CINCINNATI: Procter & Gamble, the consumer goods group, is seeking to "create space for connections" between its various business units as a driver for innovation.
The owner of Tide and Pampers spends $2bn a year on R&D, and is increasingly trying to pool insights and technologies gathered by its numerous divisions, from haircare to household goods.
Bruce Brown, the firm's chief technology officer, told Forbes that Crest WhiteStrips, which improve the appearance of teeth, thus drew on input from several sources, including packaging from the paper products category and bleach used in fabric care.
He said: "Often connection of seemingly disparate technologies delivers disruptive ideas. The magic in a big company is how to create space for connections, so an idea person can bump into a technology person.
"At P&G we create communities of cross-discipline practice so you connect and share. We have found that some of the best innovators at P&G are the best connectors."
Currently, P&G has some 8,000 staff working on innovation and operates 26 new product development hubs around the world, but it believes on-the-ground understanding is as vital as size.
"A challenge for a company like P&G, where scale matters, is we must constantly remember, the 'consumer is the boss,'" said Brown. "Everything we do starts and ends with the consumer.
"A lot of our executives visit stores and homes when they travel. The people in R&D, and at the company overall, work hard to stay in the consumer's world, and we must constantly work hard to keep the consumer at the heart of all we do."
During the 1990s, Brown worked for a time in Japan, where Unicharm, an indigenous player, was seeing major success through rolling out localised products while P&G pushed its global lines.
"I learned that you can be common around the world but you also need to be unique enough to delight local consumers," he said.
Talent management has also come to play a key role in Procter & Gamble's approach, based on a clear definition of the kind of traits which facilitate effective innovation.
"We see a definite difference between innovators and managers and we recruit people with greater innovation potential, particularly with skills in the areas of cognition, openness and analogy skills," said Brown.
The owner of Tide and Pampers spends $2bn a year on R&D, and is increasingly trying to pool insights and technologies gathered by its numerous divisions, from haircare to household goods.
Bruce Brown, the firm's chief technology officer, told Forbes that Crest WhiteStrips, which improve the appearance of teeth, thus drew on input from several sources, including packaging from the paper products category and bleach used in fabric care.
He said: "Often connection of seemingly disparate technologies delivers disruptive ideas. The magic in a big company is how to create space for connections, so an idea person can bump into a technology person.
"At P&G we create communities of cross-discipline practice so you connect and share. We have found that some of the best innovators at P&G are the best connectors."
Currently, P&G has some 8,000 staff working on innovation and operates 26 new product development hubs around the world, but it believes on-the-ground understanding is as vital as size.
"A challenge for a company like P&G, where scale matters, is we must constantly remember, the 'consumer is the boss,'" said Brown. "Everything we do starts and ends with the consumer.
"A lot of our executives visit stores and homes when they travel. The people in R&D, and at the company overall, work hard to stay in the consumer's world, and we must constantly work hard to keep the consumer at the heart of all we do."
During the 1990s, Brown worked for a time in Japan, where Unicharm, an indigenous player, was seeing major success through rolling out localised products while P&G pushed its global lines.
"I learned that you can be common around the world but you also need to be unique enough to delight local consumers," he said.
Talent management has also come to play a key role in Procter & Gamble's approach, based on a clear definition of the kind of traits which facilitate effective innovation.
"We see a definite difference between innovators and managers and we recruit people with greater innovation potential, particularly with skills in the areas of cognition, openness and analogy skills," said Brown.
Data sourced from Forbes; additional content by Warc staff
