DMV – Three letters that can strike fear in any man or woman’s heart, a term that all too often brings images of long lines and broken processes and red tape. State Departments of Motor Vehicles typically face many challenges: with lower budgets, staff reductions and increasing numbers of drivers and vehicles being registered. They face the challenge of continuing to provide quality services to the public while meeting increasingly challenging mandates from federal, state and local governments.

Part 1: Why innovation is such a challenge in a corporate setting

Next month, Part 2: A manager’s guide for application and implementation of the Innovation Cycle

Innovation is currently a hot topic in the executive suite and in business publications. Amid the buzz, managers are uncertain about how to reconcile the seemingly opposing calls for increased innovation and bottom-line productivity. As a result, when challenged to grow their businesses they often default to more familiar options, even if growth through innovation could be the best choice. We propose not only a truce between the creative and analytic sides of business, but also a highly valuable method for collaboration that builds upon the strengths of each to maximize the value of innovation investments.

According to Business Week’s Bruce Nussbaum, “There is, in fact, a whole new generation of innovation gurus. They are not the superstars of the ’90s, such as Clayton Christensen, who focused on what might be called macro-innovation – the impact of big, unexpected new technologies on companies. The new gurus focus more on micro-innovation – teaching companies how to connect with their customers’ emotions, linking research and development labs to consumer needs, recalibrating employee incentives to emphasize creativity, constructing maps showing opportunities for innovation.”

This chapter argues the use of BPM as the central tool to support next-generation business processes to transform the operations of manufacturers. Next-generation business processes? Dr. Max More, a strategic business futurist, postulates the process-driven enterprise, in the foreword to the book, The Real-Time Enterprise, “The ideal vision of the process-driven RTE is one of companies where information moves without hindrance, and business processes are continuously monitored and trigger rapid reactions, usually automated according to embedded business rules. RTEs also sense shifts in tastes and practices and respond by offering new products and services. Automated processes easily traverse corporate boundaries, time zones, media and systems. Batch processes and manual input are minimized by ensuring that real-time information among employees, customers, partners and suppliers is current and coherent.

In Part 1 of this three-part introduction to business innovation, we explored the innovation imperative and concluded by identifying six facets of business innovation:

• Operational innovation
• Organizational innovation
• Supply-side innovation
• Core-competency innovation
• Sell-side innovation
• Product and Service innovation.

Now, let’s take a quick look at each of these categories of business innovation.

What strikes fear in the hearts of today’s business leaders? Commoditization and Globalization. Unless a company can innovate, it cannot make margins and will be marginalized as a commodity player. Unless a company can innovate, it will be left behind in the brave new world of total global competition. But, what exactly is innovation, and how does innovation happen? These are the most important business questions of our times.

In this first of a three part series excerpted from the book, Extreme Competition: Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation, we will explore the many facets of innovation and distinguish between Business Innovation and the conventional notions of research and invention.

What strikes fear in the hearts of today’s business leaders? Commoditization and Globalization. Unless a company can innovate, it cannot make margins and will be marginalized as a commodity player. Unless a company can innovate, it will be left behind in the brave new world of total global competition. But, what exactly is innovation, and how does innovation happen? These are the most important business questions of our times.

This complimentary chapter, exclusively for BPMInstitute.org members, is the first of a three part series excerpted from Peter Fingar’s latest book Extreme Competition: Innovation and the Great 21st Century Business Reformation.

In part 1 we will explore the many facets of innovation and distinguish between Business Innovation and the conventional notions of research and invention.

What do your customers really want? More for less, of course! That can hardly come as a surprise to you. After all, whether you are a senior executive, a middle manager, or a front line worker, you’re a customer yourself.

As a customer, what “more” do you want? More value, more service, more consistent, flawless delivery performance, more accuracy, and even more responsiveness? You bet. Chances are that increasingly, you want to pay “less” for this “more” don’t you?

Your customers are no different, and that’s a problem because unless you can provide your customers with “more for less,” you can be assured they will find someone else who can, and sooner rather than later.

Business Process Management as a management philosophy has only been discussed since the mid-1990s. This chapter explores the relationships of BPM to other process-focused management practices. The author depicts BPM as the convergence of previous process-focused management practices, such as Business Process Reengineering and Total Quality Management. The goals, principles, and practices associated with BPM are also discussed in this chapter.

This chapter is from Business Process Management Systems: Strategy and Implementation by James F. Chang. Copyright 2006 Auerbach Publications. Reprinted with Permission of the Publisher.

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