The material is from Tom Peters book The Circle of Innovation published by Vintage Books,1999. Many of the themes outlined in Mr. Peters book have not changed and many companies have still not figured out how to do innovation. Companies do parts of innovation, but forget the other parts. Mr. Peters outlines 15 themes to help companies innovate better.

6. All Value Comes from the Professional Services- People come to work everyday and arrive in a department, the way of thinking is all value chain elements are services; all services can be outsourced? why should the company keep the department if outsourcing is better? If you changed titles of departments from Manager of … to Managing Director …, besides a title change would that inspire a different way of thinking. If the Managing Director knew either improve customer service by thinking like a client or be outsourced would that improve customer service? Would the Managing Director visit every internal client to see how they could do better? could every job be turned into a project? could the department be changed to thinking about improvements and better problem solving rather than responding? could standards be pushed up to WOW? would you have better people?

7. The Intermediary is Doomed – if you chop out the middle management, do your people have the ability to change from an organization to organizers? One method to do this is to empower your customers. In many industries the gate keepers to the information changes by allowing customers access to information which gives them more power to do. Those that are left are the top are responsible for network and character of the organization and those at the bottom have greater ability to do and make decisions that are in the customers interest.

8. The System is the Solution – part of the system is to ensure your forms/documents match beauty, grace, parsimony and focus. Are the forms easy for people to read and do? The other part of systems and perhaps more important is the social side or people. Face to face still counts.

9. Create Waves of Lust – just about everything in the world can be commoditized, but to combat it you have to provide Great or WOW service or WOW experience. What makes your product or service which allows the customer to say WOW that is great? Find it and do it.

10. Tommy Hilfiger Knows – to stand out in the crowd you need great branding. Branding means creating a distinct personality and telling the world about it. The only way you do it is to have an obsession with branding in every department and every decision should reflect branding. How much? no one knows, but it is an art. Leverage is good, too much leverage is bad.

a few more rules for part 3

Linking to dividend paying stocks, much of the rules are internal but they reflect to the customers and potential customers. How is your company’s brand? what does head office look like when you do your homework about the company?

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions