Transform Style Of Innovation Management To WIN BIG
The opening of Doug Hall’s next book – to be published January 17, 2016.
INNOVATION ENGINEERING
Out of the Crisis II
To paraphrase Dr. W. Edwards Deming from his book Out of the Crisis. “The aim of this book is transformation of the style of management. Transformation of management is not a job of reconstruction, nor is it revision. It requires a whole new structure, from foundation upward. Mutation might be the word, except that mutation implies unordered spontaneity. Transformation must take place with directed effort. The aim of this book is to supply the direction.”
The “Crisis” Dr. Deming referred to was the massive decline that western companies experienced during the late 70’s as a result of their quality gap versus Japanese products. Dr. Deming knew the solution to the “Crisis.” He was the one who had taught the Japanese how to increase quality and reduce costs by applying system thinking to manufacturing.
Japanese industry was so thankful they named their national quality award, the Deming Prize. The Japanese Emperor awarded him the Second Order of the Sacred Treasure in recognition of his contributions to Japan. Shoichiro Toyoda, President and member of the family that founded Toyota, described Dr. Deming’s impact on his company this way: “Everyday I think of what he meant to us. Deming is the core of our management.”
Out of the Crisis II
The Crisis in 1980 was the quality gap. The Crisis today is the innovation gap.
Today, if you are not meaningfully unique you better be cheap.
The innovation gap is amplified by the Internet. The internet accelerates the decline of companies and careers into price driven commodities. The internet accelerates change, new technologies, and enables new competitors.
To the optimist, the accelerating pace of today ignites new possibilities for winning versus competition and in marketplaces around the world. To the pessimist, it’s the worst thing that could ever happen.
The solution to the Crisis in 1980, was using the system thinking taught by Dr. Deming to enable increased quality and decreased cost. Today, a team of pioneers lead by the Innovation Engineering Institute are finding that the solution to Crisis II is applying system thinking as taught by Dr. Deming to enable innovation by everyone, everywhere, everyday. The result is increased speed to market (up to 6x) and decreased risk (30 to 80%).
Dr. Deming understood the value of applying systems thinking to innovation. In his book The New Economics he estimated that the factory represented just 3% of the opportunity for company improvement, “the shop floor is only a small part of the total. Anyone could be 100% successful with the 3 per cent, and find himself out of business.” The biggest opportunity for system thinking is in applying it to strategy, innovation and how we work together. And that, is the purpose of the Innovation Engineering movement.
What is Innovation Engineering?
Innovation Engineering is a reliable methodology to Define, Discover, Develop and Deliver new ways to address a business situation (incremental and short term CORE projects or disruptive, longer term LEAP projects).
It is a systematic approach to align strategy, create innovative ideas, persuasively communicate ideas, rapidly test ideas with quantitative research, patent ideas and take the idea to market with increased speed and decreased risk.
Innovation Engineering is based on a belief that to win with innovation in today’s marketplace we need to move from controlling to ENABLING employees. Therefore, all education programs on campus and off (IE Green Belt, Blue Belt and Black Belt) use the patent pending Cycles to Mastery™ teaching technology. It is designed to enable all who are willing to achieve mastery of the 48 skills that make up the Innovation Engineering field of study. The Innovation Engineering digital tool set at Innovation Engineering labs.com enables employee effectiveness in project management, collaboration, rapid research and patent ROI.
The Innovation Engineering transformation is designed to be implemented over time, using a “diffusion of innovation” approach, with each phase delivering tangible results, but with low to no disruption to existing business operations.
