For Bright Ideas, Ask the Staff http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020

Question

For Bright Ideas, Ask the Staff

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204774604576631063939483984.html?mod=djem_jiewr_OM_domainid

4. What are your thoughts about "idea kiosks"? What are the advantages to using these? What are the disadvantages?

5. The article promotes the idea that line workers can suggest effective ways to improve a business. How does your company solicit improvement ideas from line employees? How effective is your program? How could it be improved?

6. The article discusses creative methods for establishing continuous improvement in a business. What are the variety of ways that your company improves continually? How do you measure the effectiveness of your efforts? After reading the article, what additional innovations could you use to improve your continuous improvement efforts?

Explanation / Answer

An Idea Kiosk can be considered as one of the small Business strategies which are now contributing hugely to profitability for small business owners.

These are mobile storefronts. Thus , advantages can be summed as highly accessible and very low on maintenance. The different form and type can be based on products like fast food, apparels, kitchenware, gifts, electronics, cosmetics etc. Therefore these are niche one stop destinations for consumers, very streamlined on the product lines.

Disadvantages of idea kiosk could be summed as limited transactions (since they are pre-programmed ) , customer might be facing difficulties in terms of technology, considering the fact that still massive percentage of the society is not aided with technology based transactions on a daily basis. Also, personal interaction Is limited. If customers are driven by a preconceived notion of being treated on a personal level, they might not be feeling as great left for self service.

The show is run mainly by its employees and they are the ones most closely related to the welfare and achievements of the organization. Thus an employees’ perfect understanding of their roles and responsibilities and enacting and executing the business deliverables with some added punch of innovation of how to do what to do gives a perfect blend of growth and continual improvement .

Continual Business improvement only comes with the legacy of maintaining an optimum coordination and alignment of all the stake holders working together towards achieving the company objectives.

The key ingredients to develop Business improvement that continues and sustains can be summes up as : Close loop networking ( tight coordination of employees with Organizational values imbibed ), More of participation and not dictation in order to establish a same page feeling by all and not leave on a superior-subordinate kind of feeling existing , since that would only leave them not volunteering more responsibilities and depending on seniors.

Welcoming ideas , Having multiple open form of discussions, celebrating improvement to drive motivation, providing all sort of support to employees in order to bring about changes, and last but not the least , proper RnR against the good contributions.

These overall add to the health of improvement of the organization.

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