Lean As A Disruptive Innovation at ThedaCare

Sg2's Michael Sachs' thoughts on Lean as disruptive innovation (free registration required.)

As a concept, I'm not sure Lean itself is all that disruptive EXCEPT as it reflects a passionate, organization-wide commitment to improved performance and waste reduction. Add a thirst for new knowledge, pervasive "all hands, all levels" involvement and an executive willingness to stay the course for longer than 2 months, and, yes, it's truly disruptive.

And disruption's very tough to compete with once it's hard-wired into an organization's DNA. But then nobody ever says "We want to be EASY to compete with!" do they?

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