Innovation Has A Start

Innovation Has a Starting Point, Don’t Reinvent the Wheel.

In construction, innovation is exciting. It’s how we grow, adapt, and deliver better results. But there’s something important I’ve learned: innovation should have a starting point, and it should move forward from there.

The Problem with Reinventing the Wheel

I’ve seen two extremes in company culture. On one end, you have organizations so rigid in their processes that innovation barely survives. They’ve got both a floor and a ceiling, minimum standards you can’t go below and maximum boundaries you can’t go beyond.

On the other end, you have companies so entrepreneurial that they’ll have 15 different people across the country all trying to solve the same problem separately, wasting massive amounts of money and resources. The chaos can spark ideas, but it also breeds inefficiency.

Neither extreme work perfectly.

A Better Approach

For rigid companies:

• Keep the floor, remove the ceiling. Have a minimum standard everyone must meet, but allow teams to innovate beyond it.

For ultra-loose companies:

• Establish a starting point. Provide a standard or existing solution as the base so improvements can build on something stable.

Innovation without a starting point led to waste. Improvement without a standard is aimless.

My Starting Point

When I’ve developed systems like the Takt Production System or integrated planning approaches, I didn’t start from scratch. I built from the work of Lean Core, AGC Lean, Toyota, Scrum, German Takt research, professors, industry leaders, and even those who’ve disagreed with me.

I gave credit where credit was due, and then I moved forward from there. That’s how innovation compounds: it respects what came before while making it better.

The Danger of Innovating Just to Be Different

In our industry, I see too many people trying to “be different” for the sake of being different. They criticize existing work without understanding it, repackage it under a new name, and sometimes degrade quality just to create separation.

True innovation doesn’t start by tearing down; it starts by building up from a solid base.

Stability Breeds Innovation

Charlie Dunn taught me that innovation and continuous improvement come from stability and standards. Without a standard, you can’t measure improvement. Without a stable base, you can’t build higher.

At Elevate Construction, everything we create stands on the shoulders of someone else’s work. We credit them, refine the system, and leave a stronger base for the next wave of innovators.

The only exception? CPM. In my opinion, there’s nothing to improve there; it’s fundamentally flawed in how it treats people. Everything else? We can and should innovate on it.

Key Takeaway:
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Find the current best standard, give credit to those who built it, and innovate from there. Standards create the stability that makes real, lasting innovation possible.