costs by using practices commonly associated with mass production and lean production. When it comes to innovations in health care delivery, these Indian hospitals have surpassed the efforts of other top institutions around the world. This innovation has also reduced costs. These hospitals have also been innovative in compensating doctors. Innovation has flourished in the U.S. Leading Health Care Innovation. Health India Innovation MORE

Technologies like 3-D printing, robotics, advanced motion controls, and new methods for continuous manufacturing hold great potential for improving how companies design and build products to better serve customers. Robotics is a good example: It’s obvious that it can increase productivity, but it takes some know-how to put robots to work. NUMMI) in California, did not deploy lean manufacturing across the company for decades despite the clear advantages. MORE

Enter Henry Ford, who revolutionized the industry with his manufacturing innovations , lowering the price of cars from $2,000 in 1908 to just $260 by 1925 — an 87% reduction! He didn’t do it by making cars shoddier or offshoring production to low-wage countries. His secret was mass production in a “focused factory,” using interchangeable parts, specialization, and the assembly line. But the most innovative Indian hospitals are doing much more. MORE

Innovation isn’t always strategic, but strategy making sure as heck better be innovative. It is important, however, to understand the nuances and complexities of innovation as they relate to strategy. Not all innovation is created equal. I put all innovations into two broad categories: linear innovations (which are consistent with the firm’s current business model) and non-linear innovations (not perfectly continuous with the current business model). MORE

Supposedly set to launch this July — and then September — New York City announced that its innovative bike sharing program would be delayed until at least next spring. On a far larger scale and more caustically, former JCPenney and Macy's CEO Allen Questrom ripped into current JCPenney CEO (and Apple Store innovator) Ron Johnson's turnaround strategy for the struggling retailer. But the importance and pace of innovation rollouts demand a different design sensibility. MORE

They created and maintained a close connection to frontline staff — what Jim Womack , the expert in lean production and thinking, calls “going to gemba ” — Japanese for “the actual place.”. This innovation developed because the frontline staff had strong, trusting, and supportive relationships with the patients they cared for and had strong improvement skills. Follow the Leading Health Care Innovation insight center on Twitter @HBRhealth. In August, Dr. Donald M. MORE

As global innovators, however, they share a remarkable core value and best practice: they invest in the innovative capabilities of their suppliers. By sheer happenstance, I had just gotten a copy of Gemba Walks , a collection of essays by James Womack , a co-author of the automotive classic The Machine That Changed The World and a pioneering importer of Toyota-inspired lean production insights and methodologies to America. Creativity Google Innovation MORE

In the 1980s, our organizations learned a great deal about how to improve productivity, quality, and costs from Japanese practices. Lean production , which includes a vastly expanded role for front-line workers in addressing problems, was brought to the United States by Toyota in its auto plants but has now spread to health care, professional services, and virtually every other industry. A few decades ago, U.S. MORE

The dynamic is always the same, whether the idea in question is reengineering, six-sigma quality, or lean production systems: A genuinely original strategy is born in one company or industry, consultants discover the practice and turn it into a marketable commodity, executives in all sorts of other companies race to "buy" the product — and then they wonder why the technique didn't work nearly as well in their organization as it did in the place that created it in the first place. MORE