Kaizen versus Innovation

Innovation is seen as a major change in the wake of technological breakthroughs. Innovation is dramatic and a real attention-getter. Kaizen, on the other hand, is often undramatic and subtle, and its results are seldom immediately visible. While Kaizen is a continuous process that implies continuous improvement and involves every employee in every company func­tion at all levels of the organization, innovation is generally a one-shot phenomenon. The comparison between Kaizen and innovation is shown in Tables 9.2 and 9.3.

Analysing Table 9.3, we find that the West has been stronger in terms of innovation and Japan has been stronger on the Kaizen front. These differences are also reflected in the dif­ferent social and cultural heritages such as the Western educational system’s stress on indi­vidual initiative and creativity as against the Japanese educational system’s emphasis on harmony and collectivism.

One big difference between Kaizen and innovation is that while Kaizen does not neces­sarily call for a large investment to implement it, it does call for a great deal of continuous effort and commitment. Innovation is a one-shot deal whose effects are gradually eroded by intense competition and deteriorating standards, Kaizen is an on-going effort with cumula­tive effects marking the steady rise as the years go by.

Continuous efforts towards improvement must exist within organizations to even main­tain the status quo. If standards exist only in order to maintain the status quo, they will not be challenged so long as the level of performance is acceptable. When such effort is lacking, decline is inevitable. Therefore, even when an innovation makes a revolutionary standard of performance attainable, the new performance level will decline unless the standard is con­stantly challenged and upgraded. Thus, whenever an innovation is achieved, it must be fol­lowed by a series of Kaizen efforts to maintain and improve it. Kaizen is a constant effort not only to maintain but also to upgrade standards.

Source: Poornima M. Charantimath (2017), Total Quality Management, Pearson; 3rd edition.

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