Innovation is a buzzword today in the corporate world. Every organization wants to be innovative. They want to sell innovative products and services!
Genuine innovation creates lots of genuine value to the organization, customers & society. It is about value added to customers & society by the application of creative ideas which are commercialized. Innovation can be in any of the following dimensions:
- Products & Services
- Processes
- Business Model
Consider the following facts about Innovation:
- Over 50% of all innovation is focused on developing innovative Products & Services
- Nearly 20% of innovation is focused towards Processes
- Over 70 % of ideas for innovation are generated during interaction with customers, business partners, suppliers & competition
- Only less than 20 % of ideas for innovation are generated employee forums such as brainstorming, suggestion forums, etc
Innovation & Creativity
Innovation & Creativity have strong linkages, but they are not the same. Creativity is the initiating enabler of Innovation. It is a sub-set of innovation but an important constituent.
It takes creative people to generate ideas that are novel. Innovation structures the idea – gives it a form, facilitates its execution & thus makes it commercially workable.
- Creativity is usually spontaneous.
- Creativity is still considered by many to be a gift, but it’s been proven, that’s just a myth!
- It isn’t possible to structure creativity as much as innovation.
BTW, 80% of managers can’t differentiate between creativity & innovation!
Challenges for implementing Innovation & Creativity?
Key challenges to institutionalize innovation in organizations are:
- About one-third of all innovations fail because of organization’s culture inhibits innovation
- About half of all organizations who fail to deliver on innovation don’t consider it in their strategic planning process
- Employees don’t embody innovation easily as other change initiatives
- Nearly half of all organizations that aim to innovate don’t have processes & tools to manage innovation
- About one-fifth of failures happen due to lack of alignment & accountability over innovation between leadership
Challenges with Creativity are:
- Employees fear for failure
- Individuals lack of ability to articulate their creativity… communication matters
- Individuals are not willing to risk
- They are unable to get beyond conventional ‘thinking’
- In a given situation, they can’t identify the right stimulus to think unconventional
How can we help you?
There are several key ingredients that can make employees ‘Creative’ & organizations ‘Innovative’. We can help you in acquiring those ingredients :
- Processes
- Innovation Culture
- Strategic focus & accountability
- Creativity Tools Coaching for employees
- SCAMPER
- Ideation Blitz workshop
- Visioning Tools workshop for leaders
- TRIZ workshop
- Lateral Thinking Tools workshop (mind mapping, various brainstorming techniques, visioning tools, newspaper methods, random words, analogies, etc.)
- Experimentation techniques for screening ideas
What have we done?
Steward ‘Ideation Blitz’ session For a Bank’s Outsourcing Unit
Neil facilitated Kaizen Blitz session which is a structured brainstorming and idea screening session themed on continuous improvement. Such sessions can be further focused on specific objectives such as waste elimination, automation, etc., In this particular session, a large group of 200 associates participated in a day long session with prior preparatory session. More than 1000 implementable ideas were screened in a single a day.
Duration: 3 weeks
SCAMPER Workshop
SCAMPER is about identifying solutions for problems in a quick and innovative manner. It is certainly simpler than Triz. Hence associates can be easily use this in their daily management.
Mistake Proofing Solution for Engine Assembly Defects
Poka yoke to eliminate seizure of 2 wheeler engines Engine is loaded to the vehicle chassis and then engine oil is filled to the engine. There were several cases where engine was sealed without filling the engine oil. It was observed that the operator tightened the engine oil nut with a pneumatic tool without filling the oil. A poka-yoke was designed in to ensure the pneumatic tool would not work for the duration of oil filling in every cycle of TAKT time. Thus if the operator inadvertently tightened the nut without filling oil, the pneumatic tool wouldn’t work. Thus the defect rate drastically reduced. This improvement was conceived and implemented within in a single day.
Fork Oil Variation Reduction Oil is filled in the front forks of Automobiles.
This was accomplished manually using measuring jars. However the variation in the quantity of oil filled with 2 forks of the same vehicle and variation against specification led to poor performance and feel. Oil greater than the specification makes gives a ‘hard’ feel, while lesser oil reduces the ‘endurance’ of the fork system. A Low Cost Automation solution was introduced, which will fill metered quantity of oil. Thus variation drastically reduced. Further the automation included other operations such as tightening the fork nuts and fixing of oil seal, thus reducing complaints of ‘oil leak due to seal damage’.
Read about Neil’s one-to-one coaching programs here