Manufacturing Excellence - Inspire, Lead, and Succeed with INNOVATION!

You have all the reason in the world to achieve your grandest dreams. Imagination plus innovation equals realization. 
~ Dennis Waitley

In my workshops I mention over and over again that "the focus for the manufacturing industry has to be on creativity and innovation, especially if North America wants to be competitive in a global market".

Innovation is a change in the thought process for doing something, or the useful application of new inventions or discoveries.

Unfortunately I realize more and more that many companies seem to believe that innovation must be a big, complicated and very expensive undertaking. This may also be the reason why they would rather stick with what they have and know, as opposed to making huge investments in something that may not materialize.

This is a misconception as innovation can start with very simple changes and improvements. The truth of the matter is that the manufacturing sector will benefit more from a high volume of smaller innovations than a few large ones. Many times innovations will save the company money and that's when you will start asking yourself why you did not encourage this philosophy all along.

Step by step, day by day, questioning things you do, questioning how you do things, questioning how efficient you do things and questioning how to do things better.

However, the key to creating a culture of innovation is encouragement.

Have you ever wondered why it seems easier to solve other people's problems and so difficult to  solve our own? That's just how it is, sometimes we can't see the forest for the trees and yet, if we look at it from another perspective, we are able to see things we haven't seen before. We are so involved in our daily tasks that we start overlooking the big picture. We focus on little, meaningless things that turn out to be very big issues in our mind.

It is clear that we are still so involved in this outdated industrial-age thinking that it seems there is neither time nor room for innovation. People are putting in a lot of time but are they really getting the results they are looking for?
Don't you think it is time to find a better way?

Creating a culture of innovation requires reading about it, educating yourself on it, sharing what you know with others, having meaningful discussions within your organization and also with your customers and perhaps even competitors, being interested instead of interesting, having the courage to encourage innovation, and listen to the ideas and solutions of the people around you.

Ask yourself: Am I happy with the status quo, or am I ready, willing and able to embrace a whole new level of energy in the light of innovation?