Innovations Are Under Your Nose: “Go and See”

Excellent “Strategy+Business” article (free registration required) on “See For Yourself” advice for executives wanting to short circuit innovation cycles; it is a great history on lean/”go and see” origins of Toyota, Wal-Mart and others who have adopted these techniques. The idea of short-circuiting the cycles created by the barriers of multi-level organizations, approval and budgeting processes exists in agile software development and any kind of project environment.

Most projects surface innovations as they drive to satisfy their original intent. Many of these innovations are simply canned because they don’t fit with the original specification. Key projects require an executive level approval to stray from original goals. An executive that watches for, and then “goes and sees” innovation possibilities can short-circuit the change process by confronting the innovation and deciding, then and there, whether or not to assign the project team to analyze, justify and subsequently implement the innovation.

An interesting truth is that most innovations are copied. In the “See For Yourself” article Sam Walton said that all of his innovations were “copied from someone else” meaning other companies or other industries. The key is looking outside of your four walls and then overcoming the hierarchical and process barriers of the organization.