I wrote this around 2007 – 2008 and made it Public on my Yahoo! 360 Blog back then : ) Looking at it now, I feel it may still help some people, so I would like to share it again on my Khoinghiepthongminh.com (Smartrepreneur.net) Blog.
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Have you ever wondered and reflected on these 2 concepts?
Do you think Innovation and Improvement are the same?
Continuous improvement (Kaizen) and Innovation are 2 different concepts. Everything has a price. Depending on how you assess that price and view the issue, Innovation and Improvement may be opposed, mutually supportive, or unrelated. From there, you will find your own solution.
Innovation
The West greatly reveres Innovation; to them, development means constantly creating new things and honoring new values.
“Change” is also a value in Western culture. It has been an American value since the nation's founding, was the Democratic Party's slogan in the 56th election campaign, and helps America maintain its leading position as a superpower.
“The only thing that never changes is change” – Michael Dell.
Innovation is rebellion, challenging the past.
The definition of Creativity is to continually create something new. That is the definition of “iGod” Steve Jobs, and also the spiritual culture of thousands of Apple employees. Apple can be seen as an exemplary company in creating new things.
A problem arises whenever Western companies create something new: almost immediately, they lose the market to Eastern companies, which carve away their share. Their solution is not to try to reclaim the market with the old, but to continue building on their innovative strengths, constantly creating new things and new markets.
The reason is that Eastern companies have been highly successful in applying what the West created. Beyond that, they Continuously Improve these things, making them ever Better.
The difference is that one side wins markets by continually creating something new, while the other wins by continually improving what the first side created to make it far better.
Improvement
Marxism is like a knife plunged straight into capitalism, but capitalism used that very knife to stitch up its own wound.
What does that sentence mean?
It is by studying Marxism, in some respects even more seriously than socialist countries, that Western capitalism has avoided being swallowed by Marxism.
It is the same here.
Having once led the way, the West had to send delegations to Japan continually for 55 years to learn the best management tools and discover hidden gems of management and production science: the Toyota Production System (TPS), Just in time (JIT), Lean… precious treasures that helped Western companies become more competitive. One of these was Kaizen.
As mentioned, the philosophy of Kaizen differs from that of Innovation.
While Innovation means changing everything immediately, intensely, on a large scale and at great cost, Continuous Improvement unfolds over a sufficiently long period through small actions and thousands of simple creative ideas, whose combined final results will astonish us.
The essence of Kaizen is simplicity. But thousands of simple things create an unbelievable effect.
Toyota is an exemplary company in applying Kaizen. How many companies worldwide dream of building a system like Toyota's?
Ask employees, “If you owned this company, what would you do to improve it?”
Kaizen is a system in which everyone in the company or organization participates in improvement and contributes creative ideas.
Kaizen is an atmosphere that encourages employees to contribute and implement ideas with greater enthusiasm, becoming more engaged, more dedicated and prouder to be part of the business. That is why Kaizen is very simple yet extremely difficult to imitate. When implementing it, you will see countless difficulties emerge. Sustaining Kaizen is both a science and an art.
Kaizen is a culture, a philosophy—the philosophy of simplicity. Kaizen is about the simplest things.
“Do not underestimate small things; a kite flies because of its tail.” – American proverb.
Kaizen means challenging the present. Make things better and do not settle for the status quo.
The best is the enemy of Kaizen.
Strive for the best, but begin with better.
Kaizen means continuous practice. “What we must learn before doing, we learn by doing” – Aristotle.
Here I understand creativity as simply rearranging what already exists, because “There is nothing new under the sun” – the Old Testament.
Kaizen means changing how we think based on the current situation to bring improvement. “Think inside the box” before “Think out of the box”
Roadside traffic lights are sometimes obscured by tree canopies, preventing road users from seeing the signals.
The solution?
Turning streetlights “from vertical to horizontal.”
That is Kaizen.
The traffic lights in the example above are horizontal. In countries with winter, more snow will cover them, causing many difficulties and accidents for road users. The solution?
By “turning horizontal into vertical” with traffic signals, the area on which snow accumulates decreases, so heavy materials are no longer needed to manufacture traffic lights. The material cost savings are substantial across an entire country.
That is Kaizen.
Do not overlook the obvious. What are they there for?
Imagine a company with 100 employees, each contributing and implementing an average of 1 idea / week. In one year, it implements 5200 improvement ideas. How much would productivity and product creation time improve? The effectiveness is astonishing.
Kaizen vs Innovation
Edison once said, “If everyone only focused on improvements, there would be no inventions.”
Indeed, Edison was an inventive genius with thousands of patents. He was a genius at creating new things.
But one thing Edison did not say was: ‘Improvement without innovation will bring us to an end sooner or later. Looking toward the future, innovation without improvement will get us nowhere.’
Take the sound recorder: a major invention and an important part of human history. Edison earned almost nothing from it.
Edison’s machine was cylindrical and recorded sound on a vertical cylinder. However, that shape was unsuitable for manufacturing. Soon afterward, innovators made one simple change: “turning vertical into horizontal,” creating a horizontal plastic disc and thereby enabling mass production of recording machines. A small change made recording machines widespread around the world, and the manufacturing innovators made fortunes from it. Of course, the world also became better, as every household could have a recording machine.
What can we learn?
You need not be exceptional. Ordinary people can easily do things such as “turning vertical into horizontal.” Clearly, this does not demand the genius or thinking ability needed to create a tape recorder. In other words:
If you know how to apply small changes and use what is right before your eyes but often overlooked, then: Even an ordinary person can Challenge a Genius.
The Japanese did not invent the telephone, television, computer, steam engine, automobile, airplane, World Wide Web, or Internet, nor did they set foot on the moon… So why does the world now admire what Japan has accomplished? And how are we witnessing Japan ‘conquering’ the world?
If you are not a genius, is there a way to defeat a genius?
Should a battle between a tiny fellow and a giant end with the tiny fellow knocking the giant down, or standing on the giant's shoulders?
Henry Ford—an icon of the automobile industry who created the mass-production model Toyota later used to develop JIT—was a great man. His first thought every morning was, “Can I do it Better?” Guided by that philosophy, he continually introduced higher-quality cars at ever-lower prices. Benefiting customers by making goods increasingly affordable was Henry Ford's vital philosophy and the source of his greatness.
Above all, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison were 2 close friends. They were great friends who helped each other's careers and occasionally went fishing together by a stream. Between them, neither found the other's thinking contradictory to his own. Both were great men.
Kaizen or Innovation? Continuous improvement or innovation? The answer lies within you.
Not committing yourself to the search for ideas means living like an ant rather than a human.
Dream of the world you want to live in, then make that world yours.
TMT
