GUEST POST by Robert F. Brands

Is your Idea pipeline being filled and maintained?

by Robert F. Brands

If even 1% of new ideas succeed, it can lead to a huge payoff. A steady stream of ideas is what fuels Innovation, so one of Robert’s Rules of Innovation imperatives is Ideation, or the idea management processes .

On any new product development team, it is up to the leader to facilitate ideation sessions that produce a regular supply of new ideas. In order for these ideation sessions to be as effective as possible, it’s valuable to include members such as the sales team, people who interact directly with customers, and maybe even a few select customers themselves to offer their insight into the meeting.

In these brainstorming sessions, which should be held regularly like two to three times a year, it’s ideal to include a diverse group of people – perhaps from customer service, engineering or production – to create a setting ripe for creative ideas and to avoid group-think. The process should be a structured repeatable process. All ideas should be written up on the whiteboard or flip chart, then recorded and stored for future reference, with absolutely no ideas dubbed as bad. Negativity causes fear of judgment, which can seriously hurt the Ideation process and any chance of new and original ideas. Remember, good ideas can come from anywhere, so the more diverse your team and the more removed they are from their usual environments, the better for developing ideas essential to Innovation.

Ideation and the management of the ideation process pack the front end of the New Product Development funnel with a wealth of viable concepts. This portfolio approach anticipates the fact that some concepts will pan out, while others are dropped. Here are some tips on ideation:

• Focus, focus, focus. Remember that depth is better than breadth for quality idea generation. Drill down and maintain focus.
• Prioritize ideas. And keep your eye on areas that enhance perceived value, improve customer relations, and capitalize on competitive opportunities.
• Store best practices. And be sure to reference them regularly. Remember, also, to create a database of ideation session “discards” – used in combination with other concepts from the group’s “toy box,” there might be the makings of a winner.

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GUEST POST by Robert F. Brands

“If you’ve never failed… you’ve never lived” is a popular video on YouTube describing the failures of people like Thomas Edison, once called “too stupid to learn” by his teacher and Walt Disney, who was fired from a newspaper for “lacking imagination”. Not every idea succeeds, and indeed, some of America’s most triumphant inventors, artists and entrepreneurs have most likely failed at some point in their lives. But without risk and the possibility of failure, there can be no innovation and no success. That is precisely one of “Robert’s Rules of Innovation” imperatives: No Risk, No Innovation.

The success rate when it comes to innovation is very slim. In fact, just 1 in 100 new product entries succeed in the grocery business, according to a study by allbusiness.com. For every innovative product that comes out of the new product development process, there are plenty of ideas that don’t work out – deemed as failures. What’s important is that companies have a tolerance for failure and encourage risk taking. Fear of failure can kill Innovation. Never punish for failed ideas. Instead, learn from them how to improve in the future. Establish a level of trust so your team won’t be afraid to think outside the box. To build a successful culture of Innovation, encourage everyone on your New Product Development team to take risks!

Here are some tips related to the five simple steps for encouraging initiative and innovation in my book:

1. Profiles in Risk: Clearly communicate the risk profile you are asking your people to adopt and state why it is important to the organization’s success.
2. Failure Management: Never allow an unsuccessful risk to hamper a team member’s opportunities and advancement.
3. Key Learnings Process: Establish a formalized, non-accusatory process for harvesting key learnings from unsuccessful risks. Distribute these lessons-learned.

For more, check out Robert’s Rules of Innovation from John Wiley & Sons.

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The Societal Cost of Business Gone Bad

by Robert F. Brands with Jeff Zbar

Bernard Madoff’s and Scott Rothstein’s Ponzi schemes. Medicaid / Medicare scams. School board officials who sell their votes for cash. Mortgage fraud, foreclosure “robo-signers” and short-sales wrought with misdeeds.

From Wall Street to Main Street to Washington – and the headline news, very smart, innovative people are gaining prominence nationwide for fraud. Investment scandals, Ponzi schemes and rip-offs in all forms seem epidemic.

They capture our attention. We express outrage. We demand retribution.

