How ITT Drives Value-Creation with Value Based Product Development

ITT Corporation has 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

Driving Global Innovation: Kellogg’s Secret Ingredient (People!)

With 2009 sales reaching nearly $13 billion, the Kellogg Company is a world-leading producer of cereal and convenience foods. Their portfolio of products and brands can be found just about anywhere in the world with manufacturing occurring in 18 countries and marketing in more than 180 countries.  How does Kellogg’s drive successful global innovation? 

With more than a century of experience developing and launching regional and global products, the Kellogg Company’s innovation engine is a well-oiled machine. Over the years they have implemented and refined several innovation processes they consider critical to their success:  Stage-Gate, Portfolio Management, People Investment and the Launch Program Leadership initiative.

In her presentation, Mary will discuss Kellogg’s approach to global innovation and in particular, their focus on developing the leaders that drive new products to market.  Highlights include:

• An overview of Kellogg’s global innovation program 
• Highlights of the  Launch Program Leadership initiative and how it is transforming Kellogg’s performance, culture and future leaders
• How Kellogg is building an accountability culture through program leadership and teams
• Key lessons for successful global product innovation

Successful Product Launches – Maximizing Return on Investment

From its humble beginnings in the Tacoma, Washington kitchen of Frank Mars, MARS Incorporated (MARS) has grown into a company of global scope and scale, generating annual revenues of more than $28 billion.  With market leadership positions in all six businesses in which they operate - Chocolate, Petcare, Food, Confections, Drinks and Symbioscience – MARS has achieved consistent growth by developing and launching superior products that delight their customers.  Many of their brands are instantly recognized around the world, including M&Ms^®, MARS^®, Snickers^®, Uncle Ben’s^®, and Wiskas^®.   

MARS continuously evolves their product innovation and commercialization practices and, over the years, has learned that focusing on mastering the ‘market launch’ is a critical driver of their success.  In her presentation, Suzanne discusses how MARS minimizes the risks associated with ‘launching’ products into new markets while maximizing the return on investment and accelerating market acceptance.  

Highlights of her presentation include: 

• Strategic factors to consider to ready the organization to support a new product launch:  how to align, synchronize and integrate your people and plans to achieve success
• Leading the Launch:  how the focus of leadership shifts throughout the commercialization process, from ‘business evaluator’ to ‘technical advisor’ to ‘business entrepreneur’, to win in the marketplace
• What to measure ‘pre’, ‘during’ and ‘post’ launch to ensure scarce resources are optimized
• Key lessons learned

Reaching for New Heights: Masco’s Innovation Leadership Development Program

Masco Corporation is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of brand-name products for the home improvement and new home construction markets achieving worldwide sales in 2009 of $7.8 billion.   A Fortune 500^® company, Masco’s innovation program is multifaceted and emphasizes the critical drivers of success:  Leadership, Proactive Ideation, Portfolio Management and Stage-Gate. 

Five years ago, the Masco Leadership Program in Innovation was established to assist in transforming  their most promising business leaders into true Innovation Champions.  In addition to exposing their leaders to enabling innovation processes, the unique program created nontraditional opportunities for open collaboration and cross-business cooperation, leading to new business models and value creation.   

In his presentation, Thom will discuss how the Innovation Leadership Program supports  Masco’s business goal to discover and develop truly breakthrough product innovations.  Highlights include: 

• An Overview of Masco’s Mission-Critical Product Innovation Processes and Practices
• Highlights of the recent refinements Masco made to bolster their Stage-Gate Process
• The Key Elements of Masco’s Innovation Leadership Development Program
• The Benefits and Challenges of Establishing a Leadership Development Program

Maximizing Value and Optimizing Assets: Accelerating Results with Successful Change Management

McNeil Nutritionals, LLC, a Johnson & Johnson Company, has repeatedly transformed industries and markets by launching winning new products such as Splenda^®, Viactiv^®, Benecol^® and Lactaid® that improve the daily lives of the customers they serve.  Nutritional’s RAPID Stage-Gate Process is used to drive market insights into marketplace successes by navigating teams through a deliberate balancing act of a highly entrepreneurial culture and disciplined risk management.

Although Nutritional’s continuously streamlines their RAPID Process,  they recently broadened their focus from ‘the project’ to ‘the portfolio’ to gain further increases in innovation productivity.  In her presentation, Jan will discuss the holistic approach that has resulted in substantial change and performance improvements.  Highlights include: 

• Sustaining the connection between the business strategy and product innovation within a fast paced entrepreneurial culture
• An overview of Nutritional’s RAPID Stage-Gate Process including how it is designed to serve all project types 
• Accountability, Metrics and Resources:  How we hold each other to the commitments we make
• The criticality of managing change to ensure successful portfolio optimization

How Medtronic Selects Projects and Allocates Resources to the Highest Value Opportunities

With 2009 revenues reaching $14.6 billion, Medtronic is a global leader in medical technology- alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life for people with chronic conditions around the world. They develop and manufacture a wide range of products and therapies and conduct business in more than 120 countries around the world, making Medtronic one of the most diverse product and technology companies in their industry.  And like most creative, customer-focused organizations, their steady stream of new product ideas far outweighs the resources necessary to execute all of them, despite their annual R&D spend of $1 billion +. 

