Good morning,everyone.In the last few lectures I'vebeen dealing with business finance,but now I'mgoing to move on to business systems.And intoday's lecture I'm going to talk about what can gowrong when businesses try to copy their own bestpractices.
Once a business has successfully introduced a newprocess - managing a branch bank,say,or selling anew product - the parent organisation naturallywants to repeat that success,and not to generatenew knowledge.It's a less glamorous activity thanpure innovation,but it actually happens more often,as a matter offact.However,surprisingly,getting things right the second time is not necessarily any simplerthan it was the first time.
Now,there's been a lot of research into how companies can repeat their previoussuccesses,and it certainly hasn't been confined to the United States.It seems that most largeindustries are trying to repeat their own successes,and manage the knowledge they've acquired- but even so it has been shown that the overwhelming majority of attempts fail.A host ofstudies confirm this,covering a wide range of business settings:branch banks,retailstores,real estate agencies,factories,call centres...to name but a few.