Lean Six Sigma & Innovation

Please join KM Chicago on Tuesday, May 14th at 5:30pm in the Loop for a conversation about Lean Six Sigma, Innovation and Knowledge Management. 

Praveen Gupta, President of Accelper Consulting, and Director of IIT Center for Innovation Science and Applications will lead the discussion on Six Sigma implementations. 

Most Lean implementations have been used to reduce waste in operations. Deploying Lean has led to cost savings, and excess capacity in equipment and human resources. Leadership and stakeholders expect financial returns.  Utilizing Lean aggressively for reducing waste has also resulted in ignorance of the need for business growth requiring innovation. Hence Lean without innovation would result in profit in a shrinking business. This scenario does not appear a viable solution for businesses in the long.

Operational performance accounts for about 10% of the corporate performance. In order to maximize benefits of Lean Six Sigma, corporations must focus on business development by introducing new products or services.

Lean Innovation is a framework that improves efficiency and effectiveness of the innovation process based on best practices of great innovators. Lean Innovation framework reduces waste in the innovation process for accelerating innovation and increasing return on investment in innovation. This way additional capacity is utilized for realizing business growth instead of downsizing businesses.

During the Lean Innovation presentation attendees will learn about Lean Six Sigma Scorecard, new rules of creativity and a new ideation process in for effective Lean Six Sigma deployment. Also, using knowledge management to sustain innovation and business performance.

About Praveen Gupta

Praveen Gupta is a pioneer in Six Sigma methodology, an instructor for Just-in-Time principles and the chief architect of the breakthrough innovation framework (Brinnovation™). Praveen is a Director of Center for Innovation Science and Applications at IIT Chicago. He has taught innovation courses at Illinois Institute of Technology and University of Illinois, Chicago. Praveen has worked at Motorola and AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories. As a consultant at Accelper Consulting he has worked with dozens of organizations.

Praveen has authored several books including Stat Free Six Sigma for leaning the Six Sigma methodology, The Innovation Solution for leaning innovation process, and Six Sigma Business Scorecard for leaning Balanced Scorecard.

KM Chicago will reconvene in May

The April meeting has been cancelled, but please stay tuned for May's topic. We'll see you next month!

Analytics and Economic Evaluation

Wes LeBlanc

Please join KM Chicago on Tuesday, March 12th at 5:30pm in the Loop for a conversation about Analytics and Economic Evaluation. Wes LeBlanc, Analytics Director at Gensler, will focus his presentation on working with and organizing psychographic, demographic and geographic data. He'll explore the depth of these types of user profiles and the tools used for gathering and visualizing data.

Wes has extensive financial and economic experience across real estate types and uses. His specialty is in unusually large, complex, and/or multidisciplinary projects. The focus areas that encompass his experience include:  Economic Analysis and Advisory, Real Estate Market Advisory, Financial Due Diligence, Market Assessments and Modeling.  

Wes has worked nationally and abroad, specifically in Asia and the Middle East for real estate developers, landowners and conglomerates with ancillary landholdings and investments. He performed advisory work prior to Gensler at Economics Research Associates (ERA) and AECOM’s Real Estate Strategy Group. At Gensler he manages the Analytics Group –  a quantitatively-focused team of professionals that specialize in utilization of structured data and information to inform project direction. The team is comprised of economists, market analysts, business planning professionals, urban planning professionals, economic development specialists, and statisticians, among others.

Connecting In An Open World - Feb. 12, 2013

Howard B. Schechter, Ed.D. 

Dr. Schechter, a scholar practitioner in Online Learning (OL) and Knowledge Management (KM) has distinguished himself as a Corporate Learning Executive for 22 years and excelled as a Researcher and Educator at Walden University since 2001.  Additionally, he consults, speaks and writes on OL and KM and has received several awards.

His experience with social media, cloud computing, mobile devices and related frameworks is extensive and well aligned with KM Chicago’s focus on “Connecting in an open world.”   Dr. Schechter will be sharing with KM Chicago his perspectives on social media, their impact on organizations, as well as the latest research on the “effects of intergenerational knowledge sharing” at large during the February 12^th, KM Chicago session.

Dr. Schechter received his Doctorate from UMASS and his Masters from North Adams State College.

Dow Jones is looking for an Account Development Executive in the Chicago office to manage and build relationships with Midwest clients for Factiva, Dow Jones Newswires and the entire suite of Dow Jones products. The position requires excellent communication skills, flexibility, resourcefulness, and technical aptitude. Some travel in the Midwest required. Respond to ann.lee@dowjones.com.