Lean Innovation?
Five years ago Brian Hindu wrote an article for Bloomberg Businessweek about 3M and how Total Quality Management and Six Sigma movements dramatically decreased their number of patents and new product introductions as number crunching and efficiency stifled innovation and creativity. There's a quote (of many) in Gary Hamel's latest book What Matters Now I love: " If life had adhered to Six Sigma rule, we'd still be slime. Whatever the future holds for us bipeds, we can be sure that happy accidents will always be essential to breakthrough innovation (p. 42)." Yet Hamel also discusses the incredibly strong innovative culture at Whirlpool, an organization highly vested in Lean training and methods. The difference between the two examples occurs when our organizations steer too far in either direction. Jonah Lehrer in his book Imagine: How Creativity Works and in a rec...