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Getting Deep With Value Creation
In his November post, ASQ CEO Paul Borawski asks “What new fields or disciplines could most reap the benefits of quality tools and techniques?” He notes that although the tradition of quality assurance, control, and improvement emerged from manufacturing, the techniques are now widely acknowledged and applied in many fields such as healthcare, education, and…
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Thrivability: A Sneaky Awesome Little Book About Innovation
I just got done reading Jean Russell’s new book, Thrivability, from Triarchy Press. In my opinion, this is perhaps the most compelling book about innovation that’s been written in the past few years – and it’s not even expressly about innovation. But it can help you think about all the assumptions you make about society and the…
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What #BIF9 and Burning Man Taught Me About Transformation – Part II (via Deming!)
In Part I, I described some observations from my experiences at BIF and Burning Man, and alluded to the notion that I might have uncovered a very simple “secret sauce” they share. Here are the observations: Both communities consist of active and engaged participants who could be considered “innovation junkies”. Whereas the BIF crowd focuses…
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What #BIF9 and Burning Man Taught Me About Transformation – Part I
I spent the last week of August at Burning Man, and two days in September at Saul Kaplan‘s Business Innovation Factory Summit (BIF-9). On the surface, these two events couldn’t seem more different – the former is a counterculture festival of art and technology and spirit in the middle of the barren Nevada desert, whereas…
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Expressing Your Needs
Achieving quality (re: ISO 9000 para 3.1.5) is all about meeting stated and implied needs. But our society has conditioned us not to freely express our needs to friends, family, and others; after all, if we need something, the marketing should have worked already, and we should know where we can go to willingly exchange currency for the means to satisfy…
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Sustaining Excellence for the Long Term
In September’s question to the ASQ Influential Voices, CEO Paul Borawski asks how an established organization can maintain a record of excellence over the long term: Let’s say you’ve reached the “holy grail” of quality and excellence. You make a great product. Your service is top-notch. You innovate. You’ve developed a culture of quality where…
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Five Simple Heuristics for Instant Innovation
I just returned from Saul Kaplan’s 9th Business Innovation Factory (BIF-9) Summit in Providence, Rhode Island — where, to my blissful surprise, I had just as much of a transformational experience as I had at Burning Man this year. I love it when so many conscious people gather together and indulge in the realm of…
Quality and Innovation 