{"id":8071,"date":"2026-06-30T01:00:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T07:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/?p=8071"},"modified":"2026-06-05T11:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T17:49:09","slug":"ball-point-pens-and-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/ball-point-pens-and-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Ball Point Pens and Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When I was in grade school, we used fountain pens that had cartridges of ink that sometimes spilled or stained. It wasn&#8217;t until high school that I got my first ball point pen. Here&#8217;s why that&#8217;s critical to your business.<\/p>\r\n<p><em>Download my free ebook, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/pdf\/Agile-Process-Innovation.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Agile Process Innovation &#8211; Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/1151617102?title=0&amp;byline=0&amp;portrait=0\" width=\"720\" height=\"405\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><span data-mce-type=\"bookmark\" style=\"display: inline-block; width: 0px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 0;\" class=\"mce_SELRES_start\">\ufeff<\/span><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Hi, I&#8217;m Jay Arthur, author of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Lean-Six-Sigma-Demystified-Second\/dp\/0071749098\/\">Lean Six Sigma Demystified<\/a>\u201d and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/demo\/\">QI Macros [software]<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;I found it interesting that the ballpoint pen was invented in 1938, the decade before I was born. In the 50s and 60s, we used what are called <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Fountain_pen\">fountain pens<\/a>: They had these little cartridges of ink, and you would put it in the pen and you could write with it, and sometimes it would spill. It was\u2026 those things were just nasty. It wasn&#8217;t until the 60s that I finally got my first ballpoint pen. I wonder: why did it take over 20 years from the invention to the distribution of ballpoint pens?<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Now, also penicillin: it took 25 years for people to decide to use penicillin to treat infection. The data I look at says that the medical community takes about 17 years to adopt some new method. They wait for endless studies to prove that it&#8217;s all good. Why does it take so long to implement things that are good?<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;I want you to get this idea that there is some idea sitting out there right now that would dramatically help you and your company and nobody&#8217;s looked at it, right? We just keep doing the same old stuff. I think Thomas Gibson famously said\u2026 \u201cThe future is already here but it&#8217;s not normally distributed.\u201d So only a few people know about the future, but it&#8217;s here.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;So that&#8217;s my Improvement Insight. Let&#8217;s go out and find something that we can take advantage of right now that already exists that would make us better, faster, cheaper, safer.<\/p>\r\n<p>&#8220;Let&#8217;s go out and improve something this week.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was in grade school, we used fountain pens that had cartridges of ink that sometimes spilled or stained. It wasn&rsquo;t until high school that I got my first ball point pen. Here&rsquo;s why that&rsquo;s critical to your business. Download my free ebook, Agile Process Innovation &ndash; Hacking Lean Six Sigma for Results. &#65279; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8380,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[290],"tags":[665,435,168],"class_list":["post-8071","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-improvement-insights","tag-ball-point-pens","tag-innovation","tag-qi-macros"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8071"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8368,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8071\/revisions\/8368"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8071"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8071"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qimacros.com\/lean-six-sigma-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8071"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}