REDISCOVERING CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

Continuous improvement (CI) is increasingly being seen as an important complement to more radical, step-change forms of innovation. In essen ce, it involves a company-wide process of enabling a continuing stream of focused incremental innovation. It has found particular applicatio n in recent years in the area of quality improvement, but the principl e can be applied to many other. divisions of business performance. Alt hough simple to define, the achievement of such CI activity and its ma intenance over the long term is a major source of difficulty. This pap er reports on research in this area and highlights key areas within CI which need to be addressed.