Not providing conclusive and prompt feedback will undermine an Innovation Initiative.

Stefan Lindegaard hit on a very important point in his blog regarding “False Positives and Fast Response Times.” One of the most important points regarding any campaign to solicit ideas is feedback. Individuals who take the time to share their thoughts to improve processes, cut costs, or create new products and services want to know if they are...

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BP: Not the smartest engineers when the challenge is not framed correctly!

(DISCLAIMER: Although I would not be surprised that a similar idea to this could solve the problem, there are several factors that obviously have not been taken into account with this design… [i.e.: the blowout preventer is partially engaged]. This article is more an illustration on how over-complicated we can make things when as humans we are unprepared...

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Idea Management Software: Filtering ideas to find the best ones is not the most valuable feature.

Before the advent of the web, and more specifically, Web 2.0 technologies, effective innovation was a slow process and was usually limited to large organizations which had the resources to genuinely filter through thousands of ideas. According to the American Management Association’s (AMA) data, most companies lack a formal process for selecting...

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Dogs chasing cars: The value of accurate data analysis.

Taiichi Ohno used to say “Where there is no standard there can be no Kaizen”, which can be translated to “you can’t improve what you don’t measure.” However, these two sayings have a critical missing element... the term “accurate”. Many organizations fall victim to poor data interpretation and instead of improving their processes they do them more...

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Blame the process and not the person: Quality, redundancy, and catastrophic failures in the sinking of BPs Gulf of Mexico platform.

Seeing that my natural vacation sanctuary, where I normally go to break from life’s stresses and enjoy time with my family is about to be permanently destroyed, I decided to break with the Idea Management and Lean tone of this blog in order to reflect a little on quality management. For many years, I helped Mercedes-Benz suppliers improve their quality...

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Lean Idea Management: Balancing the idea assembly line.

People have asked me in the past year what Lean Idea Management meant. They assumed it had to do with managing Kaizen in lean organizations. Although in reality our Idea Management tool would bring value to Lean organizations, it also applies well in all organizations. The reason I named the blog Lean Idea Management, and really what drove the design of EurekaTool was the need to eliminate the non-value added steps often associated with that assembly line called “ideation-to-implementation”. There are many areas of waste in a typical continuous...

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Managing ideas that save lives - Can you afford not to do it effectively?

If there is anything to learn from the Toyota accelerator fiasco is that there is a vast disconnect in the reporting systems that currently exist in organizations to stay abreast of safety situations which could be deemed ‘catastrophic’ (loss of life impact). Part of the reason that Toyota did not address the accelerator problem more decisively was the fact that the external sensors (data collection points) that they were utilizing were not well integrated and collected a lot of erroneous or misleading data. NHTSA was perhaps one of the biggest...

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Innovation is about adding value.

I am guilty of making the same mistake many make about innovation – believing it’s usually about state-of-the-art inventions. I recently blogged about the Apple iPAD and did a good job of criticizing the lack of new technology. After all, the iPAD is essentially something between a large iPhone or a small laptop that most companies will be able...

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The big challenge in Open Innovation (Part II)

What’s in it for me? This is the very first question most of the participants in an open innovation initiative will ask. One of the aspects often overlooked with OI is what will the process or organization give back to the participants. It is very easy to give out cash prizes for winning ideas or participation, but is what is the formula for ensuring...

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The big challenge in Open Innovation (Part I)

I started investigating stats regarding open innovation to see what I could find regarding the idea quality ratio. In simple mathematical terms this ratio is the number of approved (or implemented) ideas divided by the total submitted ideas. Over the years, data from most idea management processes has shown that programs where this ratio is high,...

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Something Different

A new book by Youngme Moon promises to be “Different”. In this age of bigger, better, faster, it’s time for companies and people to be different. Organizations are beginning to realize that they need to instill the innovation culture in their organizations in order to stand out. Whether it’s on the shop floor continually innovating improved processes to eliminate non-value-added steps, to online communities of customers and employees brainstorming the next product breakthrough, managers in today’s business world will need to challenge their...

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Kaizen Teams = Innovation Teams

The common recommendation by TPS experts is that Kaizen teams must be cross-functional. The common rule is to form the team with 1/3 target area members, 1/3 from upstream and downstream areas, and 1/3 from external areas (i.e.: Finance, engineering, HR). This makes sense, and sounds reasonable, however I found that perhaps the best way to explain...

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Open Innovation: Corporate citizenship redefined.

One thing that I was taught when I was young was that sharing information with others and not keeping secrets could make you friends with a lot of people. In today’s market, it looks like major corporations are starting to leverage that axiom to further expand their corporate dominance. Being a good corporate citizen no longer means charitable giving to local communities, and hiring interns from local schools. The definition has been transformed by some of the top corporate citizens to include direct participation from the community in identifying...

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Making Senators "Stand in the circle"

I stumbled accross this video on Jon Miller's blog. Senate hopeful, Paul Akers, discusses Lean on Fox News. If there is one thing I'd like to see congress do is to pull a page from Taiichi Ohno's playbook. ...

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Greennovation: The green innovation movement.

One of the greatest tech movements in history has been open-source software. At the birth of the movement many scoffed and thought that making source code available for free would lead to the financial demise of those who shared their code. The following NY Times article explores how many companies (IBM, DuPont, and others) known for innovation are following suit with open innovation. They are opening virtual communities for discussion on ‘green’ topics. They are involving communities, and in the process pledging their environmental patents for...

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Is lean to blame for Toyota’s current problems?

Due a misunderstanding of what lean manufacturing really is, many believe its ultimate goal is to make things cheaply and cut every corner possible. So it is understandable that those who have this impression of lean will think it’s the reason why Toyota is having the problems it is currently having. The reality of those problems is not rooted in...

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Stand in the circle and observe.

In late 2009 I visited a supplier which had been placed on containment for poor quality. (Due to the severe recession, travel budgets were cut and the ability to engage this supplier directly was delayed by over a year.) They were constantly fighting fires and were never able to get into a proactive mode where they could identify quality risks prior...

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The Lean Innovation cycle

Lean complements Innovation complements Lean... A great article published on Wharton University’s knowledge blog. It explores how lean and innovation can complement each other to make companies successful. Article In my personal experience in auto manufacturing, it was almost a given that the first months of production of a new product required...

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