Mar 28

Written by: Brian Seitz
3/28/2008 6:22 AM 

Over the years Operations Researchers, Efficiency Experts, and Management Consultants have spent many long hours pondering over productivity of the blue collar or touch labor positions within business.  There are studies too numerous to count in this area.  However, the labor composition of business today is nowhere near, what it previously was.   In previous generations, the hands-on labor to non-touch labor ratio had the majority on the hands-on labor.

 

With the industrial revolution and then the scientific management, age the ration of hands-on labor to non-touch labor decreased.  Part of that was due to various forms of tool-induced productivity; increasingly though productivity gains were brought about by work standardization.  The creation of standardized jobs, responsibilities, procedures and methods brought about the conditions that enabled employees to improve performance from repeated experience.  The Boston Consulting Group in the mid 1960s documented this effect and today it has become dogma for planning in most manufacturing corporations and has migrated to other touch labor businesses.

 

As we have entered the information age this concept had appeared to fade from popularity; partly from white collar employees not wanting to have the same oversight that blue collar workers have and partly from a lack of understanding how to standardize knowledge work.  As white-collar work has become more specialized into information processing and management tools, techniques to standardize the information processing roles have come into play.  Tools such as Business Process Management and Customer Relationship Management are creating those job standards so key to enabling the experience curve to operate. 

 

The question becomes is it possible to standardize innovation and creativity? Is innovation and creativity still just serendipity brought about by still unknown factors?  There are places where creativity and innovation occur slightly more than others are; Lockheed Skunkworks, Xerox Parc, and 3M Labs to name a few.  These areas seem unique in composition. When the same factors are applied elsewhere the results are somewhat disappointing.  There are some methods that can used to simulate creativity programmatically; DeBono’s Lateral Thinking and Six Thinking Hats, Brainstorming, and Triz.  However, results from these methods do not necessarily follow an experience curve when measured.  While the manipulation of these variables increases the probabilities of innovation and creativity I have not seen a standardized formula for creating innovation.