Category Archives: Innovation

Chaos Management (by design) at Google

Posted on September 25, 2006 by John Hunter

Chaos by design by Adam Lashinsky: Sandberg recently committed an error that cost Google several million dollars — “Bad decision, moved too quickly, no controls in place, wasted some money,” is all she’ll say about it — and when she realized the magnitude of her mistake, she walked across the street to inform Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and unofficial thought leader. “God, I feel really bad about this,” Sandberg told Page, who accepted her apology. But as she turned to … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Google, Innovation, Management | 4 Comments

Systemic Thinking

Posted on September 23, 2006 by John Hunter

Systemic Thinking by Gary Bartlett provides a nice introduction to systemic thinking compared to analysis. Analysis is very useful however, the strong tendency to focus on only breaking apart systems to analyze components does result in missing insight into improvement opportunities (that can be gained by looking at the system as a whole). Conventional thinking techniques are fundamentally analytical. Systemic thinking is different – it combines analytical thinking with synthetical thinking. … That tool is synthesis – seeing how things … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Innovation, Systems thinking | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Quality Technology and Innovation

Posted on September 2, 2006 by John Hunter

The Future of Quality Technology: From a Manufacturing to a Knowledge Economy and From Defects to Innovations [sadly the link to ASQ fails, sigh, http://www.asqstatdiv.org/documents/newsletters/Winter06StatDiv.pdf] by Soren Bisgaard: we need to be good at both breakthrough and incremental innovation. Not either/or, but both! And this is where the quality profession comes in. Much of what quality technology is applied to can broadly be characterized as incremental innovation. This article does a good job of explaining why “quality/lean…” should not be … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, Management, Manufacturing, Statistics | 2 Comments

Permanent Innovation

Posted on August 31, 2006 by John Hunter

Langdon Morris has written a new book: Permanent Innovation [the broken link was removed]. There is a blog [the broken link was removed] and web site too. The book builds upon his article, Business Model Warfare: Furthermore, the core of the innovation value proposition need not be built around a technology per se. In the examples cited above – Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Nike, Visa, Dell, Fedex, Home Depot, Southwest Airlines, and Ford (in the early days) – proprietary technologies play … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Innovation, Systems thinking

Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation

Posted on August 26, 2006 by John Hunter

How intellectual property influences innovation and growth in the economy depends on the application of intellectual property law. No intellectual property (IP) rights would hinder innovation. Complicated application of confusing and overreaching IP rights also hinders innovation. Now I see the USA systems as having overreaching claims of IP rights, IP rights granted for obvious ideas which then are used to extort those actually producing value and overall a system much in need of improvement. Lawrence Lessig does the best … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Innovation | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Ackoff, Idealized Design and Bell Labs

Posted on August 20, 2006 by John Hunter

Excerpt from Idealized Design: How to Dissolve Tomorrow’s Crisis…Today by Russell L. Ackoff, Jason Magidson and Herbert J. Addison: How Bell Labs Imagined — and Created — the Telephone System of the Future in the 1950s. Great stuff and another example showing the obsession with “new” ideas is wasteful. Idealized design is a way of thinking about change that is deceptively simple to state: In solving problems of virtually any kind, the way to get the best outcome is to … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Creativity, Deming, Innovation, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Patent Review Innovation

Posted on August 16, 2006 by John Hunter

Michael Crichton wrote an essay critical of the current patent law: This Essay Breaks the Law. I believe the US is making significant mistakes in how we are proceeding with the patent system, see: The Patent System Needs to be Significantly Improved. A recent article from Money offers an interesting idea (to try anyway) for one part of the problem. Patent review goes Wiki That’s the basic concept behind a pilot program sponsored by IBM (Charts) and other companies, which … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Economics, Innovation, IT, Management, Process improvement | 2 Comments

Google Management

Posted on August 15, 2006 by John Hunter

Management a la Google [the broken link, wsj.com, was removed] by Gary Hamel This short article makes some interesting points, definitely worth a read. Google has invested heavily in building a highly transparent organization that makes it easy to share ideas, poll peers, recruit volunteers, and build natural constituencies for change. Every project team, and there are hundreds, maintains a Web site that is continuously monitored for peer feedback. In this way, unorthodox ideas have the chance to accumulate peer … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, Management, Management Articles | 1 Comment

Interviews with Innovators

Posted on August 9, 2006 by John Hunter

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston is an interesting looking book to be published in a few months. The book consists of interviews with founders of technology companies exploring the initial efforts to create a new company. Interviews include: David Heinemeier Hansson [the broken link was removed] (who many of our readers may not have heard of but who has recently done a great web development framework [Ruby on Rails] and development philosophy very compatible … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Creativity, Innovation, IT, Management, Management Articles, Software Development | Tagged , , , ,

Reducing Waste

Posted on July 12, 2006 by John Hunter

Toyota Motor Manufacturing (UK) Ltd – achieving zero waste to landfill [the broken link was removed] Toyota developed its Environmental Management System to stay on top of its environmental objectives and ensure that all processes are dealt with in an environmentally friendly way and are implemented across all the plants. There are full key performance indicator reporting systems, visual controls and displays throughout the plant. A great improvement strategy. Determine what you are trying to do. Understand the system. Set … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Innovation, Management, Management Articles, Process improvement, Systems thinking, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

How Google Works

Posted on July 9, 2006 by John Hunter

How Google Works [the broken link was removed] by David F. Carr An interesting look at the technology system behind Google. “But this is the start of the story,” he adds, part of an approach that says “don’t necessarily do it the way everyone else did. Just find some way of doing it cheap and effectively—so we can learn.” Google was driven from the beginning by engineers that sought to do what was best. Since those engineers were the founders … Continue reading →

Posted in Google, Innovation, IT, Management, Systems thinking | Tagged | 4 Comments

More on Non-Auto Toyota

Posted on July 7, 2006 by John Hunter

Toyota: Way, Way Off-Road [the broken link was removed] by Ian Rowley. Business Week has an article exploring the non-automotive Toyota, as we have mentioned previously: Toyota Robots – Toyota as Homebuilder – Toyota Engineers a New Plant: the Living Kind. Toyota controls dozens of businesses that have virtually nothing to do with automaking, ranging in size from resort developer Nagasaki Sunset Marina (77% owned by Toyota), with just five employees, to Toyota Financial Services Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged | 2 Comments

Quality and Innovation

Posted on July 4, 2006 by John Hunter

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. Wow. It makes sense. The father of quality, of course, was Dr. W. Edwards Demming, and he preached for a very long time before he was really heard. In fact, as I recall, Japanese companies first accepted Demmings teachings long before U.S. and European corporations. Lets quote Deming on innovation from New Economics, page … Continue reading →

Posted in Deming, Innovation, Management, Popular, quote | 5 Comments

Toyota Homes

Posted on July 4, 2006 by John Hunter

Live in your next Toyota [the broken link was removed]: Housing makes up less than 1% of Toyota’s $183 billion annual sales. But company officials say technology acquired from years of making cars is central to homebuilding Toyota style. A “smart key” similar to the car key you don’t need to take out of your pocket to unlock your Toyota opens and closes the front door. A mechanism for reducing engine noise and tremors is installed under the floor to … Continue reading →

Posted in Innovation, Management, Toyota Production System (TPS) | Tagged | 1 Comment

Innovation Needed to Keep USA Manufacturing?

Posted on June 29, 2006 by John Hunter

ICAR touted as example of innovation needed in U.S. [the broken link was removed] “Our ace in the hole is innovation, and that’s why intellectual property is so important to develop,” Graham said. “How do we protect that advantage within the rule of the law?” Lindsey Graham [the broken link was removed] and Hillary Clinton are co-chairs of the United States Senate Manufacturing Caucus. Is innovation our ace in the hole? I don’t think so. There is no ace in … Continue reading →

Posted in Economics, Innovation, Management, Manufacturing, Systems thinking | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Our Policy is to Stick Our Heads in the Sand

Posted on June 28, 2006 by John Hunter

Conversation with Boston Volkswagen [the broken link was removed] by Paul Graham I recently looked into getting a new car. The Kafkaesque conversation that resulted would have been funny if it were happening to someone else. If only Volkswagen could redesign the sales process to be as good as their cars…. For me it did happen to someone else so it is funny 🙂 However, I run across similar thinking and “customer service” and then I don’t find it as … Continue reading →

Posted in Customer focus, Innovation, IT, Management | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments