Leading Lean

Chapter 7. Leading Innovation

Innovating is the heartbeat of the Lean enterprise. And it must beat with vitality and zeal to ensure that disrupting your competition and marketplace is in the forefront of everyone’s mind within your organization. That means developing and executing on a strong innovation program to understand how to look for and anticipate change, then embrace and learn to exploit the inevitable opportunities that it brings to you and to the Lean enterprise.

This chapter discusses what innovation and being truly disruptive means to you as a Lean leader. We will cover the qualities of innovation, common sources of disruption, and ways you can harness these things to your strategic advantage through the use of design thinking, voice-of-customer programs, and the Lean product canvas.

Fighting Off Extinction Through Innovation

Innovation is an elusive thing. A recent study by Altimeter (a prominent research organization) found that low digital literacy is restraining the scope and extent of innovation,¹ even though customers have embraced the internet for more than 20 years now. This survey showed that only 40% of companies operated with an executive-mandated steering committee² responsible for introducing innovation and accomplishing organizational transformation, even though the Internet of Things (IoT) is beginning to permeate every corner of our world. Customers more and more demand the rapid development and release of new products/services that satisfy their ...