Then we move on – until the next event, when our attention will be captured anew. We’ll express outrage, demand retribution…and move on.

Every day, someone is screwing somebody else. It’s a vicious cycle.

Fraud is defined as the deliberate misrepresentation which causes another to suffer damages, and the U.S. is ranked in the Top 20 in corruption worldwide.

It has to end – because the societal and financial costs of these damages are just too great to maintain.

Fraud saps our national wealth and blemishes our integrity. It’s estimated that organizations lose upward of 5% of annual revenue to fraud, whether in lost revenues or corrective measures – a far higher percentage of income than is invested in innovation and research and development each year by American businesses. Add to that the billions invested in fraud prevention, detection and prosecution, and the redirected proceeds could be a real boon to businesses’ – and the nation’s – bottom line. Just imagine investing that money into R&D. What would the possible outcomes be?

Actually, creative fraudsters employ many of the same imperatives that any innovative organization should, and which are found in my book Robert’s Rules of Innovation. They are innovative, realize the need for risk, create new products, take ownership of their ideas, seek to create value, and train those around them. It’s an interesting – if frightening – parallel.

Yet the real question is: How have we as a society and culture become so complacent as to accept fraud as a fact of life (our professed disgust notwithstanding) – and a course of business?

Conventional thinking would have the remedy be as simple as arrest, prosecution – and a public mea culpa. We’ve come to accept an apology as suitable and sufficient for explaining away criminal activities. Once the apology has been offered, the fraudster – and society – put it behind us and move on. We turn the page or change the channel, and forget all about it.

Some investors seem especially willing to overlook even the possibility of fraud, as long as returns show a 45-degree upward angle on the profit chart. Who can argue that?

Society can. Because left behind is a society stained with the aftermath of the fraud itself – and burdened with the price of remedy. Prosecutors and investigators continue to follow the trail. Companies explain the bottom line’s blemish to shareholders. Individuals – pension holders, retirees, investors – are left to try to recoup their losses – if they even can.

Children of immigrants can recall their work ethic their parents brought (with precious few other possessions) from the old country. Even today, as we lament illegal immigration, people just want jobs so they can feed their families. The people who built this country held an integrity that is missing with today’s cons.

Instead, invest that creative, innovative thinking into legal work that will produce positive, admirable and accountable results that investors – and society – can proudly take to the bank.

Along the way, we have to become culturally intolerant of fraud, demand greater penalties from those found guilty, and seek a return to the respectable business pursuits that made us great – and will make us known again as the global leader in innovation and the ethical pursuit of business.

In short, the buck must stop here.

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GUEST POST by Robert F. Brands

In order for organizations to successfully achieve innovation – the lifeblood of any company – Robert’s Rules of Innovation gives ten imperatives to follow in order to attain sustainable growth. The ten imperatives begin with the first step that needs to be accomplished before any progress can be made, and that is to inspire and initiate. After all, every team needs inspiration to begin a new product development (NPD) process that will drive them towards successful innovation.

Inspiration for companies comes from the leaders, so it is the leader’s responsibility to initiate and drive the innovation program. For the program to be taken seriously and incorporated as part of the company’s culture itself, the CEO or designated leader must set a schedule of regular meetings. Regular, in-person meetings are the only way for team members to accepts the serious non -wavering intend, recognize the goals and deadlines of the project, and it ensures that the innovation program will not just fall off the map. It’s easy to instruct team members to be conscientious of Innovation, but new products will not come to fruition unless members feel a sense of accountability and urgency for the NPD process.

At New Product Development meetings, take action steps to ensure progress is made:

• Address issues and concerns.
• Share research and results.
• Recalibrate priorities.
• Make new decisions.
• Set objectives and action items to be completed for the next meeting.
• Request progress reports.

The leader’s inspiration and commitment sets the tone for the rest of the organization. By setting a standard of expectations, others see the NPD process as a priority and an indispensible part of the company corporate culture.

Think about the most innovative companies and you”ll find a charismatic involved hands-on leader, be it Steve Jobs of Apple, Herb Kohler of the Kohler company or any small innovative trendsetting company for that matter.

