« The Cost of Knowledge | Home | Befragung von Führungskräften »

13.11.06

Doing the same mistake for 32 years

Rosabeth Moss Kanter - in HBR’s November edition (“Innovation: The Classic Traps”) - uses a wonderful example to illustrate how companies gamble away valuable knowledge from their employees. Fortunately (in this example), the employee still hasn’t left the company.

A related mistake is to act as if only products count, even though transformative new ideas can come from a range of functions, such as production and marketing. For instance, a fabric company that made complicated woven materials had a long-standing problem: yarn breakage during production, which was reflected in the cost of the company’s products and represented a competitive disadvantage. But the top team at the fabric maker continued to talk about the company’s search for really big product innovations, such as totally new materials. A new executive, who believed in opening the search for innovation to all employees, joined the company. After a meeting discussing the need for change, a veteran factory worker, who had joined as a young immigrant and still spoke with a heavy accent, tentatively approached the new executive with an idea for ending the breakage.The company tried it, and it worked. When asked how long he had had that idea, the worker replied, Thirty-two years.

You may wish to leave a from your own site.