High-Involvment Innovation

any change by which work is rendered superior in quality or more economical in cost."  

High-involvment innovation has been around for a while.  Denny's Shipyard in Dumbarton, Scotland, back in 1871 asked--and rewarded--workers for "any change by which work is rendered superior in quality or more economical in cost."  

It makes a big difference to firms like Toyota that do this on a systematic basis-it receives around two million suggestions a year from its workforce.  Kawasaki engineering, another high-involvment player, has a staggering seven million)--and it implements the majority of these.

ACTION POINT:  Encourage your employees to look for any change that renders superior quality work or more economical cost.