Here are some inspiration tips from my book to help you get started. There are three key steps to achieve the type of Innovation culture that inspires and creates intra-organization cohesion:

1. Lead by Example: It all starts at the top. Management buy-in and support of innovation and ideation is critical. And by support, I mean both material and emotional. It needs to not only endorse, but proactively push for Innovation. It’s the only way for your team to get the motivation to take time from their “day jobs” to make Innovation happen;
2. Over-Communicate, Under-Promise: Talk up overarching Innovation visions, successes (and failures), without hyperbole or pie-in-the-sky verbiage. Keep it simple. Keep it focused. Keep it real. Internal and external communications enhances group buy-in to Innovation goals. It’s important to articulate your grand vision and provide the compelling case for change.
3. Silo Demolition: Knock down the barriers that keep silos apart by creating cross-functional teams between groups that don’t typically interact. This keeps the flame of cooperation – and Innovation – burning brightly. “Silo-itis” can smother buy-in for innovation.

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GUEST POST by Robert F. Brands

As leaders search for the next process that will transform their organizations into category leaders, for many – it seems – the answer is close at hand: innovation.

Over the past several weeks on this blog, we’ve reviewed key imperatives that formed “Robert’s Rules of Innovation” and that together create the foundation upon which to build, improve, sustain and grow an organization’s innovation mandate.

Consider this the closing chapter in an 11-step treatise on putting what you’ve read into action. First, a brief summary…

Consider the lesson on the first imperative – Inspire and Initiate – to realize the steps necessary. The power of inspiration cannot be over-estimated in the process of innovation. Inspire your people, and then hit the throttle.

With inspiration as the wind in your sails, next comes the realization that with No risk, there can be no innovation. Companies must be willing to take some risk to potentially realize the benefits of innovation.

We discovered how important innovation is to the New product development process it, and how Ownership across the organization – from the CEO to the rank-and-file employee – fuels buy-in to successful innovation.

Innovation, we learned, fuels value creation, yet accountability, training and coaching, and idea management bring value to the process and its individual elements. Finally, the mandate to observe and measure every step of the process brings quantifiable metrics to the process, which – hopefully – delivers net results / net rewards.

Together, these imperatives drive innovation.

With these imperatives in place, now visualize the role they play in your organization and issue a call to action: Innovate to thrive.

How should you start? Here are three final tips to get you started…

• Just Do It. Like the Nike commercial, it’s all about execution. You can read books and blogs on innovation. You can write plans for your next innovative pursuit. Yet as the Chinese proverb says, “Every long journey begins with one small step.” With the plan in hand, work the plan.
• Communicate. This cannot be stressed enough. From the CEO to the Chief Innovation Officer to every team member involved in the process, communication is essential to relaying key information about goals, intent, progress (from the biggest success to the smallest setback), and lessons learned from any failure. Whether by email, IM, a collaborative whiteboard, or recurring meetings, communicate your milestones.
• Get committed. Personal involvement from the CEO means, “No Lip Service.” From the highest levels, there must be a hands-on presence in update meetings, project rankings, and troop motivation. You must set the example. You must walk the talk.

You’ve been given the tools and insights. Now, it’s time to implement an innovation initiative in your organization. You don’t have to start big; in fact, like so many first-time projects, a beta may be the best way to test the initiative without investing too much time, manpower or resources – only to later discover whether the concept was worthy of pursuing further.

The key, though, is to kick it off. Create a personal action plan, follow it through, get engaged with personal involvement, and be there.

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GUEST POST by Robert F. Brands

Of the ten imperatives of Robert’s Rules of Innovation, this step is all about continuous improvement. It is necessary to Observe and Measure throughout the Innovation process, or else, how would you recognize successful Innovation? A system of metrics will objectively show your progress and success each step of the way. Plan. Do. Check. Act. It’s essential to follow a course of actions that produce ongoing improvement.

So first, gather initial observations and measurements at the beginning of the NPD process. It’s necessary to establish a baseline or starting point and measurable facts versus subjective assessments.

Secondly, to have an optimal measurements, one should establish leading and lagging indicators – leading to show where you are heading, and lagging to show you rear-view mirror observations.

Examples of leading indicators can be patents filed, ideas created and in the hopper, as well as development time spent. Lagging indicators include patents granted, new products introduced and percentage of new product sales compared to total sales.

Product life cycles are getting shorter and shorter, which means NPD cycles must happen quicker to keep up. For example, personal care products have a life cycle of only 2 or 3 years. That means continuous Innovation is vital. Observe and measure the time spent in each gate, and the time spent to get to the next gate. See if you can make any improvements as far as efficiency.

By following a set of metrics, you’ll be able to evaluate the performance of your New Product Development process and your end result. And it doesn’t stop after the product is launched.

Additional Tips

1. What’s Measured, Is Treasured: And that’s just human nature, so be sure to check and recheck performance – monthly. No exceptions, no excuses. What gets measured gets done.

2. What to Look For?: The key performance indicators and metrics include:

• R&D spending as a percentage of sales
• Total patents filed/pending/awarded/rejected
• Total R&D head count
• Current year percentage of sales attributable to new products released in the past year/three years/five years
• Number of new products released

For a recent survey on Innovation Measurements, see: “”

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GUEST POST by Robert F. Brands

Learning From Above

by Robert F. Brands

When the brightest minds across disparate industries gather to discuss open innovation, parallel – and completely fresh – thinking can emerge.

Two days spent at this month’s World Research Group Open Innovation Summit among the best-of-breed innovation leaders in the space revealed consensus on the imperative for open innovation. From Fortune 100 corporations down to the most agile mid-sized companies, all embraced the need for innovation. This was refreshing indeed.

Executives from P&G shared the news that the company’s Connect & Develop initiative is now taken to the next level in cooperation with Ohio’s state universities. Unilever reviewed the essential seven soft skills of teamwork-focused innovation. Johnson & Johnson spoke of its “Innovation Sandbox,” where the company unleashes and leverages the power of its entrepreneurial employees.

“It’s all about enabling, and not just one way to do things,” J&J execs said. Open innovation, they said, removes early risk from projects, leverages internal knowledge, capitalizes on executive air cover to support initiatives, and – ultimately – can guide, drive and optimize investment decisions and greater shareholder and stakeholder value.

Among the imperatives discussed were the need for …

• Open innovation. The foundation of the summit, this concept was embraced as the most effective way to accelerate innovation in today’s highly competitive and dynamic marketplace. Don’t reinvent the wheel, speakers explained. Use existing, proven and protected technology to expedite your next efforts.
• Commonality in communities. Team work is vital, but each member must embrace ownership, individual responsibility (the “I” in Team) and the soft skills of interpersonal relations.
• Inspiration. Innovation requires a spark to light its fire. At PepsiCo, many of the best ideas are borne from market-watching. When market forces collide, and trends emerge, unique market dynamics are created. Consider Business 1.0, where corporate marketers fed the message, and Business 2.0, where social networks and mobile marketing have empowered consumers. Where will 3.0 take innovators? Digital savvy brands will feed consumers who are better informed – and less inclined to make impulse buys. Decisions will be made in-home and out-of-home – but not in retail. Tomorrow’s innovation-inspired organization will feed that pre-shop diligence through lasting and engaging connections via differentiated experiences.
• A new perspective. To innovation think tank Maddock Douglas, getting “outside the jar” lets innovators see the label unseen from the inside – and create a culture of learning.
• Internal understanding before external engagement. In short, your house has to be in order before you can embrace open innovation. Big ideas fail because of misaligned innovation. Clearly define innovation and inspire a culture that embraces it. Have a structured repeatable process in place so the well-aligned organization can capitalize on the leverage of others, leading to the collaboration needed to compete effectively.
• Networking and collaboration. Internally and externally, networks build camaraderie, cohesion and shared learning.
• Evaluation – continual and measurable. In PepsiCo’s experience, such observation, measurement and evaluation has fed ideation – and continued value creation.
• Repeatable processes. Successful innovation done once can be attributed to luck. Innovation done repeatedly must be attributed to a successful process.
• Sustained innovation. Repeating the process often sets the stage for future success. Evaluate, improve and deliver “new” in business and organizations.
• Communications. No innovation occurs in a vacuum. It is essential to share progress, early wins and challenges. Communications across the team, disciplines and members can help ensure continued success.
• Willingness to take risk. All innovation has inherent risk. Accept the existence of and the possibility (even the probability) of failure. If failure results from an honest and well-reasoned attempt at innovation, it is not cause for disciplinary action (lest you discourage future attempts at innovation). Instead, learn from risk and failure alike.

