Six Sigma promoters and innovation advocates have emerged as opposing camps in the battle for tool supremacy in the organization improvement wars. As Business Week said in “Six Sigma: So Yesterday?” and “At 3M, A Struggle Between Efficiency and Creativity,” which described how GE, Home Depot, 3M, Young & Rubicam, and Intuit are distancing themselves from traditional Six Sigma, “The reason [Six Sigma] caught fire was its effectiveness in cutting costs and improving profitability; that makes it a powerful tool—if those are a company’s goals. But as innovation becomes the cause du jour, companies are increasingly confronting the side effects of a Six Sigma culture…Once a company has done the requisite belt-tightening,…kick-starting the top line becomes paramount; the best way there apart from acquisition is innovation.”

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