  We study the possibility of a first-order electroweak phase transition (EWPT)
due to a dimension-six operator in the effective Higgs potential. In contrast
with previous attempts to make the EWPT strongly first-order as required by
electroweak baryogenesis, we do not rely on large one-loop thermally generated
cubic Higgs interactions. Instead, we augment the Standard Model (SM) effective
theory with a dimension-six Higgs operator. This addition enables a strong
first-order phase transition to develop even with a Higgs boson mass well above
the current direct limit of 114 GeV. The phi^6 term can be generated for
instance by strong dynamics at the TeV scale or by integrating out heavy
particles like an additional singlet scalar field. We discuss conditions to
comply with electroweak precision constraints, and point out how future
experimental measurements of the Higgs self couplings could test the idea.
