。当然，在面临挑战的时候，每个人都有自己不喜欢的工作。 But overall, you have longevity that way. You have loyalty that way. You have people who love what they do that way. And that’s how you can get the best designs. And if there is trouble in your story, if there is a problem that happens with your group, as you’re learning something or trying to do an innovation, you fail, you have to process that failure properly so that people learn from it, opposed to feel reprimanded by it or let go by it. You know, you don’t want to fire somebody because they made a mistake. You want to learn from that. Obviously, there are certain situations where you’ve given it your all and it’s not the right fit, and that’s a different situation. But you have to keep the company goals in mind and your team engaged. And I think that that’s what gives you a setup, if you will, for success.

凯蒂:是的,当然。谢谢你，道恩，多谢你的建议。我认为这是完美的。感谢您收看我们的播客。你可以在Massa.com上找到更多关于Massa的信息。是这样吗?

黎明:这是正确的。Massa.com。

凯蒂:完美的。黎明，非常感谢你。我希望很快就能与你交谈。

黎明:非常感谢。和你谈话很愉快。美妙的播客。谢谢你！

凯蒂:感谢收听本周的节目。一定要在社交媒体上关注我们，并在对话中加入你的声音。你可以在Untold Content找乐动体育足球到我们。

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*采访不是对个人或企业的认可。