Creating and Connecting Communities of Innovation

Creating and Connecting Communities of Innovation

Steve Sowerby Dr Kevin McFarthingXPotential Innovation Fixer

ESOMAR Innovation DetonationBarcelona, 15 November 2010

Communities of Innovation

• Building a community of innovation starts with mindset

• There are practical steps needed to create communities

• The internal innovation community needs to be created before moving externally

• There are several different external communities that can be created

The Formula for Innovation Acceleration

Rate of innovation

Degree of connectivity

connectivity between people

intensity of community


Intensify the communityBy

Strengthening connectionsWith

A sense of common purpose

Supported byLeadership

Process People

Leading toMore innovation

Community

• Common purpose• Clear and distinct identity• Sense of belonging and contribution

• It’s how you feel

• It’s what you do

Building an internal innovation community

It’s all about the brand

Case study example:Beiersdorf

• Organisation focused on creating and delivering brand equity

• Development of the centralised process trained across 1500 individuals

• Organisational changes to reflect innovation focused roles and responsibilities

• Corporate challenge to focus on bigger, better, faster and fewer innovations with supporting KPIs

Skills and competencies of the

“complete innovator”

• We can identify the characteristics and behaviours of individuals and teams required for becoming the “complete innovator”

• Assessment tool, Pathfinder, can enable organisations to identify individuals and develop team to maximise innovation

Characteristics of the complete innovator

To be really innovative requires an attitude and work

environment that fosters innovation, and new ideas that could improve the way

things are done.

The guiding premise of The Complete Innovator asserts

that developing unique, clever, imaginative and creative new

ideas is the starting point of establishing change in an

organisation.

The complete process of innovative change requires the ability to convince, persuade, excite and motivate others to embrace new ideas and to go

beyond our natural tendency to seek the status quo..

An innovative idea must be embraced by the

organization before it can be implemented. Anyone who tries to implement without

“buy in” will only isolate those whose support is vital.

Foster

ing ChangeDriv

ing

Implementation

WinningCom

mitmen

t

Ideas

Generating

Key success factors for the internal community

• Obsessive focus on the consumer and the brand• Leadership from the top cascaded through

leaders across the organisation• Common language and process• A deep understanding of the characteristics of a

‘complete innovator’• A willingness to break the rules of the classical

organisational structure

Building an external community

Innovation needs to change

From command and control, vertically integrated, resource controlling

TOA sense of community with diverse partnerships, seamlessly integrated with the core company

USINGNetworking, relationships, structures, processes and trust

Brand communities

BRAND

Company

Consumers

Lead users

Suppliers

Inventors

Intermediaries

Brand communities

BRAND

Company

Consumers

Lead users

Suppliers

Inventors

Intermediaries

User Communities

LEGO® Mindstorms

• Programmable robotic and mechanical version of LEGO

• Estimated 40,000 users (20k “AFOLs”) spending ~$10k per year

• Much of LEGO’s design is done by their community, and the MUP (Mindstorms User Panel)

• They are open source – they’re not a software company

LEGO® Communities

• LEGO club– ~3 million members– >8 million visits a

month– Average visit 28

minutes

• Lugnet.org• 1000steine.de• Brickshelf.com (MOCs)• Brickish.co.uk• Brickmaster

• Brickjournal.com• MasterBuilders• LEGO-certified

professionals• AFOLs• LEGO Ambassadors• FirstLEGOLeague.org• LEGO learning

institute• Designbyme.lego.com• BrickLink

Supplier communities


• WIN BALANCING– If an Open Innovation project comes off,

everybody wins– If it doesn’t, Clorox compensate the supplier– There is always money on the table for the

supplier – so they come back to Clorox

• Clorox “HiveLive” site– Crowdsourcing– OI meets social networking– Direct access to large company– Indirect search for solutions– Blog

22


23

Nestle

• “Sharing is winning” philosophy

• Nestle shares its future needs for all its business units with innovation partners

• Work to a Master Joint Development Agreement

• Intellectual Property ownership principle– Every physical solution is owned by the

competency-providing partner– The smart applications are owned by the receiving

party (Nestle)

• >$200M from new business in 200924

Key learnings for supplier communities

• Key suppliers selected on basis of importance of business to both companies

• Key information shared on both sides

• Everyone understands the reward system at the start

―Nestle – “sharing is winning”―Clorox – “win balancing”

• Relationships are worked at

Technology research communities

External research communities

• Eindhoven High Tech Campus• 1998 – Philips relocates all NL-based R&D to

Eindhoven• 2003 – opens up the campus to other companies• 2010 - 100 companies and 8000 researchers

“The hotspot for human-focused innovation”

So how?Leadership, process, people

“We’ll look at ideas from anywhere. Some come from our competitors; we see if they are doing something new and see if we can do it better. We’re not proud.”

Set the target of delivery – full stop.

Bart Becht, CEOBart Becht, CEO

Bart Becht, CEO

“Inventors are evenly distributed in the population, and we're as likely to find invention in a garage as in our labs.”

Set the goal of delivering 50% of ideas coming from outside P&G.

A G Lafley, CEO

Core processes

• Integration of external partners to internal processes

• Market research• Strategic Alliance processes• Software

– From Microsoft Project to integrated systems like PAM (Alliantist)

Idea Analysis Define needsGate Prototype ProductionGateGate

People

• Technology Scouts need– Experience– Wide knowledge– An engaging personality– Empathy– Street “savvy”– Negotiation skills– A sense of humour– Courage

• Communities need communicators

People

• Unilever train Open Innovation staff in 7 soft skills– Intrapreneurial skills– Relationship building– Strategic influencing– Quick study– Tolerance for uncertainty– Balanced optimism– Passion


Intensify the communityBy

Strengthening connectionsWith

A sense of common purpose

Supported byLeadership

Process People

Leading toMore innovation

Innovation

Ultimately –

minds

needs

processes

Communities

and

Thank you!!

The Authors

Steve Sowerby: An experienced Business Professional, Marketer, General Manager & Senior Consultant with over 30 years corporate and consultancy experience across numerous categories including FMCG, pharmaceuticals, financial services, luxury goods & food. An inspiring and articulate speaker, Steve has recently presented to professional audiences around the world on the topic of “Building Brands in Turbulent Times”

Dr Kevin McFarthing:An innovation specialist with over 25 years of senior executive experience including his recent position as Head of Strategic Alliances at Reckitt Benckiser where he led the development of RB’sopen innovation portal. An inspiring global expert on Open Innovation, Kevin has presented on the topic in Germany, USA and UK

XPotential is a brand focused strategy consultancy that helps to align individuals, functions and organisations throughout the world to create and deliver Brand Value.

We work with some of the world’s biggest brands to deliver outstanding results. We orientate individuals and teams in the organisations to focus their responsibilities to deliver value to their most important asset - their brand. We are proud to have worked with over 30 companies in over 50 countries and touched tens of thousands of individuals, delivering some of their most impressive business results.

We do this through working closely with the leadership of organisations to develop Brand Centric Vision and Strategy through a deep understand of the challenges and opportunities for the Brands and the Company, the Brand Vision and the key audience for change.

We then design and implement a programme of brand centric change including communication, engagement, training and follow up. We have worked both cross functionally and also through specific areas including sales, supply chain, innovation, marketing, R&D, finance and HR.

www.xpotential.co.uk

Who are XPotential?

What is Innovation Fixer?

Innovation Fixer improves the output and impact of your innovation. Starting with an Innovation Checkup using the Innovation Fixer Wheel© as the framework, we deliver perceptive recommendations and implementation of real improvements.

WORKING WITH INNOVATION FIXER We are passionate about innovation and what it can do for business. That’s why we want to help. We will deliver a perceptive assessment of what you can change to improve the growth delivered by innovation, with clear recommendations for action.

You’ll find us easy and straightforward to deal with. We won’t disappear too early (unless you want us to, of course). We’ll be there to guide and mentor you through the implementation stages of the project, but at the same time ensure that you implement and own any changes you make.

WHY INNOVATION FIXER? Innovation Fixer is led by Dr Kevin McFarthing based on many years of experience at the heart of innovation, the last 17 years spent with Reckitt Benckiser (RB). RB have an outstanding track record in innovation, and are in the top 20 companies of the UK FTSE 100.

Kevin has leading edge senior experience in Open Innovation, Strategic Alliances and R&D. He has led product development in many areas, including consumer healthcare, household products, prescription medicines, diagnostics and molecular biology.

His passion for innovation includes exploiting it no matter whatthe source, using resources efficiently and delivering fantasticproducts and services.

Innovation Fixer also works closely with experienced consultantsand associate companies with expertise in key areas.

www.innovationfixer.com