Sustainable innovation will create more profit…

Everybody agrees that changes will have to come. We have to change our ways in respect to the environment, but limited resources will also force us to act more as partners in a business relationship in order to cope with the challenges of a global market. This change is no longer voluntary, but a necessity to survive and to eventually build strong economies. Deliberate changes can only be achieved by well-managed innovation. Innovation is more than designing high-tech products and smart Internet services. Innovations produce cost reductions and flexibility.  It makes sustainable progress possible without spending extra money or adding effort to satisfy loyal customers through improved functionalities or performances.  Isn’t that what we all want?

Sustainable progress can be achieved through the elimination of waste, low consumption of materials and energy, and an exact fit of the requirements of a client's needs. This requires more than good quality control. Quality control can improve processes, but it cannot reorganize them. New business processes provides new output, therefore, the marketing of your products and services will also change. When a new product or service is launched, there will be effects for all primary processes of the value chain. Consequently, an innovation process should include all rationalized possibilities of the value chain for fulfilling the demands of the market. Quality and Innovation are, in this respect, the motivators for sustainable improvement.

The management of these kinds of innovations can overwhelm project leaders when there is no clear course for achieving the desired innovation output and knowledge. Aiming at a moving target during Innovative developments will delay the process, cause higher costs, and lower the quality of the result.  Innovation and Quality must merge in order to change organizations for sustainable progress. Therefore, guidelines will help to innovate to the most recognized quality systems (particularly the ISO 9001: 2008 and Design for Lean Six Sigma .) These make it necessary in an early stage to define requirements and constraints of a new development - not only on functionality and performance levels, but also integrally on the level of modules, systems and processes that will produce the offer to the market. Multidisciplinary involvement for defining the new development must start from the beginning in order to contribute and monitor the results for the improvement of the venture’s performance.

Benefits of fast product introductions to increase competitive advantage can be achieved by speeding up innovations.  Systematically shortening the time to market is possible through an agreement on an innovation program that includes all necessary rules and processes. These should be similar for every innovation within your company. The ISO 9001: 2008 standard specifies that the company’s organization must be geared towards effectively fulfilling the requirements of your customers. This also means that the external processes, with all their inputs and outputs, of the members of the supply chain must be included in these procedures. Because multidisciplinary involvement is a necessity for good quality output of the innovation result, these procedures must be defined in consensus. Responsibilities, activities, and the input of ‘go/no go’ decisions at milestones have to be agreed upon for every stage in the development process. The interaction with all other procedures within ISO 9001 can be incorporated for an effective workflow.