Board 104: An Accelerator of Human Innovation Integrating Continuous Improvement and Lean Philosophy into Innovation Program for Undergraduate Students

Abstract

This paper provides a novel program to create the seeds of innovation. Innovation is one of the most crucial elements of a successful startup, and it is important to move quickly. At the same time, many startups fail because they build the wrong product. The longevity of any business and/or industry relies on the effectiveness and rationale of the service providers. The paradigm and business methodology applied in lean six sigma is aimed at having the long-term effectiveness of the employees. Hence the lean and continuous improvement application has originally proved to be a quality process that provides and generates a high percentage of service output. Sustainable development has become a vital aspect of the success of any organization's programs since it ensures environmental, economic, and social sustainability during the program process; through this mechanism, Innovation as a learning system embeds design thinking, creativity, and sustainability. This system needs effectiveness in terms of the long-term relevance of service providers. After a deep review of thousands of recently published articles, journals, and other innovation programs to address the most common innovation program challenges, this study concludes that applying the lean philosophy and building continuous improvement culture will maximize program efficiency and eliminate waste; it is the ideal starting point to provoke more effective innovation. In general, Lean innovation is a methodology that helps you create products and services by offering the minimum product with measurable customer feedback at each stage of development. The process can be applied to any product or service and any sized organization, from small startups to large corporations. In this setup, there are a lot of innovative programs for undergraduate students, but very few are effective and for the long term. Our program, ultimate innovation, exploits the mechanism of lean philosophy and continuous improvement culture to overcome those challenges. The ultimate innovation program was designed after addressing the most common educational challenges to provide a systematic, scientific pattern to help students and faculty members develop the thinking skills required for continuous improvement as well as meet university goals. The program combines the speed of innovation with the rigor of customer development so you can iteratively build a product or service based on customer needs/wants. Additionally, the program consists of various processes hinged together to focus on individuals over processes to gain new creative insights and innovative solutions that could benefit students across the disciplines at the University. Also, the program takes advantage of the possible continuous feedback loop by releasing updates to customers more frequently. With the Ultimate Innovation program, participants will learn to lead by getting to know themselves better, harnessing their creativity, building teams and organizations through the culture of innovation., and reinforcing the skills needed to lead innovation. The Ultimate Innovation program will be considered an innovation role model for other universities and colleges to adopt our program.