It is amazing how two decades can bring the same issues facing U.S. corporations back to the top of the pile. In an article in the June 11, 2007 BusinessWeek, "At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency and Creativity," the discussion centers on how the introduction of Six Sigma has brought cost reductions, improved efficiencies, and increased profit. At the same time, 3M has fallen from its time honored position as the number one corporate innovator.
The rush to Six Sigma has placed concentration on improved operating efficiency, driving up bottom-line profits. However, Six Sigma as most often implemented stifles creativity and innovation because it is aimed at improving existing processes, not determining when existing processes are outdated or no longer adequate. That is, Six Sigma does not describe how to address a process when that process is not capable of producing the desired output. I suppose one could argue that Design for Six Sigma is a process framework that enables an organization to design capable systems. Even so, what happens when an idea is conceptualized to which there is no practical use? Or what happens when there is a practical use for a concept, but one does not immediately recognize that use? From a Six Sigma point of view, it has no use and constitutes waste. Therefore, it should be discarded so as to simplify existing processes and reduce costs.
It reminds me of the days of Crosby quality where the goal was zero defects. It didn't matter whether the customer liked your product, just that you produced it with quality. As Dr. W. Edwards Deming used to note in his lectures, the last buggy whip manufacturer probably produced excellent buggy whips. Too bad nobody wanted them.
Innovation is not a process. Rather, it is a discontinuous act of creativity. It may spring forth while the mind is otherwise engaged. It may occur through the linkage of two or more unrelated ideas or concepts. It may emerge from the fog of vague ideas to a crystal clear concept in an instant. That is not to say that innovation cannot be planned. However, innovation must mature and ferment in the mind until it is ready to emerge. While the plan may be executed, innovation emerges on its own schedule.
Therefore, can a formal quality process such as Six Sigma and innovation coexist? It is doubtful. At least in the context of a formal Six Sigma process for innovation it is doubtful. Six Sigma is a tactical approach to improve an organization's performance in terms of efficiency, cost, and profit. Innovation is a strategic approach to provide the means for an organization to survive and thrive in the future.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
Over Technologized
I took a trip over the U.S. Memorial Day holiday to attend a friend's wedding. For the most part, it was uneventful. However, an interesting thing happened when I stopped to fill-up with gasoline. I got out of the car and as I was about to enter my credit card information, the store attendant came out and said that I would be unable to pump gas because "the computer system is down." This wasn't a big imposition, I simply drove to another gas station.
It got me thinking about an event several years back when I stopped in at a local grocery store (a national chain) to pick up some plastic cups for a business exercise I was giving the next day. It was about 2:00AM, and after looking all over the store for the cups, I finally found them and took them to the checkout lane. The store clerk looked at me and stated that it would be approximately 30 minutes before she could check me out because the system was being updated.
This technological world is a real marvel of convenience, responsiveness, and availability. We can email from our phones; take pictures with digital cameras; talk globally from our computers; receive HD television over our fiber-optic cable; carry, view, or listen to thousands of pictures or songs on our iPods; determine our location within a few feet with our global positioning system; and even view the temperature on our watches. Well, we can do all those things if everything works right. But as the two preceding examples indicate, if they don't work right, we may very well just be standing around.
As our world becomes more automated and electronically integrated, one has to wonder what would happen if a "glitch" caused a cascading failure. Of course there are back-ups, redundancies, alternates circuits and paths, so the chance of a catastrophic failure is remote, or so it would seem. Then again, Apollo 13 was a masterpiece of back-ups and redundancies. So was Challenger. So was Columbia. Yet they all failed.
Self-configuring and self-healing systems can help, but what happens if they can't? Or what happens if they are not fast enough? It could be a great plot for a novel. Think what would happen if a large number of these systems failed at once. I am reminded of that 1970 science fiction movie called "Collossus: The Forbin Project," where a super-computer is joined to the grid and it proceeds to take control of all computers in the world. It may be science fiction and it may be far fetched, but so were some of our space failures.
It got me thinking about an event several years back when I stopped in at a local grocery store (a national chain) to pick up some plastic cups for a business exercise I was giving the next day. It was about 2:00AM, and after looking all over the store for the cups, I finally found them and took them to the checkout lane. The store clerk looked at me and stated that it would be approximately 30 minutes before she could check me out because the system was being updated.
