How To Breed An Innovative Business Idea — #16 of 31 Proven Skills [Research]
Skill #16: Improve the First Process Resource to Deliver a Better Result
Underpinning this skill is the understanding that any process consists of a series of steps or events, each dependent on its predecessor for how it turns out. Therefore, to ensure that any important process stage meets expectations, it is essential to ensure that the step that precedes it does its job as well as possible. Taking this line of thinking to its logical conclusion, the highest priority should be given to the first step or event in any process as it affects every stage that follows it
Skill #16 Improve the First Process Resource to Deliver a Better Result is the second of a group of four skills that modify an Initiating Resource in its entirety rather than modifying its attributes. There are three skills that embody the latter strategy.
[In total, there are 31 innovative skills that my research of thousands of successful business ideas has uncovered. I refer to such ideas as Sebirs. Sebir is a loose acronym for Small effort — big result, a phrase I find useful to describe ideas that are ‘innovative’.]
Previously, in Skill #15 Eliminate Process Resources to Deliver a Better Result, we learned that although they are rather unobtrusive and mundane in an intellectual sense, processes are central to achieving our goals, no matter what those may be. Appreciating fundamental truths about processes — and there are three that are mathematical certainties — is the path to guaranteeing the desired result.
All processes consist of a number of steps or events (stages) that are connected in the sense that each stage is dependent on the one that precedes it. Skill #15 was built logically upon the fact that given this sequential dependency, it follows that the fewer the stages in any process, the better the outcome of the process. Therefore, if we can eliminate stages and still achieve our process goal, the quality of the end result will be significantly improved.
We can take this logic about dependent stages further. If say, the quality of stage seven in a process is dependent upon the contribution of stage six, and stage six is dependent upon what is fed to it by stage five, we can reason that the earlier a stage is in any process, the more important is its contribution because effectively it affects all of the stages that succeed it. The natural conclusion is that top priority should be given to making the first step of any process as perfect as possible.
With this knowledge, we are equipped to apply Skill #16 Improve the First Process Resource to Deliver a Better Result.
Let’s check out an example of Skill #16 in action.
The standard expectation of many products or services that are put into ongoing use is that sooner or later, despite professional quality control in the production stage, some aspect of them will fail unexpectedly. A medical equipment manufacturer, by treating production as a first-stage resource, focuses on how it can make it truly excellent. It decides to develop and install sensors in its devices that predict machine failures and trigger maintenance activity before any malfunction. Unplanned downtime among the users of the medical manufacturer’s equipment is almost eliminated when perfecting the production stage is adopted as an innovative strategy.
Other Examples of Improving a First-Stage Resource to Deliver a Better Result*
In business production settings, the appreciation of processes is much more palpable of course because the study of the stages leading up to the final product or service is a commonplace practice.
Therefore, in the interest of displaying the impressive reach of Skill #16, let us look at a couple of non-commercial illustrations of it at work.
First, a public service example.
A local government authority must address the problem of serious injuries to people who are struck by a speeding fire truck because the headphones they are wearing block out the noise of the warning siren. They adopt as a first-stage resource the point at which an operational fire truck turns on its siren and decide to convert it to a low-frequency siren whose vibrations can be felt, even by headphone-wearing pedestrians. The latter instinctively get well out of the way when they sense the vehicle’s approach. The incidence of injuries caused to people unmindful of the fire truck threat reduces significantly when an early stage of the fire response process is innovatively upgraded.
Second, an instance from nature, which I think demonstrates that dealing efficaciously with the first stage of a process can result in truly inspirational, innovative thinking.
A wildlife organization faces the very difficult task of preventing hunters from clubbing seal cubs to death for their beautiful, soft sealskin coats. To select a first-stage resource, the wildlife people decide to focus on a really early place in the natural process, before the cubs are located by hunters. They spray a splash of paint on all the pups they can find, not hurting them but ruining their coats. As such, the pursuit of the sealskins becomes pointless for the hunters. A modified and now inviolable first stage of the hunting process effectively and innovatively protects the seal cubs.
Critical to the understanding that all processes are comprised of a discrete number of stages is the recognition of dependency. Every stage owes its value to the preceding stages. It must take what it inherits. If this line of logic is followed to its inevitable conclusion, the innovator grasps that improving the early stages of a process — but particularly maximizing the excellence of the first step or event — is the key to realizing significant innovative value.
Takeaway
*More than 1 million categorized, innovative business ideas can be searched on Sebir.com
