Regardless of the size of your company – the ability to identify and solve problems is something that businesses are always going to require. One way of looking at process improvement toolsets like Lean and Six Sigma are as problem solving techniques – structured ways of overcoming the challenges that businesses face.

But at a time when the spoils go to innovators like Apple, is the rigid application of the Lean Six Sigma toolset hindering rather than helping?

In this Process Perspectives podcast, Pierre Nader, Head of Process Excellence and Total Quality Management at Du Telecom, the second largest telecommunications provider in the United Arab Emirates, discusses why continuous improvement and innovation must come together to create a platform for operational excellence.

He argues that companies pursuing either innovation or operational excellence - rather than combing the two – risks damaging the company’s prospects. The innovators without operational excellence will be penalized for their chaotic processes while those who pursue operational excellence without innovation will be doomed to eventual irrelevance. He also discusses an approach called Applied Creativity that he has been using within Du Telecom to come up with new ideas to solving business problems.

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