What is the relationship between innovation and quality?

In June 2009, leaders from business, industry, non-governmental organizations, ASQ, and the Baldrige program met to discuss how “quality and performance improvement can achieve the greatest effect and foster positive change.” At the end of the day, the group identified four priority areas of focus for the future of quality and organizational performance excellence:

• Ensure that quality systems and performance excellence are relevant and support long-term sustainability
• Connect quality with innovation
• Increase public awareness by branding quality and performance excellence
• Use information and engagement technology and tools to change mindsets and behavior

I think connecting quality with innovation is the easiest of the four because the connection already exists. In a culture of innovation, people are constantly seeking ways to improve processes and performance. It’s not just about building the next iPod or creating the next Twitter. In fact, it’s almost not about that at all. I read an interview done by Ubiquity with Peter Denning, a teacher at the Naval Postgraduate School, in which he does a great job of redefining innovation. “What I hear most commonly from people is the notion that innovation means a new or novel idea,” said Denning. “Some people add that the idea flows through a pipeline of research, development, prototyping, manufacturing, and marketing. In this model, a lot of people think that the work of innovation is the creation of new ideas, and that the flow to market is the destiny of great ideas.”

Denning disagrees with this view. “An innovation is the transformation of practice in a community. In this definition, community can be small, as in a workgroup, or large, as in the whole world.”

By this definition, I’ve seen rampant innovation at every Baldrige organization I’ve worked with. The “transformation of practice” is a common characteristic of high-performing organizations, evident in the ways they engage employees in making their processes more efficient and effective, meeting and exceeding customer requirements, and producing world-class results.

The issue seems to be one of clarifying and communicating. Innovation is the transformation of practice in a community. Integrating Baldrige transforms the practices of an organization. Thus, Baldrige organizations are, by nature, innovative.

That would seem to cement the relationship between innovation and quality, don’t you think?

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