Is This Any Time To Think About Innovation?
As the global financial markets melt down, the stock market takes a roller coaster ride, and business credit practically vanishes, companies are hunkering down. This is a natural reaction, and for many organizations it is necessary. But achievement in the longer term will depend on a company’s ability to do more than cut costs. It will require ongoing creativity, a culture of perpetual innovation.
Of course, it’s easy to suggest that companies need to be innovative. It’s a lot more difficult to build a company that actually is, especially when other matters demand immediate attention. However, the latest issue of BPM Magazine includes two feature articles that could guide organizations in using a well-known method for cost reduction and process improvement to also help build the innovation needed for long-term success once the business environment stabilizes.
The method is Lean Six Sigma, which is the product of companies’ incorporation of the Lean approach to process optimization into Six Sigma quality-control initiatives. Lean Six Sigma benefits from a focus on fact-based analysis and direct customer input, and it is typically thought of as a way to find efficiencies in corporate operations. That’s not the full extent of its potential, though; it can also spur broad-based innovation.
Many companies attempt to cultivate a culture of innovation by declaring creativity to be a core corporate value and by encouraging employees to spend time pursuing independent research. Such actions may stimulate employees to give innovation more thought than they otherwise would, but they don’t create a mechanism for promoting those projects that are aligned with the company’s overall goals over those that aren’t. Lean Six Sigma introduces discipline to innovation, encouraging companies to create a strategic vision for innovation that is based on insights into the needs of customers and other stakeholders (provided by the Six Sigma half of the equation).
The results can be astonishing. We published an article by IBM’s Amy Blitz and Dave Lubowe that tells the stories of three companies in different industries and facing different market challenges, each of which has used Lean Six Sigma to radically reshape themselves and drastically improve their competitiveness.
We also published an article by Forrest Breyfogle, a Six Sigma expert who has developed a comprehensive, nine-step approach to the problem of choosing projects to undertake. He adds to Lean Six Sigma a thorough analysis of corporate metrics at two different levels so that initial selection of which innovations to pursue becomes more regimented and so that flailing projects can be nipped in the bud.
A major initiative like a Lean Six Sigma implementation may be the last thing you think your business needs right now — this may seem to hardly be the time to dump resources into such a project. But for companies wanting to come out of the downturn with a competitive advantage, now may be the perfect time to simultaneously introduce efficiencies and spur innovation.
Do you agree? Along with all your colleagues who read this column, I would love to hear your take.
