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Innovation is about creating the future…and making sure your organization is part of it. We are in an age where customers and consumers expect innovation and new ideas. Unfortunately, business has not positioned itself well for innovation. In the last years of the 20th century, business focused on improving the delivery of existing products and services, and less on the development of new markets and new products. The harsh reality is that if a product or service has become outdated, effort to improve its delivery efficiency is totally wasted.
For successful innovation, an organization needs its people to be well connected, which is exactly what a highly-developed quality management system can do. This book shows that quality management and its associated efficiencies does not necessarily have to drive out the “thinking time” that is so critical to innovation. You can innovate and develop the products and services that the market needs tomorrow by following the two modes of operation described by noted author Peter Merrill: “stay loose” to create and conceptualize, and “hang tight” to develop the concept and commercialize.
Contrary to popular belief, new ideas emerge most frequently as the result of collective knowledge and typically do not come from a lone “genius.” Consequently, for successful innovation to occur, the internal and external networks of an organization have to be well developed. Merrill describes how to become an innovative organization that enables information to flow freely between its people, and also enables information to flow freely to and from external organizations.
