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I think the The Quality Movement Vs. The Innovation Movement by Bruce Nussbaum makes a mistake in calling the innovation movement separate from the quality movement.
Lets quote Deming on innovation from New Economics, page 10:
What is required? Innovation.
New Economics, page 7:
This is not hidden is some talk Deming gave once in New York City. This is in the first 10 pages of New Economics. I think maybe we overestimate how well we have accepted Deming’s teachings. We too quickly dismiss the work of everyone who has gone before, not just Deming but also: Ackoff, Box, Ohno, McGreggor, Kano, Scholtes, Joiner, Ishikawa and on and on.
Yes, today incredible innovation is taking place at companies like Google but this is not new. Toyota has understood the importance of innovation (biotechnology - Hybrid cars 1993 - moving into car manufacturing - robots) for a long time (and so have many many more: IBM, Disney, Nike, NASA, DARPA, Apple, Microsoft, Wal Mart, Sony, Merck, Intel, Chalres Schwab, 3M, Amazon, Da Vinci, Miles Davis, Picasso, Edison, Fosbury, Einstein…). And given the date lets add the United States of America to the innovation list.
I really don’t understand how people can talk about innovation as if it were some new discovery. Yes I understand we can bring a different focus to innovation. We can reconfigure management structures to encourage and support innovation. That is good. And new ideas are being developed, but the innovation fad is silly. And accepting the notion that this innovation stuff is some new idea will make managers less effective than if they understand the past.
For getting some good ideas about what managers/executives should understand about innovation Gary Hamel and Clayton Christensen (The Innovators Solution by Clayton M. Christensen and Michael E. Raynor, 2003) do offer very valuable information. While I do find the whole innovation fad a bit much that does not mean good work is not being done on how to better manage and understand innovation.
Other posts responding to Bruce Nussbaum:
More on innovation:
Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog © curiouscat.com 2005-2008 powered by WordPress
September 3rd, 2006 at 7:43 pm
[...] This article does a good job of explaining why “quality/lean…” should not be viewed as just process improvement, and innovation as something separate. I agree, as discussed in: Quality and Innovation. Many quality and lean tools are focused on process improvement. But those tools are part of a system that requires customer focused innovation (including breakthrough innovation). [...]
January 11th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
[...] Two examples from 37signals: first, Pioneer Theater. Good idea. I am stretching to call it innovation, today, maybe 5 years ago it was. [...]
July 18th, 2007 at 3:46 pm
“Management innovation is innovation in management principles and processes that ultimately changes the practice of what managers do, and how they do it. It is different from operational innovation; which is about how the work of transforming inputs into outputs actually gets done…”
September 1st, 2007 at 9:47 am
As I have stated many times, while bad six sigma efforts may harm innovation but there is no reason good six sigma efforts would do so. In fact good six sigma efforts help innovation…