04 Nov 08 TRIZ Humour - Principle 13 Other Way Round

Two chainsmoker friends went to church. One of them asked father ” Father, can I smoke while I pray”. Father said ” Ofourse not, my child”. Wiser by the incidence the seond one asked ” Father, Can I pray while I smoke” Father said ” Ofourse, You Can, my child.”

Good way of using Principle 13 of TRIZ ” The Other Way Round” .

TRIZ - Systematic Innovation, Simple, Systematic & For Everyone…..

 

Source - prashantinnofuture.blogspot.com/¼/p>

04 Nov 08 Role of an Innovation Facilitator

I came across some interesting facts about cells and neurons. In biological history, one of the biggest turning points occurred when neurons evolved. Neurons are biological connectors that help cells to communicate. Before birth of neurons cells had to be very close to each other, in little blobs, to coordinate their functions. Neurons helped cells to communicate from the distance, which allowed an infinite variety of life forms to emerge. Thanks to neurons, cells were rearranged and assigned different functions. Cells thus collected into all sorts of different shapes, from fish to flowers, hummingbirds to humpbacked whales.

Now you may wonder what is the connection of the subject heading with all this. Let us examine this connection. Role of an innovation facilitator is like neuron that connects cells (innovation teams assigned with task of quantum improvements). Organizations have several such teams, sometimes geographically dispersed and all of them are very busy in their own activities & working on several projects, so hardly having any time to interact with each other. In such circumstances, Innovation facilitator plays a three-way role; of a connector, of a maven and that of a sagacious businessman.

Let us understand the facets of each one of them. In his role as a connector he moves in with several teams helping them think out of box with structured systematic innovation methods. In his enhanced role as a connector he can be a program manager micro- managing various innovation projects. His scope as a connector also goes beyond organizational boundaries by he establishing, nurturing, leveraging external connections. The more connections that are made, the greater the influence and reach of the network, the more intelligent it becomes.

After having settled in his role as a connector his next job is that of a maven who keeps a very detailed information of various ideas that are evolving or have evolved, emerging, technogies, alternative application of technologies, Teams look up to him for such information to progress in their work. Information fuels intelligence and sparks innovation.

Both these roles help him become a wise businessman, where he constantly thinks how he might use other’s ideas into his business and /or how he can sell his ideas to others and profit from it.

I will conclude this post with an analogy; innovation facilitator is like a shared electron, which helps atoms (innovating teams) form a strong / stable innovation bond.

Let me have your views on this.

Source - prashantinnofuture.blogspot.com/

30 Oct 08 iSixSigma’s Top 10 Sets Standard for Best Places to Work for Six Sigma Professionals

--  Chevron Corp.
--  EMC Corp.
--  Masco Builder Cabinet Group
--  McKesson Corp.
--  NewPage Corp.
--  Rio Tinto
--  Textron Inc.
--  Volt Information Sciences Inc.
--  Vought Aircraft Industries Inc.
--  Xerox Corp.

27 Oct 08 Lean insight: ‘Five Whys’ problem-solving

Applying the right lean tool for a given problem follows directly from mastery of the lean principles. This article provides an explanation of the “Five Whys” problem-solving tool.

Proper uses of the tool:
1) As a structured approach to solve problems as they occur
2) As a framework for a team to work through a more complex problem

Improper uses of the tool:
1) To emphasize the person or blame, turning the Five Whys into the Five Whos.
2) To emphasize documentation at the expense of applying the tool. When problem-solving becomes a tedious, desk-intensive process, it is a punishment that gets used as little as possible.

Description of Five Whys tool, how-to
The Five Whys is a simple process to follow to solve any problem. It starts with writing or having an effective problem statement. Problem statements determine the direction we head next. If we get it wrong, every step that follows will be wrong. Problem statements should describe the current condition, use data where possible, and describe the gap in performance. You should also be open to changing the problem statement as you learn more during your investigation. In writing problem statements, you should avoid describing the solution, postulate as to the expected cause, be vague or ambiguous or combine multiple problems into one.

Some examples of good problem statements include:

• Currently entering data into two different systems; tasks are on average 20 percent late from scheduled time
• Overall customer complaints are up 50 percent
• The No. 3 press is consuming $2,000 in repairs monthly

Once the problem statement is determined, you can begin using the Five Whys to determine the root cause. Ask why to the problem statement and then ask why to that again five times. Five is not a magic number; sometimes it might be two, others nine. You should not try to jump whys, but precede one why at a time. You can test each answer to your “why” by asking, “If I remove this, will the previous answer go away?” If the answer is no, you haven’t answered why correctly and you should explore it further. If you can’t immediately answer a why, go and observe or collect data until you can see the current condition clearly enough to answer. Because of this, you may not complete a Five Why in one conversation, but may have to observe, collect data and other activities at each level of why. You have gotten to the end, or the root cause, when you can describe the cause of the problem in terms of an activity, connection or flow.

An example follows with the problem that a key piece of equipment failed.
Why did the equipment fail? Because the circuit board burned out.
Why did the circuit board burn out? Because it overheated.
Why did it overheat? Because it wasn’t getting enough air.
Why was it not getting enough air? Because the filter wasn’t changed.
Why was the filter not changed? Because there was no preventive maintenance schedule to do so.

That is now a root cause that can be solved. By focusing on the question WHY, we are more likely to avoid using the other W question: WHO.

The purpose is to fix the system, not just remove the symptom. If we aren’t clear about the difference between symptoms and problems, we will not find the root cause effectively. Symptoms are the part we see – the part on the surface. Symptoms are how we know we have a problem. Problems themselves are the cause of that symptom. As an example, if I see oil on my garage floor and I clean up the oil, is the problem fixed? No, you just fixed a symptom of the problem, not the problem. The problem is the engine leaks.

Once the root cause is determined, a countermeasure to the problem must be found. Creativity and lean tools are your most powerful allies in this part of the process. Focus on nothing but the root cause in determining the proper countermeasure. All the other work from problem statement to the Five Whys helps to get you to this point.

A vital final step of the process is verifying that the solution worked. This should be done by first seeing that the countermeasure is sustainable and then making sure that the original condition – the symptom – has been eliminated. There are two purposes. The first is to ensure we met our objective: eliminating the adverse condition. The second is where learning occurs. By verifying each countermeasure, we learn what works and what doesn’t, improving our knowledge both of the process we are trying to manage and improve in addition to problem solving process itself.

Variations on the tool
The Five Whys can be built into many other problem solving processes. Many companies create proprietary problem solving processes that are based on having a common way to communicate or save for learning and history. The Five Whys can be utilized as a formal part of a larger process or by the user to determine the root cause, which then gets input into the formal process. Also, tools, such as Six Sigma, can help find the answer to each successive ‘why’ being asked, but does not replace the process of digging down layer by layer.

How tool relates to rules and principles
The Five Whys most obviously and directly relates to the principle of Systematic Problem Solving. Without the intent of the principle behind you, the Five Whys will likely be a shell of a process and not used effectively.

Key behaviors that must accompany the Five Whys include: 1) surfacing problems quickly; 2) using them as opportunities to move closer to the ideal state; and 3) focus on the process, not on blaming the person. The principle of Create a Learning Organization is also greatly enabled through the practice of the Five Whys. The Five Whys can become the primary driver of daily learning about the management and improvement of the process.

By finding the root cause and then verifying the effectiveness of the countermeasure, deep knowledge of the process can become institutionalized.

Source - Reliableplant.com

21 Oct 08 How to Organize for Lean/Six Sigma

Nov. 1, 2008 –

 

But that was yesterday. Today the practice of lean/Six Sigma solutions is no longer restricted to the production floor, says Jake Stiles, president and COO, Stiles & Associates.  He explains that when his executive recruiting firm originated in the early 1990s, the clients were primarily looking to fill staff positions that would oversee lean/Six Sigma initiatives on the production floor.

 

“Today’s corporations are looking for lean/Six Sigma experts that can help deliver the potential of the technology to every functional area, even finance and maintenance,” says Stiles. “Lean/Six Sigma has progressed to become the common tool set across all corporate functions,” adds Dennis McRae, client partner, Celerant Consulting Inc.

 

Applying lean/Six Sigma to some functional areas can synergistically optimize and accelerate the entire corporate mission — including the application of lean/Six Sigma to the other functional areas.

 

“For example, consider the potential benefits of applying the lean/Six Sigma approach to product development,” says John Gilligan, president, Boothroyd Dewhurst Inc. By first optimizing the product with the company’s Design For Manufacture and Assembly (DFMA) software, the subsequent lean/Six Sigma initiatives can proceed from a more refined level, he notes.

 

“The net result — of product simplification preceding the lean/Six Sigma procedures — could also simplify a wide variety of other manufacturing steps,” Gilligan adds. For example if the simplified product design results in cutting part count, the implications include reduced assembly time, potentially fewer suppliers and reduced production floor space requirements.

 

At Hypertherm Inc., a manufacturer of plasma cutting systems, the DFMA software enabled a first pass part count reduction as high as 50%, says Mike Shipulski, Hypertherm’s director of engineering. About 500 parts were eliminated from the product, a main power supply sub-assembly that originally contained about 1,000 parts. Shipulski says the resulting reduction in assembly floor space requirements made it possible to satisfy a growing market demand within the existing building. “We didn’t have to add floor space.”

 

Gilligan says past applications of the DFMA software reveal that most of the material and labor savings are in the 50% to 70% range, with floor space reductions typically in the 15% to 20% range. Shipulski says Hypertherm’s part count reduction efforts range from 47% to 63% in first pass efforts. Subsequent efforts achieve less, but parts and labor can still be reduced, says Shipulski.

 

“Ultimately you have to change the technology to get to the next level,” Shipulski says. “With DFMA, we’re able to take out waste even before it gets into the manufacturing process. It enables us to introduce a low waste design into a manufacturing system and from there the lean thinkers in manufacturing can take the waste out even further.”

 

“We’ve found that the lean lever in design is far more powerful than the lean lever in manufacturing,” he continues. “For example, [applying lean to] manufacturing can’t take out half of the labor. Traditional lean methods would be hard pressed to achieve more than a 30% reduction in production floor labor requirements. While DFMA can help bring about changes in the production process, traditional lean methods can’t introduce as big an improvement.”

 

Shipulski also points out that the supply base can be reduced when DFMA reduces part count by 50% — a characteristic that conventional lean doesn’t permit.

 

Shipulski admits that DFMA does require design engineers to have an expanded role in understanding how designs are translated into process requirements for the production floor. “DFMA demands that design engineers understand, at some level, how the various aspects of the design consume resources and what features create labor time and cost.”

 

The approach is a demonstration that labor cost can be designed out of a product instead of pursuing what people think is lower labor cost in another country, Shipulski explains. “The DFMA-based alternative lowers labor cost without exposure to rapidly rising transportation costs from offshore suppliers.” More importantly, he adds, DFMA-empowered lean provides the advantage of speed. Since shipping is not involved, the approach makes possible faster reaction to a changing demand.

 

Starting Out

 

Since pursuing the lean/Six Sigma journey is more a matter of commitment than compliance, Rob Pierson was impressed to observe the committed dedication of his CEO at a recent kaizen event at his new employer. Pierson says it was the first time in his lean/Six Sigma career that he experienced a CEO on a weeklong kaizen.

 

“That kind of commitment, coming from the top, signals a company that will become a lean/Six Sigma leader,” Pierson says. “Our CEO is driving it into the DNA of our business culture to continuously eliminate waste and drive cycle time reduction. Our vision is to achieve and maintain that goal.”

 

Pierson’s new employer, Graf-Tech International Ltd., is a $1.3 billion producer of carbon and graphite products. Spun off from Union Carbide in the late 1990s, the organization is now embarking on a lean/Six Sigma journey with Pierson’s leadership as global director of enterprise excellence. Pierson, a Six Sigma Black Belt, joined the company earlier this year. With 10 plants and 2,600 employees, about 80% of the company’s output is electrodes for electric arc furnaces. Other industrial activity includes refractory brick and engineered solutions using graphite.

 

Pierson says lean/Six Sigma is being pursued as a competitive differentiator to build on GrafTech’s products and services offerings. “The strategy is to leverage the company’s financial strengths and become stronger operationally throughout the entire value stream.” That strategy targets more than the plant floor, explains Pierson. “We’ll be involving lean/Six Sigma from the supplier through manufacturing, through to the customer.” That includes activities on the shop floor as well as the front office. As an example, Pierson notes that the company just completed its first accounts receivable kaizen event to improve that process. Another recent kaizen event focused on the transportation module.

 

“Our lean/Six Sigma activities involve more than the plant floor where we’re moving equipment, creating flow and getting rid of plant floor waste. We’re working inside and outside the organization’s boundaries to improve the company.” For example, with the front office, the metrics of accomplishment include such things as days of sales outstanding in collections and dollars past due. Having just done the kaizen, Pierson anticipates that collections will be cut by 75% and sales outstanding by 50% or more.

 

Typically, says Pierson, the results will be a 25% reduction in lead time, inventory turns of 24 or greater and a 25% to 50% profit improvement compared to industry standards. Pierson describes a committed learning process that’s under way where employees undergo training and the short term use of consultants (TBM Consulting Group) helping to sharpen the focus of lean/Six Sigma methods and goals. “They’re teaching us ‘how to fish,’” says Pierson.

 

One measure of what awaits Graf-Tech’s efforts is provided by TBM’s benchmarks of lean/Six Sigma leaders. TBM says they enjoy the following:

 

 
• Customer service levels of 95% to 99%; 
• Customer retention of 90% or more; 
• Lead times of one-quarter to one-half the industry average; 
• Productivity/throughput improvement: 15-plus % per year; 
• Sales growth: three to five times the industry average; 
• Earnings growth: two to four times the industry average.

 

Lessons Learned

 

When describing his GrafTech vision, Pierson is careful to reference the mission as the combined pursuit of both lean and Six Sigma. “It’s not two competing camps — just one army.” He sees the either/or strategy in decline.

 

“Traditionally companies would either roll out lean or Six Sigma, but not both,” explains Pierson. “The lean folks would focus on waste reduction, typically on the plant floor, via kaizen and continuous improvement. Those selecting Six Sigma, on the other hand, usually employed Black Belts or Green Belts to work on longer-term projects using an approach called DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control).” The focus of Six Sigma organizations, he notes, is typically centered on variation reduction projects.

 

“Now when a continuous improvement team determines that flow of material is being interrupted by a significant scrap problem at the furnace, they don’t say, ‘Well, that will require using those Six Sigma tools — we’ll just leave it alone.’ What they now say is, ‘Hey, let’s do a kaizen using Six Sigma to quickly solve the scrap problem then continue on with our flow project.’”

 

Pierson emphasizes that combining lean and Six Sigma simply increases the size of your toolbox. Adds Celerant Consulting’s McRae, “Consider lean as the foundation for accelerating behavior change — the elimination of non-value-added behavior. Then with the new attitudes established towards waste elimination and cycle time reduction, it makes sense to use Six Sigma to resolve part variability.”

Source - Industryweek.com¼/p>

13 Oct 08 A system overwhelmed by innovation

The stunning scale of the interventions under way in financial markets – barely imaginable just weeks ago – make it seem that nothing will ever be the same. A crisis so grave, so weighted with ideological implications, must point to a grand political realignment, with much of what we thought we knew about the role of governments and markets overthrown. So it is argued, and so many people hope.

It is possible. It happened after the Great Depression. But I doubt that this crisis will change the world anything like as profoundly. In the end, I doubt it will even overthrow much of the conventional wisdom about states and markets.

In thinking through the parallel with the 1930s, the important question is how far the financial emergency will infect the rest of the economy. The Depression changed the US and the world because it wrecked the lives of countless millions of people.

The US and many other countries face a bad recession – but surely nothing to compare with that sustained catastrophe. Ragged as the response to this emergency seems, we will look back and say that, compared with previous crises, the remedies were both prompt and massive. Notwithstanding the past few weeks’ arguments about how to stabilise the situation, we will also say that consensus was achieved with surprising speed – and that the willingness to support it with sufficient resources (meaning without limit) was never really in question. In short, the mistakes of the 1930s are not being repeated.

Sorting out the details of the response will be messy but the principles are now clear and policy is forming around them. First, address illiquidity in the market for mortgage-backed securities. Second, inject public capital on a huge scale, drawing in new private capital at the same time. Third, revive the inter-bank market with temporary guarantees. Fourth, especially in the US, step up efforts to slow mortgage foreclosures, to relieve the distress and stop house prices undershooting.

Britain was first to put most of these elements in place. It helps to have an impotent legislature. The US administration has to ask Congress first, so these things take a little longer. Washington will argue about whether the rescue package, together with the Federal Reserve’s existing powers, leave enough wiggle room for all of the above. But Hank Paulson, reeling from this week’s turmoil on Wall Street, is on board. Those four complementary parts, backed before this is over with a trillion or two of taxpayers’ money in the US alone, have every chance of limiting the damage to the real economy to a bad recession, as opposed to a new Depression.

One can also predict the central feature of the post-crisis regulatory regime. It was suggested on this page on January 31 by Charles Goodhart and Avinash Persaud: contra-cyclical capital requirements. The basic idea is simple: force banks to build up capital faster when their lending is expanding most rapidly. Financial busts almost always follow credit booms. Contra-cyclical capital requirements tax the expansion of credit and build a bigger cushion for any bust.

Very many other issues will need to be addressed, of course, including the meaning of the term “bank” for these purposes (it will have to be widened); regulation of derivatives; regulation of mortgages; and opportunities for international regulatory arbitrage (which put a premium on, at a minimum, closer co-operation among national regulators). Still, when all is said and done, contra-cyclical capital will be the central idea.

Suppose that the US and the world escape with a bad recession but no worse, and that a new regulatory system – one that shackles lenders more tightly in good times – is put in place. Where would this leave the underlying argument about state and market, and the prospects for government intervention in other parts of the economy?

My guess is: rhetorically adjusted, about where it was before the crisis. This is because countervailing forces are in play, limiting any net effect.

The intellectual climate has already moved decisively in favour of market-sceptics. Until further notice, pro-market triumphalism is over. In the US, most likely, Barack Obama will be elected – not just because of the crisis, though it helps – and he will have big Democratic majorities in Congress to help him govern. His stump speech ties the emergency to deregulation and “trickle-down economics”, the outgoing doctrines. All that is history, he says.

We shall see. Mr Obama’s laudable ambitions to extend health insurance to all Americans, to refurbish the country’s failing infrastructure, to make a college education affordable and to cut nearly everybody’s taxes will run up against the amazing demands that the rescue will place on present and future taxpayers. The fiscal mess left behind by the Bush administration makes the problem much worse. Supposing he wins, the intellectual climate will be strongly on Mr Obama’s side; the fiscal climate, and taxpayers watching these bills fall due, will not. Circumstances will force the next president to be a fiscal conservative on matters other than temporary stimulus and financial stability.

There is a broader point. The financial crisis was indeed a failure of regulation. The system was overwhelmed by innovation. Regulators are going to have to catch up and, you could say, try to hold innovation back. But finance is not a normal industry. The question to ponder is this: in which other industries will curbing innovation – also known as market forces – strike governments or voters, in the US or anywhere else, as a good idea?

Source - FT.com

10 Oct 08 Comparing Lean Six Sigma Program to Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) Business Governance System

Organizations can go beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard with an Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) business governance system that can transitions organizational firefighting to moving toward achievement of the 3 Rs of business; i.e., everyone doing the Right things and doing them Right at the Right time. A table that compares these systems is referenced below.

Six Sigma is a term coined by Motorola that emphasizes the improvement of processes for the purpose of reducing variability and making general improvements. Lean is to improving operations and the supply chain with an emphasis on the reduction of wasteful activities like waiting, transportation, material hand-offs, inventory, and overproduction.

Lean Six Sigma is a project based process improvement program. Lean Six Sigma is not a business system. Often a Six Sigma deployment evolves to a hunt for project system; e.g., we have someone going to training next week and they need a workshop project. This push-for-project creation often can lead to organizational suboptimizations and much wasted efforts; e.g., I am having trouble getting my project completed, nobody seems interested.

The balanced scorecard tracks the business in the areas of financial, customer, internal processes, and learning and growth. Each category is to have objectives, measures, targets, and initiatives. Scorecard balance is important because if you don’t have balance you could be giving one metric more focus than another, which can lead to problems. For example, when focus is given to only on-time delivery, product quality could suffer dramatically to meet ship dates. However care needs to be given in how this balanced is achieved. A natural balance is much more powerful than forcing balance through the organizational chart using a scorecard structure of financial, customer, internal business process, and learning and growth that may not be directly appropriate to all business areas. In addition, a scorecard structure that is closely tied to the organization chart has an additional disadvantage in that it will need to be changed whenever significant reorganizations occur.

Organizations are now finding an Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) system to be very beneficial in overcoming traditional Six Sigma deployment issues. The IEE system goes Beyond Lean Six Sigma and the Balanced Scorecard.

IEE is a business system that has unique measure (30,000-foot-level tracking system), analyze, and improve components so that organizational measurements create a project pull system, where defined projects benefit the business as a whole. IEE is a system that structurally blends innovation with analytics and truly integrated Lean and Six Sigma tools both at the project execution and enterprise management as well.

 

Source - smartersolutions.com

07 Oct 08 Why Quality Teams (CAN) Fail

It is hard to talk about Quality as it relates to today’s market condition…where do you start.  But as I read through a recent Wall Street Journal article, ”SEC Faulted for Missing Red Flags at Bear” I couldn’t help but to draw parallels to a firm’s Quality team.  The article states that the “SEC simply failed to carryout its mission in its oversight at Bear Stearns”.  Under Mr. Cox’s (the SEC chairman) watch, the agency no longer has large firms left to oversee; Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs have either gone bankrupt, been bought-out or morphed into a new entity.  The root causes of the failure discussed in the article were:
 

1. That the SEC did not have enough authority to effectively oversee the banks

2. Enforcement cases were stalled in part because the agency’s staff were asked to jump through additional loops

3. The idea of rapid deregulation (change) and having enough staff to keep up with audits was briefly discussed

Oddly enough these are the root causes for the failure of any once-healthy organization.  So it goes for the Quality team of a firm that is falling apart before the team can even take form.  This team is put in a position of leadership without any authority to drive change…textbook case of a paper tiger.  The Quality leader is given the charge to drive improvements and changes across the organization.  But the speed and the quality of the change are suffocated by the various committees and subcommittees that have to buy in before anything is accepted.  The concept of leadership is totally lost in the process.

Because leadership is afraid to take a decision, various layers of red tap are introduced.  And before you know it what was once the right thing to do for the company (based on data) has morphed into something unrecognizable.  As we sit (literally and figuratively) on the side lines and watch, we cannot help but to feel sorry, helpless and frustrated for the Quality team.  We know it is just a matter of time before the whole concept gets abandoned.  What once was a good and necessary idea (an independent team to drive unbiased change) is cast aside because the foundation (read leadership) from the start was weak (read not completely on board).  This the most unfortunate and also the least  controllable outcome from an external consultant’s perspective.  If anyone has ideas as to how we can combat this please share!

 

Source- Asq.org

04 Oct 08 Looking beyond the obvious

Americans tend to be a “roughly right and let’s get on with it” culture—though they often see themselves as quality-seeking perfectionists. Take a look at just about any American company’s vice- president of Quality or vice- president of Customer Experience. You know he or she is never going to be the CEO. Even after a generation of Six Sigma, ISO’s, and CMMI’s, America is still famous as the home of the “80 %.” Get it 80 % right, put a price tag on it, and get it out there.

To be honest, it’s not quite that simple. This description of American culture has subtle layers of complexity. As with all cliches and generalisations, there’s some truth here. Take Ford and General Motors. They’ve been losing market share in cycles to both Toyota and Honda for years based to a degree on perceived quality. But as recently as mid-2007, Ford scored higher on its overall quality than any car company in the world, and GM has been scoring among the top three in consumer-ranked quality surveys on some of its cars.

And, of course, in leading edge IT technology, America continues to be, by far, the world leader in quality in hardware, software , storage, printers, and services. In the world of airliners, severe quality problems in the electrical systems on the grand Airbus 380—the proud centerpiece of Europe’s half-public-half-government controlled consortium—set back its delivery schedule more than a year and helped the US’s Boeing Aircraft Company, which had been sagging, recapture market leadership. An impressive comeback, even as Boeing faced its own, though less severe, delays in rolling out its new Dreamliner 787.

So Americans do strive for perfection, for excellence, for superior quality, for CMMI Level 5, and for Six Sigma Quality. And they can be dammed hard on suppliers, vendors, and partners who don’t deliver at the level they want.

But what tends to happen is this: as the product or project moves close to completion, the role of the technical and quality people gets less and less attention. At this point, the marketing, advertising, and sale teams have the spotlight—and to a degree, the power. They’ve created advertising campaigns, marketing roll outs, speaking engagements, beta demonstrations, and they’ve set dates. This huge “go-to-market” people are better looking, better dressed,and much better presenters and social schmoozers than the technical team.

But this is still only part of the picture…..

My observation is that the key differentiator behind American success is flexibility. Sometimes this requires moving ahead with an 80 % solution, sometimes it means going for Six Sigma quality. The British are good at this, too, but their stubborn, muddle-through confidence keeps them wedded to the original plan a bit longer. The Germans are so good at anything they do they are loath to change course; the French (who are very hard workers) labor for a higher God who doesn’t seem to care if they have a plan or not; and for the Japanese, the plan has been so well conceived it practically is a God.

The Chinese can move very quickly, but their entrepreneurial flexibility is not yet clear to me. Flexibility is a special type of genius. Whether Americans push on to 99.999 % quality, or “put a fork in it and serve it up at 80 percent solved,” their ability to make this decision in near real time has worked well so far. It is the underlying reason that a country of only 300 million people, 17 % of whom are over 60 years old, generates a $12 trillion economy.

Where does India stand in the “flexibility” spectrum? My sense is “very high.” After all, India has grown its software services and software-enabled businesses from almost nothing to upwards of $50 billion in the market capitalization of its top four IT players (TCS, Insosys, Wipro, Satyam) in less than 25 years. They are even outsourcing some of their work to China

Distinguished executives such as Symphony’s Ajay Kela, MindTree Consulting’s Subroto Bagchi, and HP’s Dilip Phadke have spent so much time in the US that talking to them gives you a feeling that you are talking with American executives. The difference is they are more deliberate and precise in what they say and how they explain complicated issues.

My very cursory observation is that Indian IT professionals in general, perhaps because of their advanced technical educations, might tend to analyse a problem from four different angles while Americans will look at it from just three angles, and then run out the door and start selling it.

And of course the more enlightened Indians and Americans will realise that the problem in front of them is actually part of a larger issue, and then search for ways to satisfy or surpass expectations. Then there are these telling…

words from Pavan Varma’s book: “Whether in India or abroad, Indians have one quality which has stood them in good stead: resilience.”

One last thought abut Americans and how they often appear to be lazy and irresolute—particularly in popular films, music videos, and sometimes in real life. How can this be in a country that generates a $12 trillion economy? Of course, ask young Chetan Bhagat what he thinks of Americans, and the author of the popular book One night @ the call center will tell you by way of a rant from one of his book’s characters, six-foot tall Vroom. Vroom works on the night shift at a fictional call center called “Connexions,” where they handle service calls for their client, the fictional company Western Computers and Appliances. On this particular night Vroom has had to listen to complaints from one too many Americans: “There are two things I cannot stand,” he says. “Racists and Americans.” Ignoring the obvious contradiction of what he just said, he goes on: “Why do some fat-assed, dim-witted Americans get to act superior to us?Do you know why? I’ll tell you why. Not because they are smarter. Not because they are better people. But because their country is rich and ours is poor. That is the only damn reason.”

Source - financialexpress.com

02 Oct 08 Innovation can drive your growth

Want to become a market leader? If your business can use innovation and target a new market, or change its market position, the best leader in that niche will be a natural choice.

If you are producing the same product or service as everyone else, you are destined to end up in a commodity market competing around promotions and price.

Unless you happen to have the benefit of economies of scale or preferential access to low cost components or ingredients, your profits are always going to be marginal and growth is going to elude you.

Only by moving away from commodity marketing and building a sustainable competitive advantage can you start to push your price and margins up. In the end, you need to be a market leader in a highly targeted market with a product that solves a compelling need to provide the fuel for growth. This is where innovation plays a big role.

Innovation, in its most basic form, is simply bringing something new to a market situation. It is more than invention, although many products brought to market are based on new knowledge.

Innovation changes a market situation by upsetting the established order, by finding new ways to solve old problems, better ways to solve an existing problem or new ways to bring established products into the market. Innovation can be though product features and design, new processes or new business concepts.

The advantage to the business that uses innovation to change its market position is that it gets to lead the market in some dimension, which plays well to a segment of the market who desire that differentiation.

By tapping into an unmet need it can establish a higher price, higher margin and capture market share. Providing this is done in a sustainable manner, such as through some form of protection, that new market share can be held for some period of time.

Thus copyright, patents, brands, trademarks and licenses are strong forms of innovation protection. Other methods such as loyalty schemes, long term preferred supplier contracts, embedded operations and control over channels to market can also form barriers to competition.

Innovation, however, needs to be directed towards solving a specific problem in the market that can create this leading position. The aim should be to target innovation around problems that can form longer term barriers.

A focus on difficult to solve problems, problems that have a sense of urgency about them or are associated with meeting compliance requirements, will always drive higher market growth. Incremental innovation which simply keeps pace with the competition will not drive growth in its own right.

Although it is very tempting to see innovation as a logical extension of existing product specification, it only protects what has already been achieved but it doesn’t capture market share from competitors or gain a greater share of a growing market. So while all innovation has an impact, it is the bold innovator who will change the game.

Smaller companies are better suited to differentiated niche markets where specialised solutions can give them a protected market, but also allow them to set higher prices. In this context, innovation driven through customer feedback, internal research and development and market scanning, can bring forth periodic improvement in products and services to keep them in a leadership position.

What is very clear is that without innovation, a leadership position will never be established nor maintained.

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