Traditional innovation approaches create the very problems you’re trying to solve: products that consistently launch late, resources constantly over-allocated, too many active projects with constant change in priorities, and product sales that fall significantly short of pre-launch forecasts. Lean principles systematically eliminate these failures by fundamentally transforming how value flows through your innovation journey.
We use hundreds of Lean principles to maximize the value created during the innovation journey.
These principles primarily ensure that innovation resources generate maximum customer value—instead of creating waste. The Innovation Practice of Lean Focus employs the full spectrum of these principles to eliminate late launches, accelerate pipeline flow, and increase revenue from new products. Among the hundreds we implement, Customer Value, Pull, and Waste Elimination represent three core principles that transform failing innovation departments into market leaders.
Principle 1: Customer Value invests only in validated demand, while traditional methods waste resources on assumptions.
Traditional innovation departments operate on assumptions, forecasts, and internal opinions about what customers want. This creates pipelines bloated with low-value projects that consume resources while delivering disappointing sales results. The Lean principle of Customer Value demands direct market validation before significant investment, ensuring your innovation resources flow exclusively toward products that customers verifiably value. This fundamental shift eliminates the gap between pre-launch forecasts and actual sales results because you’re building what the market has already confirmed it wants.
Principle 2: Pull systems create synchronized flow, while traditional push methods create pipeline chaos.
Traditional innovation operates on push: projects are launched into development based on internal schedules, capacity planning, and resource availability. This creates the bottlenecks, delays, and late launches that plague your pipeline. Pull systems work backward from market demand, allowing work to flow only when downstream capacity exists and customer need is verified. Projects move through development at the pace the market can absorb them, creating the synchronized flow that accelerates time-to-market while paradoxically reducing the pressure that causes delays.
Principle 3: Waste Elimination attacks value-destroying activities, while traditional methods accept inefficiency as normal.
Your innovation department unknowingly operates with massive waste: unnecessary meetings, redundant approvals, work sitting idle between stages, over-engineered features customers don’t value, and rework from inadequate upfront validation. Traditional approaches accept this waste as “how things work.” Lean systematically identifies and eliminates every activity that consumes resources without creating customer value. This increases the percentage of revenue from recent launches because more innovation capacity flows toward fewer, higher-value products that reach market faster.
The Lean Focus Business System™ (LBS™) turns principles into practice.
The hundreds of Lean principles that drive a company’s innovation transformation—including Customer Value, Pull, and Waste Elimination—come to life through the proven Tools contained within the Innovation Practice of LBS™. These Tools represent systematic activities such as workshops, process implementations, and structured improvements that your innovation department will undertake side-by-side with our seasoned, senior-level practitioners. The Lean Focus Business System™ is truly among the most respected business systems in the world, providing repeatable, proven solutions that work across industries and countries.
Your innovation problems won’t solve themselves, and traditional approaches have already proven inadequate.
Contact the senior-level LBS Experts of our Innovation Practice today to schedule a presentation of the Lean Focus Business System™. During this session, we’ll demonstrate exactly how the proven Tools used by the Innovation Practice of LBS™ will transform your innovation challenges into competitive advantages.
Industry Experience of Our Innovation Practice
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MATERIAL HANDLING
PATIENT MONITORING
BIOPHARMACEUTICALS
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IMPLANTABLE DEVICES
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GENOMICS & PRECISION MEDICINE
TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT
HOME GOODS & FURNISHINGS
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AUTOMATION EQUIPMENT
DIAGNOSTIC EQUIPMENT
INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY
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TEST & MEASUREMENT
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A Selection of Businesses Our Innovation Practice Has Served
Our Innovation Practice Regional Leaders
GASTON BERRIO
Lean Focus North America
+1 (630) 800-8519
[email protected]
About Gaston
Gaston serves as a Senior Vice President of Lean Focus’ Innovation Practice, where his extensive leadership experience across global Engineering, Product, and PMO teams is highly valued. Recognized for fostering a culture of problem-solving and Continuous Improvement, Gaston’s efforts have consistently led to robust and sustainable outcomes. With a career spanning over two decades, Gaston has held influential CTO, VP, and Director positions at companies like Danaher, Fortive, and Vontier. He has been instrumental in Strategic Planning, Strategy Deployment, M&A Due Diligence, and the creation of Product & Technology Roadmaps.
His aptitude for translating strategic goals into tangible achievements has marked his career. Gaston is a pragmatic leader who thrives on direct engagement, or ‘going to Gemba’, ensuring a customer-centric approach throughout the product development lifecycle.
Gaston’s academic background includes a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems from Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires, Argentina. His innovative spirit is further demonstrated by his contributions as an inventor, holding several patents across the Petroleum Retail, Payment, and Test & Measurement sectors.
MANUEL JANS, PHD.
Lean Focus Europe
+49 173 2505762
[email protected]
About Manuel
Manuel has over 20 years of experience in Human Resource Management and Organizational Development. He has initially provided support for lean business transformations at all levels as a HR Consultant and later by leading customer-focused Talent and HR organizations in multi-national companies (up to $2.2B and 40+ locations). His assignments include various Talent leader roles at Danaher´s Water Quality Business and Head of HR positions in Pharma and Biotech. As an entrepreneur he has (co-)founded start-up businesses and professional networks. He is passionate about applying lean and agile thinking to build, improve and sustain impactful HR and talent practices, placing and developing key talent to drive the transformation journey, and building a lean leadership culture at all levels of the organization. Manuel holds a MBA (Diplom-Kaufmann) and Ph.D. in Business Administration (HR focus) from Essen University.
MICHAEL REINHOLT ANDERSEN
Lean Focus Nordic
+45 4030 3080
[email protected]
About Michael
Michael is the CEO of Lean Focus Nordic, bringing over 25 years of leadership experience. His career includes ~18 years at Danaher Corporation, where he held multiple executive roles, including General Manager/Managing Director Dentistry and Biotech businesses, as well as several VP Operations & Supply Chain and VP of Lean Business Transformation. In his role as Danaher Corporate Director, he was responsible for Danaher Business System implementation in EU. Most recently, he led Operations & Supply Chain of a $1B acute care diagnostics business, transforming it into one of Danaher’s most Lean-mature organizations.
An expert in driving transformational change, Michael specializes in implementing Lean practices and applying Lean business systems in large-scale organizations to enhance quality, delivery, innovation speed, and cost efficiency. He has successfully led cross-functional Lean transformations across diverse industries, cultivating high-performing, problem-solving cultures on a global scale.
Michael is renowned for driving radical business transformations and delivering impactful results. He excels in building enduring cultures of Continuous Improvement, anchored in collaboration, empowerment, and mutual respect.
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1. Challenge
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2. Opportunity
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Lean Focus North America
P: +1 (630) 800-8519
E: [email protected]
Lean Focus Europe
P: +49 173 2505762
E: [email protected]
Lean Focus Nordic
P: +45 4030 3080
E: [email protected]
International Phone Number: +1 (630) 800-8519
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