This technological world is a real marvel of convenience, responsiveness, and availability. We can email from our phones; take pictures with digital cameras; talk globally from our computers; receive HD television over our fiber-optic cable; carry, view, or listen to thousands of pictures or songs on our iPods; determine our location within a few feet with our global positioning system; and even view the temperature on our watches. Well, we can do all those things if everything works right. But as the two preceding examples indicate, if they don't work right, we may very well just be standing around.
As our world becomes more automated and electronically integrated, one has to wonder what would happen if a "glitch" caused a cascading failure. Of course there are back-ups, redundancies, alternates circuits and paths, so the chance of a catastrophic failure is remote, or so it would seem. Then again, Apollo 13 was a masterpiece of back-ups and redundancies. So was Challenger. So was Columbia. Yet they all failed.
Self-configuring and self-healing systems can help, but what happens if they can't? Or what happens if they are not fast enough? It could be a great plot for a novel. Think what would happen if a large number of these systems failed at once. I am reminded of that 1970 science fiction movie called "Collossus: The Forbin Project," where a super-computer is joined to the grid and it proceeds to take control of all computers in the world. It may be science fiction and it may be far fetched, but so were some of our space failures.
Sunday, April 29, 2007
The Verbal Commons
Historically, I have not been a big user of Internet community applications. I looked at chat rooms years ago, but my impression was a large number of people in a noisy room, with pairs attempting to talk across a large room to each other. Not my idea of discourse.
I have been a member of a number of special interest discussion groups that have shown to have a lot less noise than chat rooms, but they tend to be cliquish. If you are a trusted member, things are great. If you are an infrequent poster or lurker, the results can be less than satisfactory. Typically, you can be restricted from posting through moderation (with some of the flames that occur on a discussion group, I can understand why), or it can be difficult to get a respectful response from the other members.
The result is that I have been a loyal user of email as the primary communication tool. However, this too has its limitations in that the community is self-selecting--one chooses who can read and who to interact. And there can be disagreements and flames even in that medium. The pro is that an intelligent discourse can take place, although asynchronously.
After looking through the blogs over the last couple of weeks and reviewing some blogs of acquaintences of mine, I thought I would give this medium a try. I'm not sure what to expect, but it seems that the blog approach is good for capturing thoughts whether to publish publically, or to use as a parking place to random thoughts.
Therefore, I present the Peripheral Futurist blog. Through this blog, hopefully I will be able to communicate my perspectives on developments impacting how we live, how we work, and how we survive--in the future. By virtue of the fact that I have started this blog, I believe that this type of publishing will become a dominant approach for the statement, documentation, and challenge of ideas, experiments, thoughts, and concepts. Obviously some of you have more experience than I. I would be very interested in your experiences--both pro and con--with the blogosphere.
Walt
I have been a member of a number of special interest discussion groups that have shown to have a lot less noise than chat rooms, but they tend to be cliquish. If you are a trusted member, things are great. If you are an infrequent poster or lurker, the results can be less than satisfactory. Typically, you can be restricted from posting through moderation (with some of the flames that occur on a discussion group, I can understand why), or it can be difficult to get a respectful response from the other members.
The result is that I have been a loyal user of email as the primary communication tool. However, this too has its limitations in that the community is self-selecting--one chooses who can read and who to interact. And there can be disagreements and flames even in that medium. The pro is that an intelligent discourse can take place, although asynchronously.
After looking through the blogs over the last couple of weeks and reviewing some blogs of acquaintences of mine, I thought I would give this medium a try. I'm not sure what to expect, but it seems that the blog approach is good for capturing thoughts whether to publish publically, or to use as a parking place to random thoughts.
Therefore, I present the Peripheral Futurist blog. Through this blog, hopefully I will be able to communicate my perspectives on developments impacting how we live, how we work, and how we survive--in the future. By virtue of the fact that I have started this blog, I believe that this type of publishing will become a dominant approach for the statement, documentation, and challenge of ideas, experiments, thoughts, and concepts. Obviously some of you have more experience than I. I would be very interested in your experiences--both pro and con--with the blogosphere.
Walt
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