Last week marked the 100th anniversary of the introduction of a moving assembly line at Henry Ford’s Highland assembly plant, an innovation that inaugurated mass production.

In theory, most manuals sound promising. In practice, they often show their true colors. Gottfried Giritzer can look back on a work experience of more than 20 years.

The U.S. economy retains myriad sources of innovative capacity—but not enough of the innovations occurring in America today reach the marketplace, according to a major two-year MIT study.

As Thomas Edison said, “Genius is 1-percent inspiration and 99-percent perspiration.” Perspiration may be boring, but it gets you results.

Editor’s note: Tim Lozier will be a guest on Quality Digest Live this Friday, Oct. 18, 2013, at 11 a.m. Pacific

First published Oct. 1, 2013, on the CERM Risk Insights blog. © Umberto Tunesi and CERM Risk Insights.