The summit revealed the cornucopia of possibilities and pitfalls facing open innovation. Is your organization adaptable, with the courage to face change and challenge? Does your collaborative model draw on persistence – especially when faced with failure? Does it realize the urgency of Innovation Today, and have the vision and a “clear sense of why” innovation is essential?

In Robert’s Rules of Innovation, the ten imperatives that drive innovation were in full regalia during the Chicago conference. Those include Inspiration, No risk, no innovation, New product development process, Ownership, Value creation, Accountability, Training and coaching, Idea management, Observe and measure, and Net results, net rewards.

Recognizing imperatives is just a start. Applying them in an orderly, planned fashion is the key to sustained, repeatable, effective innovation.

To learn more check out the or read notes on Twitter #OIS10.

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GUEST POST by Robert F. Brands

I’m currently attending the Open Innovation Summit 2010 organized by the World Research Group in Chicago – Key corporate presenters include Cisco, P&G, J&J, HP, Clorox, etc.

Key Learnings from Unilever:

For Open Innovation to succeed you need diverse teams with members that have seven key soft skills:

1. Intrapreneurial skills
2. Talent relationship building
3. Strategic influencing
4. Quick study
5. Tolerance of uncertainty
6. Balanced optimism
7. Passion

Communication is a critical success factor/ element to make (open) innovation successful.

Clorox meanwhile is expanding Open Innovation efforts from Downstream to Upstream, through networks and communities:

• Cultural fit is key success factor to create value together in Open Innovation
• “Assessment of degree of difference” to decide to work on project/idea
• Identify top three killer issues, risks to establish exit
• Network Architecture important (technical/consumer/economical)
• Leverage internal networks/build external
• Networks Catalyze and Communities innovate
• Network/Connect, Community/Create, Organization/Execute…
• Using www.Cloroxconnects.com

Key P&G Learnings:

1. Consumer is boss
2. Wanting to reach more consumers
• Open Innovation is complex
• Teamwork across many more elements/groups
• Organizational model: Vision/mission/strategy RROI
3. Skills Required: Trust, Seamless Collaboration, Speed & Agility and Networking…
4. Open Innovation only works when internal innovation is working well, its’ structured and sustainable
5. We can create more value together than we ever could alone.

The latest P&G Connect & Develop initiative is a new (Ohio) statewide collaboration agreement and efforts between universities and P&G. (Universities working together and with P&G to develop and solve challenges)

LG’s Key Learnings:

• Without the strong commitment of top management – Efforts will fail
• Open Innovation should be integrated into the overall innovation strategy
• Need systematic way to record external organization/technology information, and to manage and share it
• You need an active IT System to make Open Innovation work
• You must define needs/technology scouting/technology incubation/collaboration management
• www.collaborateandinnovate.com (10 broad themes, 29 specific needs – needs defined by bottlenecks)
• It is important to define your needs correctly and to keep your initial screening process simple, fast and lean
• The shift from closed innovation to Open Innovation is a long journey

Qualcomm’s Secret Sauce:

• Combining online and off line collaboration techniques: collective intelligence and corporate entrepreneurship= collective entrepreneurship

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GUEST POST by Robert F. Brands

Continuous Training and Coaching is Essential to Innovation

by Robert F. Brands

In order for any company to meet its goals and to achieve sustainable Innovation , proper training and coaching is an essential though often overlooked imperative. But how can a New Product Development (NPD) team represent the philosophy of its organization if the attitude, culture and processes are not continually reinforced? Proper hiring, training and coaching is essential to finding and keeping the right people for the right job – and having them trained in their role and processes on the NPD team in order to perform their personal best.

