Church & Dwight’s Approach to Product Innovation: Fewer, Bigger, Better

Church & Dwight’s Approach to Product Innovation: Fewer, Bigger, Better
Over the past five years Church & Dwight has been steadfast in building their product innovation capability. Their five year plan started with the implementation of Stage-Gate and what Church & Dwight fondly refers to as the ‘engine’ of their product innovation program. Recently, they implemented the remaining components of their program which are modeled on Cooper’s Innovation Diamond™, including portfolio management and product innovation and technology strategy.

Since implementing a disciplined approach to product innovation five years ago, Church & Dwight has seen their organic growth rate climb 500%. In their quest to continuously improve performance and results, they have recently decided to find new ways to engage their leadership and by doing so have managed to take product innovation to an even more strategic level resulting in their new goal – Fewer, Bigger, Better.

Key takeaways include:

• How Church & Dwight is integrating the three critical decision points of NPD Governance (Strategy, Portfolio, Gates) to yield decisions which drive high value projects to market, faster
• How Church & Dwight engages their executives in Product Innovation and how this is resulting in more strategic discussions, more often and which is leading to fewer, bigger and better projects

Corning's Unwavering Commitment to Product Innovation

Corning's Unwavering Commitment to Product Innovation
This year's winner of the Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award, Corning is recognized for the strength of its innovation strategy including a "recipe" for success that draws on long-standing materials and process knowledge, deep market understanding and an entrepreneurial, collaborative culture. The world leader in specialty glass and ceramics has achieved market and peer recognition for their ability to deliver a steady stream of truly 'breakthrough' new product winners.

In 2004 Corning conducted a thorough internal assessment of their Product Innovation Program which included all core elements critical to their success: product innovation and technology strategy, technical core competencies, internal business processes such as: Stage-Gate, Voice of Customer, Ideation and their Innovation Governance structure. Mr. Kirk will share how the decisions and actions that followed this study helped Corning to make significant improvements in their overall approach to New Product and Process Development. Mr. Kirk will discuss what Corning has learned is critical for new product success and how their new NPD governance structure is engaging company leaders on a new level which is helping them to target and successfully develop truly breakthrough new products. Key takeaways include:

• What Corning has learned is critical for new product success
• Overview of Corning's newly launched NPD governance structure
• How Corning accelerates development of breakthrough new products

Aligning People, Process, and Technology to Drive Product and Technology Innovation Performance

Aligning People, Process, and Technology to Drive Product and Technology Innovation Performance
In 2006, Fresenius Medical Care, the world’s largest provider of life- sustaining dialysis products and services set into motion the necessary actions to implement a disciplined Stage-Gate process.  Developing high quality products effectively and efficiently is a mission-critical business process for the $10 billion dollar market leader. The initial goal was to get the complex, heavily regulated process of developing new products at Fresenius’s eight manufacturing locations in North America under an efficient and consistent process that would increase speed to market and sustain the current product portfolio. 

Wally Slone led the effort to draft and implement a PLM process. His team focused on understanding the “current reality” of product innovation by first engaging the people (voice of customer) that would ultimately be the end users of the PLM process. This set the foundation for changing ‘the-way-we-work’.  Through Mr. Slone’s leadership and his team’s unique approach in driving organizational cultural change, process, and technology, Fresenius is transforming its organization’s product ideation-to-launch process, technology procurement and implementation to a new level of performance.  By killing the less attractive projects and shifting valuable resources to the more meritorious projects, Wally and his team has reinvigorated the product and senior management team to focus on the “critical few” to accelerate the time to market without reducing the pipeline’s value. 

Key takeaways include: 

• An overview of Fresenius’s Product and Portfolio Management.
• How Fresenius is aligning People, Process, and Technology to accelerate new product performance results
• How Fresenius is using the Stage-Gate process to help transform their organization into a ‘business-minded’ culture

How ICOM is Using Stage-Gate to Achieve Top-Line Growth

How ICOM is Using Stage-Gate to Achieve Top-Line Growth
In 2006, ICOM established a strategic business goal to double company revenues through organic product innovation. An internal assessment concluded that the ambitious goal combined with an inadequate new product pipeline meant that ICOM had a large gap to close in a very short period of time. The resulting plan was designed to accelerate the implementation of a ‘new products engine’, create a growing momentum and solicit high quality contribution from as large a base of employeesas possible.

In building their ‘new products engine’ ICOM focused on three key drivers: meaningful and active leadership, an authentic Stage-Gate process and voice of customer skills training. Their implementation approach was creative and engaging and resulted in a full organizational transformation. The result has been very positive and ICOM is well on their way to achieving their growth target having already increased revenues from new products by over 400%.

