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Writer's pictureBen Sosne

The Local Roots of Innovation: Berkshire Born, rebooted at the BIC

A few weeks ago, Dimitri Ponomareff was at the BIC speaking at an event for educators.  Dimitri, the founder and CEO of Kanban Zone, is a coach, project manager, and facilitator who specializes in helping organizations improve using Agile and Lean strategies.  Over the last 15 years, he has coached and provided custom services for clients such as American Express, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, and the Mayo Clinic.  


In his years helping organizations implement Agile and Lean systems, Dimitri told us that he has always started with the story of Total Quality Management (TQM) and the collaboration between the US and Japan to improve the way to cars are built. What he learned when he visited to the BIC – which absolutely floored him – is that the Berkshires is quite literally the birthplace of TQM.  Dimitri was ecstatic, described our opportunity as “unique” and urged us to “appreciate the ground we were standing on.”  He promised to work with the BIC and BIC stakeholders to continue, what he called, a “historic journey of organizational quality”.  


History of TQM— rooted in Berkshire County


As Dimitri referenced, in the decades after World War II, Japan faced a mighty challenge in reconstructing its economy. Determined to rebuild their industries on a foundation of product quality and customer satisfaction, Japanese officials invited certain U.S. business leaders who were known as the “gurus” of quality.  Most prominent to visit were Dr. W. Edwards Deming, Dr. Joseph Juran, and Berkshire County’s own Dr. Armand “Val” Feigenbaum.


Using methods like Total Quality Management, which was created here in Pittsfield by Val and his brother Donald, Japan eventually became a global economic superpower, a leader in quality electronics and manufacturing.  


The Feigenbaums identified a few core principles and practices in TQM that have had an enormous influence on the development of manufacturing across the globe. These principles are as much a philosophy as a recipe for success and have been applied in many industries.  The Feiganbaums’ work has been translated into over 20 languages and President George W. Bush awarded Val a National Medal of Technology and Innovation in 2007.  


TQM allows an organization to holistically improve its operations and outcomes by focusing on quality in two dimensions: “building the right thing”— in other words, on creating relevant, high-quality products and services and by focusing on “building things right” - applying steady focus on quality and minimizing costly rework. To achieve those outcomes via TQM, companies pursue a deep knowledge of their customers and the reasons their customers are buying their product or service. “Delighting the customer” by understanding the functional, social and emotional aspects of a service or product has become a central pillar of modern product development.  Beyond a close relationship with customers, firms work to identify hidden waste in their processes and then turn the resulting savings into improving their product or service to better satisfy customers. This creates a positive feedback loop. By preventing errors in production and distribution of their service or product, TQM organizations have been able to save 20-40% of their total capacity.


TQM changes the environment inside an organization because it stresses accountability for quality across the firm: quality is everybody's job. Management’s job is to ensure that quality is understood as a shared responsibility and that it is actively managed and visible at the highest levels of management.


TQM has evolved since it was founded by the Feigenbaums in the 1950s.  The practices and principles have been drawn into many other well-respected business practices, including the $15B world of “Business Agility” – the world Dimitri lives in. 


Agile is an umbrella term for a set of practices and work patterns that allow businesses to adapt to rapidly changing environments.  Agile methods stress a cycle of learning, analyzing and adapting that first became prominent in the software industry and has now been applied in many of the fastest growing companies on earth, including Tesla, Spotify, and many parts of the military. Agile methods emphasize active and frequent collaborative problem solving within teams instead of the traditional top-down/command and control approach that was common before the arrival of digital technologies. 


Whether they define themselves as an “Agile” organization or not, most BIC member companies embrace some Agile methodologies.   Many are eager to build awareness on their own teams and expand adoption.  


TQM and Agile make a new appearance in Education in Berkshire Co.  


As we work with our regional employers, we obviously hear the need for technical skills.  That said, nearly every employer who mentions technical skills is also quick to point to a host of other skills that are equally or perhaps even more important – the ability to work as an effective team member, the ability to communicate with colleagues, the ability to iterate to solve a problem, the ability to self-start, the ability to adapt to new roles, etc.


With this feedback in mind, the BIC has partnered with several organizations – including the BU Agile Innovation Lab, Teal Education Partners, and L-EAF.org – that specialize in helping people and organizations learn and adopt TQM and Agile methods.  We’ve been particularly inspired by efforts to expose students to these principles and frameworks.  At the same event Dimitri spoke at, we heard from two high school teachers that have fully incorporated Agile methodologies into their classrooms and have students leading cohesive teams through project-based learning initiatives.  They described their students as more engaged, more confident, and more likely to embrace leadership roles.  


We believe that by introducing younger people to these newer, more adaptive ways of working earlier in their development, we can help create pools of talent that are at the forefront of business growth and innovation.   We are starting modestly, by incorporating aspects into our technology demo days, our internships, and our BETA program, and by hosting events like the one described above, but our hope is that we can inspire and work with our regional academic partners to introduce the core concepts to students throughout the County, before those students hit the job market.   


If the County creates a big enough concentration of Agile-enabled young people entering the workforce, we will not only seed the businesses eager to grow with TQM inspired minds, we can also create a magnet that will attract the attention of companies eager to find that talent they need to fuel their next venture.  High growth businesses will sprout and prosper where the talent lies.  


What inspired Dimitri, and what inspires us, is that this dream of building a pipeline of Agile-enabled workforce is so perfectly suited for the Berkshires.  Just as Cooperstown is the birthplace of baseball and Memphis is the birthplace of rock and roll, the Berkshires is the birthplace of Total Quality Management and the transformational business practices that have derived therefrom.  There is a value in telling that story, to our businesses, to our workforce, to our students, to those considering starting new businesses here, and to those like Dimitri, who look at the Berkshires differently after learning our history.  We should collectively embrace this story to become and become known as a talent hothouse with history, with educational programs and pipeline of talent that is highly distinctive and essential to the world organizations face today. 



By Simon Holzapfel and Ben Sosne


Simon Holzapfel is the Co-Founder and CHRO at Teal Education Partners and the former President and head of school at The Darrow School in New Lebanon, NY.  Ben Sosne is the Executive Director of the Berkshire Innovation Center

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