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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