Values-Driven Innovation™

Hyper competition for competitive advantage is routine in today’s marketplace. The achievement of sustainable competitive advantage requires broad-based innovation and improvement in resource productivity throughout the value chain.

Values-driven innovation™ is a disciplined approach to innovation that enables an organization to systematically examine all of its processes and products through specific values lenses. This has the potential to yield quantum breakthroughs in every sector of its operations. Those organizations that, through continuous and systematic innovation, achieve relative cost or value advantage, or enhanced new product generation, will win superior financial returns over time.

Nike, Starbucks, IKEA, and Collins Products are among a growing number of leading corporations that have discovered the enduring benefits that result from analyzing their strategy and operations through the lens of specific values, such as environmental sustainability or community responsibility, and acting upon the insights of that analysis.

An example of this approach in action is the organizational adoption of the value "environmental sustainability." One result of this would be to invite members of an organization to scrutinize all of its operations with the intention of producing breakthrough rather than linear improvements in resource efficiency and costs as the result. Examples of systemic resource utilization improvements (higher value at lower cost) as a result of viewing processes through "environmental sustainability" lenses are set-out below.

Process Benefits
• materials savings resulting from more complete processing, substitution, reuse, or recycling of production inputs
• increases in process yields
• less downtime through more careful monitoring and maintenance
• better utilization of by-products
• conversion of waste into valuable forms
• lower energy consumption during the production process
• reduced material storage and handling costs
• savings from safer workplace conditions
• elimination or reduction of the cost of activities involved in discharges or waste handling, transportation, and disposal
• improvements in the product as a by-product of process changes (such as better process control)
Product Benefits
• demonstrable increase in product innovation
• higher quality, more consistent products
• lower product costs (for instance, from material substitution)
• lower packaging costs
• more efficient resource use by products
• safer products
• lower net costs to customers of product disposal
• higher product resale and scrap value