Seven Blogs about Innovation (and the Baldrige Excellence Framework)

Innovation appears to be top-of-mind these days as organizations strive to embrace change, improve operations, be creative, use breakthrough thinking, use new measures and methods, and so on. Since excellence models were first developed in the late 1980's (e.g. Baldrige, EFQM, Canadian, Australian), the principles and best management practices have included innovation. One of the principles common to all models is 'continuous improvement' - harnessing the collective knowledge, skills and creativity of stakeholder to relentlessly pursue improvement. And some of the best management practices that refer to innovation include: learn from ideas and good practices and share them internally and with other organizations; encourage employees to share ideas and suggestions; encourage employees to be innovative and take risks; analyze processes on a regular basis and make changes aimed at continual improvement; involve customers, suppliers and partners in designing and analyzing processes; involve suppliers and partners in the development of new products and services and social and environmental standards; identify alternative and emerging technology and related cost-benefit to the organization and society; evaluate and improve the approach to each management area; measure employee suggestions and ideas submitted; measure supplier and partner involvement in new product or service development and new social and environmental standards. But two big questions remain - What percentage of the working population is aware of excellence models ? What percentage of organizations have successfully implemented an excellence model? A review of the literature and a similar query posed to national and international conference delegates would suggest about 10 per cent. We have some work to do.

Christine, the compilation blogs you recently started, like this one and the prior one on the POJ, are great resources that enhance the level of shared understanding of key concepts important to uniting the perspectives of Applicants and Examiners. They are not only informative at a higher level than the individual vlogs, but they roughly track the changing relative importance of specific Criteria requirements (+/- 1-2 years in lag time after introduction.) Any interest in suggestions for more topics?

Re: other topics...The posts I see are generally about businesses who bring the Baldrige model in after they are up and running, often years, even decades, after formation. Are there examples of "born-Baldrige" businesses and how they fare relative to other start-ups or early stage businesses?