Operational Innovation !! Technology is here but Culture Needs to Evolve!

Through the travels of the last 2 months talking with many of the leading companies in mining and other industries the concept of “Operational Innovation” is a hidden objective. Why is it hidden because it is not natural for innovation to driven from all parts of the business, companies have a habit of centralizing it. Actually we can all contribute to innovational improvement to the way to take on, execute our “jobs to be done” during the day.

There is always ways to improve, but the key item I see being missed is the “culture not just innovates, and try”, but capture this and embed it. Innovation is about lifting constraints of risk to enabling trying to change items with improvements, yes this means making “failure” as a success measure. When I say failure people look at me twice in the industrial space. But I am talking constructive failure e.g. freeing people up with an environment where they can try new ideas on improving their job, and this experiment/ trial is done in a safe none intrusive environment into the plants operations. But the user is able to allocate time, and feels empowered to come up with ideas, and try them. Once the improvement is validated and tested, the ability capture this and embed it for consistency across plants and teams. Diagnram below comes from ARC comparing the effects of embedding processes vs manual implimentation this takes a significant leap even further ahead if you build in operational innovation culture and systems into your industrail operations.