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.
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2 opinions for Innovations Are Under Your Nose: “Go and See”
ActiveEngine Sensei
Dec 9, 2007 at 9:09 am
Years ago on an engagement, I was struck by the fact the software developers had to rotate in and out of the helpdesk / support functions and engage with the sales force that used it’s software. I am hesitant to call this an innovation as it was so obvious that this was the fundamental thing to do in order to gain feedback on usability for the product.
Great post - I am always impressed with how you make connections to other sources and present something of great relevance and interest to what I do.
Bob Turek
Dec 9, 2007 at 7:41 pm
I appreciate your feedback and thank you for the compliments- it verifies that others are as interested in innovation as I am. The “connections” to your work are clearly the result of my interest in lean, focusing on value, and taking waste out of business processes and the parallels with agile.
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