Two posts came across the ol’ reader this week that both make convincing arguments for where innovation has to happen in order to continually propel an organization forward and ideally, force an industry to evolve.
James Surowiecki writes about how Toyota has been so successful because of the way they infuse innovation into their process (Thanks, Victor!). A little at a time. Every day. Relentlessly.
…if Toyota doesn’t look like an innovative company it’s only because our definition of innovation—cool new products and technological breakthroughs, by Steve Jobs-like visionaries—is far too narrow. Toyota’s innovations, by contrast, have focussed on process rather than on product, on the factory floor rather than on the showroom. That has made those innovations hard to see. But it hasn’t made them any less powerful.
Fake Steve Jobs (whatever), on the other hand, makes practically the opposite argument in this piece when he examines whether Dell will ever be able to bounce back because their innovation was focused on the process and not on building world-changing products:
What people overlook is that the advantages that allowed Dell to prosper for about a decade were all fleeting advantages. Dell was for a while an innovative company, but its innovations did not involve product design. They involved manufacturing and distribution efficiencies.
My instinct is that it depends entirely on your industry + market + audience. For really high ticket items that people will own for years, focusing on innovations in the process seems to make the most sense. For consumer goods that many replace every 6-12 months, the product really has to shine and evolve at a much faster rate.
Thoughts?
I was going to post this in the Links section but ultimately felt that it was important enough to warrant its own post. There’s a lot to be learned form the brief missives about products, process, people, etc.
A lot of it is inspirational but one that particularly stood out to me was:
“We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life. We could be sitting in a monastery somewhere in Japan. We could be out sailing. Some of the [executive team] could be playing golf. They could be running other companies. And we’ve all chosen to do this with our lives. So it better be damn good. It better be worth it. And we think it is.”
Steve Jobs speaks out (Make sure you flip through all of the pages)
