Informal Brain

A theme at work lately has been innovation. I found this snippet of an article from the New Yorker where Toyota talks about innovation as a process of continuous improvement.

The answer has a lot to do with another distinctive element of Toyota’s approach: defining innovation as an incremental process, in which the goal is not to make huge, sudden leaps but, rather, to make things better on a daily basis. (The principle is often known by its Japanese name, kaizen — continuous improvement.)

[From New Yorker: The open secret of success - The New Yorker- msnbc.com]

Far too often, I believe people think innovation has to be a grand leap forward, with impressive one time results and great return. In this case we see a company who is happy with continuous small improvement rather then waiting for those large single Ah ha! moments. Very Powerful.