Process innovation can also respond to the need for better coordination and management of functional interdependencies. Better coordination of manufacturing with marketing and sales, it is reasoned, will allow a company to make only what its customers will buy. In the consumer foods business, this process objective often takes the form of reducing the likelihood that goods will become stale; passing information from sales to manufacturing has enabled FritoLay7 and Pepperidge Farm to realize substantial reductions in stales. The automobile industry has labeled this type of coordination ''lean production," an approach cited by a major MIT study as key to Japanese success.8 Achieving a high degree of interdependence virtually demands both the adoption of a process view of the organization to facilitate the implementation of crossfunctional solutions, and the willingness to search for process innovations. Existing approaches to meeting customer needs are so functionally based that incremental change will never yield the requisite interdependence.