Once made I am committed for life

The following two quotes from the articles summarise the key issues.Defenders of Six Sigma at 3M claim that a more systematic new-product introduction process allows innovations to get to market faster. But Fry, the Post-it note inventor, disagrees. In fact, he places the blame for 3M's recent lack of innovative sizzle squarely on Six Sigma's application Rosetta Stone in 3M's research labs. Innovation, he says, is "a numbers game. You have to go through 5,000 to 6,000 raw ideas to find one successful business." Six Sigma would ask, why not eliminate all that waste and just come up with the right idea the first time? That way of thinking, says Fry, can have serious side effects. "What's remarkable is how fast a culture can be torn apart," says Fry, who lives in Maplewood, Minn., just a few minutes south of the corporate campus and pops into the office regularly to help with colleagues' projects. "[McNerney] didn't kill it, because he wasn't here long enough. But if he had been here much longer, I think he could have."McNerney is the former CEO, who came from GE and was responsible for the implementation of Six Sigma,Buckley, a PhD chemical engineer by training, seems to recognize the cultural ramifications of a process-focused program on an organization whose fate and history is so bound up in inventing new stuff. "You cannot create in that atmosphere of confinement or sameness," Buckley says. "Perhaps one of the mistakes that we made as a company—it's one of the dangers of Six Sigma—is that when you value sameness more than you value creativity, I think you potentially undermine the heart and soul of a company like 3M."As ever in human systems we need to Rosetta Stone Software understand the criticality of boundaries. Something appropriate in one context can be dangerous in another. Some chemicals take in small doses can improve health, but in large quantities become a deadly poison. So it is with Six Sigma. Dinner: Pasta spek e piselli, Strudel di verdure e formaggio, Verdure al vapore, Insalata amp, DessertAfter an afternoon catching up on email (bar a brief walk to the harbour for pictures and to buy some water) we settled into an evening lecture by John Odling-Smee on Niche Construction a key concept in modern theories of evolution. John was also my companion at the Dinner which followed (although he sensibly avoided the Grappa) and a wide ranging conversation started at lunch continued through the evening. Towards the end, the moon thankfully duplicated its behaviour of the previous night and I managed to get one photograph which at least gives and impression of its beauty. Mind you I am now convinced I need a new camera, Mine is 4 years old and these days response time and low light capability have improved. The big question - Cannon or Nikon? Once made I am committed for life ..Either way, back to niche construction. Its something I've known about for sometime, but I hadn't realised its importance, or the fascination of the detailed examples or the implications for human evolution in the short as well as the long term. John introduces the subject with the example of an earthworm. The burrowing of an earth worm produces a partially self constructed world, in which the earthworm suborns its environment to overcome a deficiency in its own makeup. Normally terrestrial animals have kidneys that retain water, fresh water animals get rid of it and marine animals get rid of salt. The earthworm is still hanging on to the kidney function of its aquatic ancestors, hence the need to use the soil to augment its poor digestive system. There are several other examples. Ants that use formic acid to kill off all plants other than their host in Ant Gardens. In one study the Garden was over 800 years old, so Rosetta Stone Hindi we have ecological inheritance.Organisms also modify their environment, adaption is a two way street. In consequence we have reciprocal causation in which both natural selection and ecological inheritance are in play, the result of which is something called niche inheritance.