Training and coaching doesn’t stop after the initial phase. Continuity is key. New techniques, processes and best practices should always be shared to foster a constant culture of Innovation. From top to bottom, from executives to managers to newcomers, everyone must be included in training and coaching programs to be on the same page and for the New Product Development process to go as smoothly as possible. In fact, even the trainers and coachers themselves need ongoing training and coaching to prevent their practices from going stale. Sustained Innovation is a constantly evolving process.

It is not without reason that Whirlpool Corporation established that the “How To” training is the most important need for corporate Innovation to succeed, from top to bottom. At Whirlpool, innovative thinking is considered the responsibility of each of its 80,000 employees. They continue to be the primary source for new ideas that meet consumer needs. It’s such an important part of their culture that they have a corporate initiative in place to sustain the commitment company-wide.

To reinforce and enhance a creative company culture and mindset, effective training and coaching must not be forgotten. Any company that wants to stay in business needs a sustainable Innovation program. Here are some Training and Coaching tips to help your product development process:

• Share the Joy: As well as the frustrations – communicate what is working and not working.
• Pick the Right Coaches: Not everyone has the psychological makeup to be the coach. Knowledge is key, obviously. But the coach needs to be able to motivate, mediate, and create camaraderie and a sense of selflessness.
• The One-On-One Touch: Individual coaching provides the privacy and attention that breeds success. I’ve found that discussions regarding areas for improvement are received and acted upon much better in a private session, away from peers listening in. This can be especially critical with new employees and/or team members.
• Basics First: Make certain project management basics are taught, applied and re-taught.

For more Tips, see Robert’s Rules of Innovation™ by Robert F. Brands with Martin J. Kleinman – published by John Wiley & Sons in March 2010.

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GUEST POST by Robert F. Brands

Amassing Intellectual Property and Value Creation

by Robert F. Brands

What is the ultimate goal of process-driven innovation? Open a bottle of Coca-Cola – and read its performance reports – to get a true taste of the answer.

In 1980, the Coca-Cola Company was struggling, and its market share was underperforming compared to its competitors. So at a worldwide management conference in 1981, CEO Roberto Críspulo Goizueta decided to refocus the entire organization on putting value creation first.

The company refined its marketing investment, expanded into new markets, and acquired new bottling companies and the intellectual property and patents they held. The company created new products, including Diet Coke. It embraced a global vision; to wit, some market researchers say the company became the world’s best-known brand.

This transformation of company and IP doubled the company’s market share in 15 years, and Goizueta reportedly created more shareholder wealth than any other CEO in U.S. history.

Much has been written about innovation – the imperatives that drive the process and the results borne from the exercise. The purpose of innovation ostensibly is value creation that translates to enhanced stakeholder value. Process-driven organizational innovation drives value creation that transforms ideas into vital intellectual property, IP into revenues, and revenues into increased stakeholder value.

In any for- and not-for-profit organization, “value creation” can be translated in many ways. It is:

• Improved, silo-busting, team-building collaboration
• Amassed IP and new product development, which gives the company or organization a competitive edge on the market or competition
• Strengthened fiscal performance, which lures additional investment

This is why organizations invest the time, energy, creativity, research, planning, refining, modeling and retesting that it hopes will pay off in terms of improved process, better teamwork, a new business model, a refined brand – and black-ink results. These are assets that add value to the company, which is why it is absolutely crucial to protect these ideas.

Yet Intellectual Property will drive the future. As we move past the Industrial Age and the Age of Technology, the future era will focus on process that drives IP – and the real value it delivers. As much as teams and share, it is imperative to build and protect IP through the use of patents. Patents protect and define the innovation so they are the key step to commercialization and enhancing value.

It is essential for every company to keep a patented Intellectual Property portfolio. The IP portfolio of Airspray doubled in value because of the patented technology that turned liquid hand soap into foam. Airspray realized – and its fiscal results proved – that the regular and persistent renewing, refreshing and updating of patents was well worth the cost.

To this day, IP remains arguably the most powerful driver in innovation’s Value Creation.

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