Innovate from outside to inside

Recently I was reading about innovation and one of the interesting perspective was on how to approach innovation. Very often when consultants look at a business process, they'll usually look at how a staff will do their work (looking at the inside), but few will ask why is the work the being done and where does the input come from (looking at the outside).

When you look at the business process from the "outside" to "inside", sometimes you'll be able to resolve issues such as correctness of information given and reduction of support calls. Sometimes, people may collect the information "just in case", but doesn't realise that the amount of information collected puts people off, and introduces errors which results in a delay in completing the business process.

One must remember that all the business processes exists due to a need. The business process that accompanies it should resolve this need, and not complicate it. Sometimes by looking at the process from the "outside" to "inside", business process may be streamlined to bring about greater efficiency and accuracy.