Robert's Rules of Innovation

A 10-Step Program for Corporate Survival

Robert F. Brands, Martin J. Kleinman

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9780470596999
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780470620984
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

From a leader in innovation best practices, 10 simple and practical steps your business must take to achieve profitable growth, through innovation

In this timely guide, innovation expert and former CEO Robert Brands presents the best practices for today's "innovate or die" world, in the form of 10 simple and practical steps your business must take to achieve growth through innovation.

Robert's Rules of Innovation ™ simply, intelligently, and entertainingly creates order from the chaos imposed by today's misguided mandate for "addition by subtraction" profitability. Concisely, Robert's Rules of Innovation ™

• Distills Robert Brands' wealth of experience as a leader of international product development teams
• Explains why innovation is imperative
• Provides the practical steps needed to deliver innovation
• Draws upon the wisdom of global business leaders and is filled with real world examples, anecdotes, and practices

Timely, accessible, and indispensable, Robert's Rules of Innovation ™ is a road map for success through sustainable innovation with a clear message: innovation is the lifeblood of business and the secret to outperforming your competition. Direct and practical, Robert's Rules of Innovation ™ is a must-read for managers at all levels.

CHAPTER 1

Innovation, Survival, and the “Aha!” Moment

Remember back in the dark ages of, oh, several years ago, where in some quarters it was legitimate to actually ask questions like:

• Should we innovate?

• Should we create a new product development (NPD) program?

• How necessary is our research-and-development (R&D) department, anyway?

That last one in particular makes me cringe. All of these questions, though, seem quaint in the context of today’s business environment. It’s war out there. You innovate. Period. If you don’t innovate, you perish (Exhibit 1.1). Simple as that. If you are reading this book, you know that failure simply is not an option.

With innovation no longer a choice, the next question for many of the thousands of otherwise thoughtful executives I’ve met over the years—in a wide variety of industries—is, “Okay, we need to innovate. But how?” or, “Okay, but we already have an NPD program in place, but it’s not working. You’re consistently late to market.”

Exhibit 1.1 Innovation Restarts the Product Life Cycle

Where do you start? How do you fashion a program that works within the context of your organization and its unique culture?

You’ve come to the right place. If you’ve read this far, you know that innovation is the lifeblood of new business. You want to outperform the competition but are unsure of how to proceed. Maybe you’ve benefited from an innovative product or service but have been unable to recreate this past success with any degree of regularity. Or perhaps you face a mandate to cut budgets to the bone—the so-called addition by subtraction. One of the first budget line items to be cut is often R&D—the very last thing that should be eliminated during uncertain times.

In today’s business environment, Robert’s Rules of Innovation will help you create order from the chaos—clearly, concisely, and helpfully. The cornerstone of Robert’s Rules of Innovation is the set of 10 essential rules of innovation implementation to create and sustain new business, detailed in Chapter 2. These rules are distilled from my decades of experience as a leader of international product development teams, as well as input from my international network of professional sources with experience on a wide variety of products and services.

How Do I Get to “Aha!”?

Throughout my professional career, my orientation has been spent on new product introductions. While at Philips Lighting as Manager-New Products, I developed the first version of an NPD stage-gate process and refined this process in roles and companies that followed, such as GTE Sylvania and Kohler.

One highlight of my career came at a company I headed, called Airspray. Take a look in your kitchen, bath, or cupboard—in the United States, in Europe, in the Pacific Rim. See those instant-foam dispensers, most likely hand soaps—the ones that work without chemicals or propellants? Dishwashing liquids? Cleansers? We pioneered that dispensing technology and created a ubiquitous presence in every household, in both developed and emerging markets. (See Exhibit 1.2.)

I am often asked how we did it. How did we get to that “Aha!”moment, when we knew we had a dispensing design that would turn the personal care product industry on its head? Once the technology was perfected, how did we sell it in one market segment after another? How did we protect our investment and ward off industry newcomers? How did we build a worldwide team and overcome the cultural differences inherent in a multinational effort? And how did we build upon our first designs to keep trade customer, retailer, and consumer interest (and profitability) high?

Exhibit 1.2 Foaming Hand Soap

Source: Rexam Airspray, B.V.

The answer: innovation. It’s an overused word and very broad in meaning. Before we continue, let’s take a closer look at what I mean when I use the word innovation.

One of my professional associates, a true product innovator, Peter Dircks, is the Vice President of Product Management and New Product Development at Hearth & Home Technologies. According to Peter, who has just redesigned his company’s flagship product line, true innovation is the optimum balance achieved by using the latest technologies, cost structures, styling, features, and services, and then successfully delivering that which is “new” to match customer or end-user needs at the optimum price.

“One needs to look only at the iPod as a perfect example,” he says. “End users wanted the ability to purchase single songs, versus entire albums, as well as to easily categorize and organize their MP3s and have all the information from the music industry. Apple delivered on this by leveraging the use of the Internet (technology), developing highly intuitive software (iTunes), as well as utilizing their music industry contracts (distribution and royalty agreements) with a very cool physical product (the iPod itself, its styling, user interface, etc.).”

According to Peter, “this is one of the best examples of true innovation, in my opinion, and why they have such a global market share MP3 player lead in what could have been a commodity product, like the TV.”

Great example, Peter, yet let’s bear in mind that while innovation used to relate primarily with manufactured “things” (products), companies have recently innovated new services as well, as evidenced by new offerings in banking, real estate, and insurance—the reverse mortgage comes quickly to mind.

And there are hybrids as well: new products accompanied by an innovative service. Again, the iPod model—super electronics bundled with iTunes accounts for managing downloads and personal music libraries.

