This past April, Michael Parent published a book
entitled The Lean Innovation Cycle: A Multi-Disciplinary Framework for Designing Value with Lean and Human-Centered Design, which addresses what many companies
are facing regarding pursuing innovation. His book addresses these concerns by
introducing a new multidisciplinary framework for both thinking about and
pursuing innovation. By taking key concepts from the quality management
practices of Lean and Six Sigma, the framework augments these tools and
disciplines by incorporating other problem-solving and design techniques,
including Human-Centered Design. The result is a view of innovation that many
business leaders will find fits nicely into their existing paradigm of strategy
and operational discipline.
When I recently spoke with Michael, I asked him: “How should
companies pursue and achieve innovation now?” Here is his complete answer:
Innovation seems to be on the tips of everyone’s tongues.
Search social media and you’ll find an ethos of innovation behind every post.
But the popularity of innovation and entrepreneurial thinking on social media
has done damage to how businesses and industry incumbents should think about
and pursue innovation. Especially in a world buffeted by global disruptions –
chip shortages, inflation, supply chain issues, pandemics – just to name a few,
companies need to have a greater understanding of what role innovation plays in
their business and the different ways they adapt to a dynamic organizational
landscape.
Regarding innovation, the biggest opportunities for
businesses are to pursue an innovative approach styled after the principles of
Quality Management. Organizations can mitigate their risks of disruption by
holistically evaluating their existing processes, and shoring up gaps that put
them in jeopardy. It might not be sexy, but improving supply chain reliability,
capability, and in-process quality has enumerable benefits for most businesses,
from increasing profit margin, to reducing expenses, to driving towards
operational consistency across their entire value chain.
Equally important is how businesses should avoid pursuing
innovation. Generally speaking, if you’re anything but a new start-up business,
you should stay away from grandiose ideas of disruptive innovation and
industry-altering advancements. These promise exceedingly high profits and
growth but fail to materialize due to excruciatingly low chances of success,
high resource demands, and even internal organizational disruption to the
existing business.
A business incumbent has already been successful in their
industry. Rather than abandoning the history and tradition of the firm through
radical, disruptive innovation, a business ought to re-evaluate its existing
value propositions through the lens of a fresh perspective. Amidst global
disruptions that have mainly affected business operations (and left the
products and marketing themselves untouched) the principles of quality
management, Lean, and Six Sigma is an excellent framework to begin this
endeavor.
What do you think of Michael’s perspective? What role does innovation play in your company? How is your company pursuing innovation? What have been the pitfalls?
