Being part of a couple of medium / large organizations I’ve always felt that my work was governed in some manner or the other by processes.

So, the real question is whether process and innovation can truly co-exist. With an organization focused on process improvement, a large amount of effort goes into improving existing systems. While great, i can’t help but wonder whether this rigid adherence to processes actually impedes creativity.

With the various levels of certification that corporations go through as part of their “quality” process allow for certain levels of improvement their stringent norms on conformance really doesn’t leave very much room for thinking “outside the box”

The Indian IT services industry is known for its high levels of process adherence, a component that it has built its reputation on.

A friend of mine recently moved from a very small startup to a rather large company, his first reaction was “I spend more time conforming to processes than doing anything really creative”. In the large scale of things I do agree that this high level of process adherence does make it easier to enable the creation of a “Way” of doing things. Though from what little I have seen there is always a certain level of diversity in the way these “processes” are interpreted.

I do understand if asked the question of whether process and innovation go hand in hand the answer would probably be “Innovation needs to be governed by a certain level of process”. But where do you stand? If you had the option would you push innovation? Or process?

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