About the author Dr. Denis Leonard is an ASQ Fellow, Edwards and Feigenbaum Medallist, and a trained EFQM Assessor and Innovation Leader.  He is a member of the QMDs Organizational Excellence Technical Committee and is Head of Integrated Management Systems with GRAHAM in the UK. Dr. Leonard can be reached at Denis.Leonard@Graham.co.uk

From the Fall 2020 Quality Management Forum

By Denis Leonard

Innovation continues to be a driving force for adaptation, change, and survival (Harrington, 2020, Christensen, 2019), and it has a key and synergetic relationship with quality management. “Simultaneous and sequential (Quality Improvement Methods) QIM adoption
generates positive complementarities and learning-by-using effects respectively enhancing innovation benefits” (Burke & Roper, 2017, p. 1516). Quality management and innovation management are “indeed approaching each other, and that is a movement driven from
both sectors, e.g., in the work of new ISO-standards and the Toyota Kata framework” (Lilja, Hansen, Fredrikson & Richardsson, 2017).

However, only 45% of companies have innovation as a strategic priority, 25% have an indifferent or inconsistent commitment or investment, and for 30% innovation is not a strategic priority (BCG,2020). More formal approaches are needed to assist, structure, and manage innovation. The newly released EFQM Innovation Lens (2020) and ISO56002 (2019) provide two key infrastructures to achieve this, and by leveraging the links between them, facilitating integration, we can use them to their maximum advantage. This paper examines the relationship between them and the critical elements for supporting, creating, managing, and implementing innovation.

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