customer

Is innovation born or built? I don’t know the answer as it applies to people. But as it applies to organizations, it’s built. My latest IndustryWeek Lessons from the Road column, titled Making Innovation a Capability, focuses on building an innovative organization. There are key lean skills and mindset that

In the last installment of my Industry Week column, Lessons from the Road, I talked about waste elimination. In it, I also explained that the commonly used phrase “do more with less” is often perceived about being about the “less” when I believe truly lean organizations focus on the “more.”

Last week I was in an automotive manufacturing plant (a very large one) helping to lead a quality systems assessment. It’s purpose is to give the client feedback of how they can improve their quality by improving their quality systems, and linking them more clearly with the voice of the

[I have been off the blog for a little while, for which I apologize. Hopefully, my business has given me plenty of interested topics for you, which I hope to publish in a timely manner.] Last week I was working with one of our consulting partners on an assessment of

Recently I had a problem with Delta. Delta treats me pretty well, in part because of my extensive travel to our clients, but this day had me annoyed. It was a small thing that turned into a bigger thing. I had an outbound flight in the morning, and a return

Eric Ries, author of the StartupLessonsLearned.com blog, has been speaking and writing about lean startups. His particular focus is on software startups, and perhaps even more focused on those that are web-based and broadly distributed products. However, his thoughts on how to use lean principles such as experimentation, structure, and

Plenty of companies say the focus on the customer. Many of them say they want customer feedback.   But few post unfiltered, real-time customer feedback on the front-page of their website where everyone can see it, whether good or bad. CustomInk.com can say that. Here’s just the latest feedback as an