John Parkinson, a guest columnist at CIO Insight, writes an interesting article on the conflict between organizations that have internalized Six Sigma, and the new imperative for innovation. We consistently see this in clients that have spent a few years getting Six Sigma built into their culture, and then reject the idea of experimentation or "fast failure" prototypes to try new concepts.

Where conflict occurs, it's often about the definition of unnecessary sources of variability. Many Six Sigma black belts (certified experts in the application of Six Sigma principles) tend to apply the principles as doctrine without regard to context or situational need. People should think outside the box and try different approaches to routine tasks, but the black belts see this as perverting their carefully optimized process by introducing unnecessary sources of variability. And it doesn't help to point out that repeating the process unchanged and expecting a different outcome is a good proxy definition for insanity.

Its completely understandable how corporate teams, who feel like they've just gotten on top of the last business transformation tool,would have trouble reconciling it with an approach that seems to fly in the face of everything that six sigma holds dear. But Parkinson has it right that the tools of innovation are complimentary to the tools of six sigma, and that we must learn to both optimize the core and create divergent experiments at the edge.