Key takeaways include:

• How ICOM’s senior leadership team leveraged Go/Kill decision points (gates) as their primary vehicle to ’role model’ and communicate new product performance expectations
• The strategic role of the Stage-Gate Process Sponsor in mentoring ‘growth-oriented’ behaviors from all stakeholders
• Key considerations when transforming a culture to‘business growth behaviors’

How ITT Drives Value-Creation with Value Based Product Development
In 2002 ITT Industries established an ambitious goal to drive top-line organic growth to new levels and launched Value Based Product Development (VBPD). In just a few short years, the manufacturing conglomerate more than doubled sales revenues from new products. Richard Arra attributes this success to the introduction of a disciplined Stage-Gate process with emphasis on high quality voice-of-customer input and tough Go/Kill decision points (gates) – a key cornerstone of VBPD.

Mr. Arra will provide an overview of how ITT approaches product innovation and will discuss the leadership required to drive such a rigorous, disciplined approach across the complex, global ITT community of 40,000 people in 55 countries. Key takeaways include:

• ITT’s Value Based Product Development Model and the key considerations in determining the degree of standardization of Stage-Gate across the 50+ value centers
• ITT’s strategic (and opt-in) approach to implementing Value Based Product Development
• ITT’s approach to introducing VBPD to their steady stream of new acquisitions

Disciplined Stage-Gate System within a Truly Entrepreneurial Culture

Disciplined Stage-Gate System within a Truly Entrepreneurial Culture
Johnson & Johnson, a leader in consumer healthcare, has enjoyed year-over-year sales growth for more than a century. They attribute this success to their unwavering commitment to developing superior products and their truly entrepreneurial culture. Therefore, when the Consumer Products Company Division (CPC) decided to introduce a disciplined approach to global collaboration to improve the speed and efficiency of product innovation they anticipated resistance. However, in order to maintain the company's competitive edge in a continually growing globally competitive market, status-quo was not an option.

In 2004, the journey began for Johnson & Johnson's CPC Division. To ensure success, they designed a comprehensive Product Innovation Roadmap. It started with what is believed by the CPC team to be one of the most important enablers of their success - a truly global R&D organization. The implementation of Stage-Gate, Portfolio Management and Resource Management followed with all three leading to the organization-wide visibility necessary to engage their executives and maintain their unwavering commitment to product innovation. Mr. Gilbert will describe Johnson & Johnson's approach to Product Innovation and will highlight what he believes is pivotal to their continued success. Key takeaways include:

• Overview of Johnson & Johnson's Product Innovation Model and enabling organization structure
  
• Key considerations when introducing a Stage-Gate process into an entrepreneurial culture

How McKesson Provider Technologies is implementing Stage-Gate to ‘Make it Stick’

How McKesson Provider Technologies is implementing Stage-Gate to ‘Make it Stick’
In 2006, McKesson Provider Technologies conducted a thorough analysis of its portfolio of current products and concluded that a significant percentage were at risk given their ‘mature’ positioning within the Product Lifecycle.

They concluded it was critical to accelerate the implementation of a world-class approach to product innovation and committed to implementing Stage-Gate. In their wisdom, they recognized that in order to drive the performance results necessary to replenish a maturing portfolio, they needed a complete organizational and cultural transformation.

Mr. Salinas will walk through McKesson’s unique and well-thought-out approach to implementing Stage-Gate for a complex organization and will describe how, from the get-go, their intent was to ‘Make It Stick’.

Key Takeaways include:

• An overview of the Master Implementation Roadmap used to accelerate the introduction of Stage-Gate
• How McKesson integrated People, Process and Technology to ensure a successful implementation
• McKesson’s Dashboard - Key metrics used to monitor Process Adoption, Process Health and Performance Outcomes

Product Leadership: P&G’s Innovation Diamond

Product Leadership: P&G’s Innovation Diamond
At Procter & Gamble, innovation is their lifeblood. For over 15 years, P&G has pursued improved performance in new product success and in Initiative Management (P&G’s internal model for improving the systems and processes which they use to drive new products to market) . While great progress has been made, particularly over the last 8 years, P&G has once again, raised the bar. Recently, they established corporate objectives which will push P&G’s performance to a completely new level. While they continue to make modest improvements to their Stage-Gate process, their attention and effort has shifted to learning how to truly leverage all four points of their Innovation Diamond (modeled after Cooper & Edgett’s Innovation Diamond™). Through careful study they have come to recognize that the biggest gains in business performance will come from a focus on improving Initiative Leadership - more specifically, the ‘People’ side of the equation.

Kim will discuss the learning journey and action plans that P&G has implemented to drive continued improvements to their product innovation performance and specifically, their leadership qualification process.

Key takeaways will include:

• Diagnosing the health of your Innovation Diamond
  
• Developing a balanced improvement plan