Contrasting Innovative Tact: Google & Apple

Performance and quality are judged by an organization’s customers. In order to understand your customers’ needs, your organization must take into account all product features, characteristics, modes of customer access, and support that contribute value as seen by your customers.

Customer-driven excellence means much more than reducing defects and errors, merely meeting specifications, or reducing complaints. In a recent article from the International Herald Times, Steve Lohr points to the very different models of innovation that the supernovas from Silicon Valley utilize; Google and Apple are constantly working to expand their market and, ultimately, bottom line.

A customer-driven organization striving to meet Baldrige Award requirements addresses not only the product and service characteristics that meet basic customer requirements, but also those features and characteristics that differentiate the organization from its competitors. Google is this type of a customer-driven innovator, as they are constantly developing and modifying their products and services in attempt to glean instant feedback from users. They are regularly asking for customer opinions, testing new “labs,” and attempting to simplify their products to impress the end-user. This unique formula, with its emphasis on regularly testing ideas and products with customers, amounts to applying, “the scientific method to market-opportunity identification,” says Errol B. Arkilic, Program Director at the National Science Foundation.  It is directed towards customer retention and loyalty, market share gain and growth, as well as demanding close attention to the voice of the customer.

The Apple model, on the contrary, is much more refined, intuitive, and top-down.  Lohr reports that when asked…

Juran Institute Acquires Baldrige.com

Juran Institute, Inc. is pleased to announce the acquisition of Baldrige.com into our family of quality solutions and services. Our legendary founder, Dr. Joseph M. Juran, was a particularly vocal advocate for the Baldrige program. Prior to the passage of the congressional act that created the Baldrige Award in 1987, he testified in front of Congress on behalf of creating the award to help bring the focus of quality to the United States. Dr. Juran was also one of the original overseers of the Baldrige Award process.  Juran Institute has offered its own staff in support of the Baldrige process, many of whom have participated in the roles of Judges, Sr. Examiners, and Examiners.

Let me personally thank Steve George for all of his contributions to this website and to the Baldrige process overall. We will continue to focus the site on the same principles that Steve did, which will be to offer insights and information on the Baldrige model as an archetype for performance excellence. We will offer articles, links, and information directly related to the Baldrige categories that will be both relevant and interesting to our readers. We also will have Steve join us from time to time as a guest author.

Baldrige.com will be managed by Joseph A. De Feo, President and CEO of Juran Institute, as well as Tom Huizenga, our General Manager and Baldrige examiner. Both of us were personally managed and coached by Dr. Juran prior to joining Juran Institute. We have led extensive careers in quality…

Help Bootstrap My Baldrige Project

What do world-class hospitals and medical centers do differently? What can the hospitals and medical centers we use learn from them?

To answer these questions, I’ve launched a new project on Kickstarter to research and write a book called The Road to World-Class Healthcare. You can watch a video introducing the project and read a complete description of it here. The key to the book is the research: road trips to 20 to 25 world-class hospitals and medical centers across the country to interview leaders and learn about best practices.

To fund the research, I’ve posted the project on Kickstarter. A Kickstarter project succeeds by gaining backers who pledge financial support in exchange for rewards. Your reward for becoming a backer of The Road to World-Class Healthcare includes exclusive access to audio excerpts of key interviews, photos, and video of best practices. Invest more and the rewards increase. You can find the complete list of rewards here.

One of the reasons for posting this project on Kickstarter, other than to help fund the research, is to see if it can generate interest. If it meets the goal, the book will be written, and that book will appeal to mainstream publishers who expect authors to have a “platform” from which to market and sell their work. Kickstarter will help me build a platform.

Please take a couple minutes to check out the video and project description at Kickstarter here. I hope you will take a personal interest in supporting it. And, since this is a grassroots…

A Patient First Culture

It’s likely that every medical center claims to put patients first. Those that actually put patients first can back up their claims with tangible results.

Schneck Medical Center, a 2011 Baldrige Award winner, is a 93-bed nonprofit hospital in southern Indiana. “At the forefront of Schneck’s commitment to excellence,” it states on its website, “is the Patient First Culture.” That culture has enabled Schneck to score 100% on 17 of 22 core measures reported for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Its patient satisfaction scores meet or exceed the top 10% or top 25% levels on nine of ten Press Ganey measures. Its hospital-acquired infection rate has been at or below 1% since 2008. It ranks second among 94 hospitals in its geographic region in value-based purchasing, which holds healthcare providers accountable for the quality and cost of their services.

An organization’s culture shapes its decisions. Schneck had limited treatment options for patients suffering myocardial infarctions, taking 120 minutes from the time a heart attack was diagnosed to the first intervention. To put these patients first, it collaborated with its largest competitor, located 25 miles away, to coordinate handing off patients who needed emergency cardiac catheterizations. The initiative has reduced the time between diagnosis and intervention to as low as 60 minutes.

A patient first culture does not mean that nothing else matters. Schneck also values workforce satisfaction: It has consistently been named one of Indiana’s Best Places to Work and recognized nationally as a “Best Place to Work” by Modern…