Innovation

Here's another piece I had written earlier...

One word that we hear quite too often these days from the managements of the corporate world, cutting across industry segments, is ‘innovation’. What does it really mean? The thesaurus defines innovation as novelty, modernization, improvement, advance, originality. Now, no wonder organizations would love to have this word in their vision statement. In fact, I would say it is a necessity, even to sustain an organization!

Generally, we tend to think that innovation is something big and needs huge investments. On the contrary, most innovations that have enabled ailing industries turn around are small steps that improve efficiency of its workforce.

I have often quoted this example of a Japanese manufacturing company where the workers assembling a product part had to place a spring under each of the two buttons. The workers, doing this all day, would often miss putting in a spring. This was effectively addressed by a small change in the process – the operator had to pick up two springs from the lot and place them in a tray before staring an assembly. After assembling the part, if there were any springs left on the tray, the worker would immediately know that he/she missed putting in a spring. This simple innovation in the process completely eliminated the problem!

Each one of us needs to spend some time analyzing the work that we do, and see how best we can optimize it. The top management of an organization can provide a strategic direction, however, such innovation has to come from within each of us, to ensure that we stay ahead of our competition.