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Call her a contrarian, but Shelley Lavender isn’t buying the conventional wisdom that stagnant economies and constrained budgets are stifling innovation in the global aerospace and defence industry.
“I’m more excited about the future than I have been in years,” the president of Boeing Military Aircraft told the Canadian Aerospace Summit in Ottawa on Wednesday.
Harkening back to the Great Depression, she said that, “those very same challenges inspired innovation, leading to breakthrough technologies, disruptive business models, and leaps forward in efficiencies and capabilities for our customers.”
Despite crushing economic conditions at the time, Boeing launched its Model 247, the first modern passenger airliner, and redefined passenger and transport aircraft. It was quickly followed by the Douglas DC-1, DC-2 and DC-3 between 1933 and 1935, a refresh rate that is “faster than Apple is turning out new models of the iPhone today,” she observed.
The times may be different, but there are valid comparisons between the early days of aerospace and today’s high-tech sector, said Lavender.
“I have no doubt our industry is standing on the cusp of the next great leap forward…and Canada is uniquely positioned to play a key role in pushing our global industry to new heights.”
That optimistic assessment was shared by Peter Hall, vice-president and chief economist with Export Development Canada. In a presentation titled, “Have we lost our nerve?” he painted a positive picture of the long-term economy, and of the transportation sector in particular.
Noting that Millennials have yet to truly engage in the workforce, he too disputed conventional thinking about the state of the global economy, arguing that North America, Europe and many of the economies into which the aerospace sector might aim to sell, have growth ahead of them. Even the BRIC economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China, some of which have made poor strategic decisions, represent opportunity.
“America still has a lot of runway ahead of itself,” Hall told the Summit, saying that the transportation sector is “on the verge of new growth.”
In a presentation on the power of “iterative innovation,” Lavender described a business model that “blurs the traditional lines between tech-insertion programs and new build aircraft” by using current production lines to introduce the newest technology into existing airframes while driving down costs, increasing quality, and meeting or exceeding customer expectations.
As it marked its centenary this year, Boeing took time to reflect on its past and ponder its future. The company sent a small group of executives around the globe to ask customers, industry partners, government officials and academics one simple question: “What would Boeing look like in the 21st century?”
That exercise might have garnered useful insight into the coming decades, but the company has already placed some strategic bets, some in Canada, on new and emerging technologies such as data analytics, robotics, autonomous systems, and hypersonic flight.
Calling it a compelling high-tech future, Lavender said, “the promises of additive manufacturing, robotics, wearable computers and other technologies have us breaking with traditional thinking.”
