Creating External Innovation

 

" Doing Work Efficiently Is Often An Excuse For Doing Work
You Shouldn't Be Doing At All"

The approach of Operational Innovation or Constant Innovation can be firm changing, but requires some prerequisites.

The proposition is not to make work more efficient but eliminate the work requirement if all possible in contrast to only approaching improvement of the existing processes and workflows.

Constant Improvement's experience over nearly two decades has seen this play out again and again as a firm changing experience with one caveat, it has to be approached correctly, with the right committments, and prerequisites in place.

These include for a sample:

• Understanding what is currently happening within your organization from a workflow perspective,
• Management commitment to the process,
• Designated and enabled authority to make the changes,
• Designated resources with applicable skills & experience,

For further reading on this approach the article below provides insights and backgound.

For an article from Harvard on Operational Innovation ...click here

Innovating External Operational Platforms

External Operational Platforms can be often be easily innovated to eliminate whole workstreams and resource requirements as well.

These operational platforms mostly directly interact with external stakeholders such as vendors and clients so the modifications made have external impacts and have a burden to bedesigned, deployed, and implemented with optimal methodologies without exception.

The negative impacts of the mishandling of these type of innovations can be substantial, costly and affect the organizations reputation and brand.

Some samples of the operational platforms that can achieve large returns are

• Information Access By Outside Stakeholders
• Customer Communications Automation
• Customer Interactions
  • Sales
  • Marketing
  • Online Purchasing
• Customer Fullfillment
• Vendor Interactions
  • Purchase Fullfillment
  • Vendor Payments

Remember "Perfection Is The Enemy Of The Good"

Voltaire's observation that perfection is the enemy of the good is especially applicable to operational innovation.

Companies that strive to design the ultimate new way of doing things usually do nothing at all; they lose momentum while tinkering and revising, and the resulting solution is too grandiose to be implemented. Avoiding this trap is of utmost importance in creating a bias for action.

Use A principle of "70 percent and go": Develop a solution that provides most but not all desired capabilities, get into the field quickly, and then enhance it over time.

This approach allows concepts to be tested, builds momentum and credibility, and delivers early benefits that silence critics and sway doubters.

"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week." George S. Patton

For further information or to speak with an Advisor Free Of Charge contact us: by email ... click here or call 888-980-7520

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Constant Improvement Group

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