Here is yet another take on how to think about innovation, from my friend Bruce Sauter, who studied industrial design and was a driving force at Atari and, later, at a division of Kohler Company. His incredible mind sits comfortably at the confluence of product design, aesthetics, and the product’s emotional tie to the end user.

“As I progressed in my career, my roles expanded to give insight into the fact that, for innovation to work and be sustainable, it must be the DNA of the organization—one with visionary leadership,” Bruce told me. “Innovation is a holistic strategy for building organizational culture, empowering the passion to create, developing creative environments that can execute effectively, and creating the potential for market leadership.”

“Innovation,” he continued, “is not just happening in the front end of the business development process—it needs to be pervasive throughout the entire value chain.”

According to Bruce, and I think you’ll agree, innovation appeals to those of us who are passionate about creativity, working in dynamic teams through hard times and good times, building upon the free exchange of ideas and the successful execution of those concepts that results in a win. When an idea is discovered and implemented across the value chain with success, a “sweet spot” is hit—right on the mark. It’s like winning the big game together.

Innovation is a cumulative process. It takes time and lots of energy. It is seeing people grow, open up, and succeed. This is one of the great by-products of innovation, he said. Successful organizations have successful people.

What it all boils down to is this: finding, empowering, and fostering individuals and teams with the passion to create their environments where they do their work, and play, and continually improve efforts to sustain the outcome. The rush you feel when things come together in just the right way and result in market leadership—that’s what it’s all about for me.

Successful innovators will tell you over and over again, and it’s important to reflect on it here as well: Innovation is not just about “creating new stuff.” It’s about creating an organizational process that encourages the creation of new methods, ideas, and, yes, products. It’s all about instituting a different way of thinking, doing, and creating value.

With all this innovation taking place—from new widgets to new insurance products to new processes—it has become more important than ever for business leaders to institute innovation programs and manage them effectively.

Usually, I avoid clichés (like the plague!). But the cliché has its purpose: It is based on a common experience, a real issue faced all the time. And the cliché that comes to mind here, regarding innovation, is this:

Fail fast, but fail cheap.

In the dark ages, NPD program participants ideated and created a new product and passed the torch to sales and marketing. Today, however, there are more complex issues within the organization that require flexible structures and unprecedented cooperation across disciplines, teams, and business units.

So we now need bold tools such as new organizational structures, new forms of training, procedures, intra-company communications, and bold leaders who understand and can implement consensus across divisional and geographic boundaries.

Innovation Is Not a Luxury

At this point, I know what some of you may be thinking:

We’re a smaller company, with less than $50 million in annual revenue. We don’t have the time, manpower, or money for this type of comprehensive innovation initiative. Why can’t we just “wing it” like we usually do?

As this is written, the media’s stream of negative financial news appears infinite. Earnings are off. Consumer spending is down. Savings rates are up (maybe that’s not such a bad thing, though). Layoffs. Deleveraging. 401(k)s that are now “201(k)s.”

“How can we afford an innovation program?” you ask.

“Maybe when things get better, we can revisit innovation,” others might say. Like putting off that European vacation, postponing the purchase of that new Beemer, shelving the kitchen remodeling. Luxuries can be delayed, right?

Remember, innovation is not a luxury, even for today’s most successful companies. Sustaining success means ongoing renewal of your intellectual property (IP) portfolio. After all, technologies become dated; end-user fashions change; and new processes, materials, and capabilities emerge. Like breakers at the seashore, the life cycle of a technology begins, crests, and falls off as, all the while, new technologies form and carry momentum of their own—an ongoing cycle of innovation energy, if you will. Exhibit 1.3 will help you visualize the “waves” of technology.

At Airspray, we applied this philosophy but extended sales growth from the initial hair care product to skin care, to hand soap, to foaming body wash.

Innovation is a must-have. It’s your company’s lifeblood. And remember, too, the perfect time to ramp up your innovation efforts is exactly when your cash-strapped competitors are slashing their programs. Especially if you believe that we are in a major, global economic shift, not just a garden-variety, cyclical downturn.

Exhibit 1.3 Repeating Innovation Is Critical to Sustaining Above-AverageLong-Term Profits

Source: Brands & Company, LLC.

Business Week magazine recently reported on this very issue. “Innovation is an easy target,” says Vijay Govindarajan, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business. “R&D dollars, by definition, lead to uncertain outcomes. Companies don’t want failures during difficult times.”¹

Some companies are taking an innovation vacation, resting on past successes, making incremental changes to successful products. But others, the smart ones, are looking at ways to reposition existing technologies in order to appeal to new end-user audiences. Here’s an example: Guitar Hero. The technology itself is cool, but not earth-shattering. What’s innovative is that its makers have captured the imagination of customers who had not been considered typical “gamers.” When you have 55-year-olds rocking out to Aerosmith, playing with a toy guitar without knowing even a handful of basic chords—a group that is not typically associated with the Grand Theft Auto crowd—you’ve done something creative.

Redirecting customer appeal is one way to be creative. Of c...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 - Innovation, Survival, and the “Aha!” Moment
• CHAPTER 2 - The Innovator’s Manifesto
• CHAPTER 3 - The Innovation Audit
• CHAPTER 4 - Innovation Emancipation
• CHAPTER 5 - Innovation in the Time of Multinational Teams
• CHAPTER 6 - Patently Obvious
• CHAPTER 7 - Innovation Implementation
• CHAPTER 8 - Innovation Checklist
• APPENDIX A - Product Development Process
• APPENDIX B - The Five Stages of the Production Development Process: Example 1
• APPENDIX C - The Five Stages of the Production Development Process: Example 2
• Key Resources and Links
• Acknowledgements
• About the Authors
• Index