I spend much of my team thinking and working on innovative information systems for construction. One of my best sources for developing ideas is a construction expert Chris who is passionate about lean construction, industrial engineering, logistics, and OODA Loop. He has taught me many things about how construction people see things and think. And I have shared ideas on how technology people approach problems, like in order to program things we need to get to a binary condition of is this a "1" or a "0."

In our latest conversation chatting about the efforts to use wireless technology Chris said the application of wireless is the "Glue and Grease" in the process. "Glue" was providing the way to connect and attach things. "Grease" was reducing the friction in processes to make them easier and faster. To my technology friends we would never use these terms we would say "system integration and performance tuning."

On the other hand I like the physical explanation of glue and grease. And I think sometimes it explains the sloppiness in system integration and performance tuning with glue dripping and grease over applied. :-)

My next presentation on construction innovation will use the ideas of "Glue and Grease," because saying words like integration and performance tuning doesn't mean much to non-technology people.