In my previous article, I talked about the fact that agility is like a tailor-made suit and must be adapted to the business context.
The fact that agility is not a standard to be taken from textbooks and therefore not a best practice is a good thing.
Gary Hamel identifies 4 levels of innovation at increasing levels of value creation and decreasing levels of imitability.
In practice, process innovation is relatively easy to imitate, and in many cases consists of the purchase of production machinery.
Less so is that of product that may also be protected by patents.
Strategic innovation includes the way of doing business integrated with the product, as in the case of giants such as Ikea, is an even less imitable level.
The highest level is management innovation.
Management innovation is, quite simply, managing people and resources and interrelationships among them, and doing it as no one has ever done before.
It is the least copyable type of innovation because, even if it is understood, it needs to be adapted to its own business and territorial context in which the company is located.
The Agile transition, once initiated, is the competitive advantage of companies that are preparing for the Industry 5.0 paradigm.
It is precisely for these reasons that it is desirable that the various agile frameworks do not fit as shelf-stable products. If not, what would be the competitive advantage once adopted?
This managerial innovation is also an innovation of the company’s culture.
As I indicated in my article on the Italian structural condition of product development within customer orders, this greatly complicates the adoption of Agile approaches for new product development.
These Agile approaches, originated in the U.S. in the software world and it is therefore necessary to be cultural mediators, to introduce them in the Italian industrial context.
It is also true that on several occasions, at the end of Agility workshops in medium-sized companies developing physical products, I have heard people in attendance say, “We are agile natively but we are agile unstructured.”
From my experience there is much truth in this statement.
The flexibility of Italian companies that make customized products for customers is really very high.
These companies are much closer to the Agile approach than to other, more traditional approaches derived from the auto industry.
The main difficulties I encounter in introducing agility in companies developing physical products within customer orders can be summarized as follows:
- Product development takes place within the logic of product development orders for customers, although with dedicated orders.
- The first emergency from within a customer order moves new product development to second priority, resulting in the suspension or slowdown of new product development.
- Similarly, the arrival of a new customer order moves new product development to second priority
- Turnover in the short term comes first, because the cost of delay is not sufficiently understood. The cost of delay is related to future turnover and marginality.
Under these conditions having people available, for the agreed-upon time, for new product design is really a challenge.
The solution is to make management aware of the cost of delay.
It is appropriate to do this not only for the individual project under analysis but also for those that have been prioritized for future development.
In this way, the delay of a project also impacts those in the development line (development pipeline).
Another very effective solution is to structure products in a modular way. A modular product architecture is strongly enabling because it can simplify development.
In fact, developing modular modules in sequence is more sustainable and than developing a product that cannot be broken down into separately developable elements.
This prompts one to lift one’s head from the trough and have a greater perspective.
The forms allow us to get used to raising our heads with less effort.