As such, astute project selection and resource allocation is at the very heart of Medtronic’s innovation program.  In his presentation, Joe will discuss Medtronic’s journey to design and implement a common enterprise-wide portfolio management system within a complex organization structure where decision autonomy occurs at the business unit (BU) level.  Highlights of Joe’s presentation: 

• How Medtronic used internal and external benchmarking to gain critical buy-in to improve organization-wide project selection and resource allocation 
• Key considerations when designing a portfolio system that achieves consistency and transparency at the corporate level and yields effective investment decisions at the BU level
• An implementation approach that balances broad, participative input and efficient execution
• Key lessons learned and benefits realized including some unexpected side effects

Optimizing Resources, Skills and Knowledge to Accelerate New Products to Market

With 2009 revenues reaching $14.6 billion, Medtronic is a global leader in medical technology- alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life for people with chronic conditions around the world. They develop and manufacture a wide range of products and therapies and conduct business in more than 120 countries around the world, making Medtronic one of the most diverse product and technology companies in their industry. How does Medtronic drive successful product innovation?

In his presentation, Mike will provide an overview of Medtronic’s multi-faceted yet integrated approach to product innovation: people, process and technology. He will also share how Medtronic manages their biggest asset - which also happens to be one of their biggest challenges – leveraging the tremendous depth, breadth and horsepower scattered throughout the global organization, to achieve optimal innovation productivity and performance results. Highlights of Mike’s presentation:

• An overview of Medtronic’s global innovation system and key performance metrics
• How Medtronic creates and sustains a global culture supportive of product innovation by focusing on accountability, high-performance teams, collaboration and information-sharing
• Medtronic’s internal innovation resource network: optimizing resources, skills and knowledge
• Insights and key lessons learned

Maximizing Return on Innovation Investment: Rust-Oleum’s ‘Focused’ Idea Generation Program

Rust-Oleum Corporation is a world leader in protective paints and coatings for consumer and industrial markets and is widely recognized for their innovative products. A subsidiary of $3.4 billion RPM International Inc., Rust-Oleum Corporation has been leveraging product innovation to drive growth from its inception and relies on a structured approach that emphasizes strategic project selection, proactive ideation and an accelerated Stage-Gate commercialization process.

During the last few years, Kurt and his team have been experimenting with their most recent winning new idea: an organization-wide approach to generating ‘breakthrough customer solutions’ ideas. Bottom line: it’s working. Rust-Oleum has increased the total value of its product innovation portfolio by over 30% in just under 3 years and has strategically shifted their mix of project types from ‘incremental’ to higher value ‘breakthroughs’. Kurt attributes much of this success to a more focused approach to developing quality/quantity ideas and getting early buy-in and participation from key stakeholders. In his presentation, Kurt will discuss:

• How Rust-Oleum integrates their proactive idea generation process into their annual planning process to ensure a tight strategic fit between business strategy and innovation results
  
• Key elements of their Idea Generation Program including their most successful techniques for capturing customer needs, screening the winners and shaping the short list of ideas into bigger innovation opportunities
  
• Why cross-functional collaboration speeds up their idea selection process and carries on into an accelerated commercialization process
  
• Key lessons and learnings to consider when shifting your portfolio from small incremental projects to bigger breakthroughs
  

Open Innovation with Stage-Gate^®: Improving Innovation Productivity

One of the largest electric utilities in the world, Hydro-Québec generates, transmits and distributes electricity using renewable energy sources, in particular hydroelectricity. They are the only electric utility in North America to operate its own large scale research centre, a part of which focuses on adapting and developing new products while helping industrial customers improve their energy efficiency. Hydro-Québec’s innovation program is modeled after the Innovation Diamond™ and focuses on the key drivers of performance.

Recently, Hydro-Québec established an initiative to improve its new product development effectiveness, reduce cycle time and costs. The effort ultimately led to Hydro-Québec’s ‘next generation’ Stage-Gate process with open innovation and co-development practices embedded and integrated throughout their stages, gates and portfolio reviews.

In his presentation, Charles will discuss the key barriers encountered, the organizational and cultural changes necessary, metrics and the key steps used to guide their transformation. Presentation highlights include:

• How Hydro-Québec doubled their number of collaborations and accelerated cycle time
• A review of the key steps used to design and integrate open innovation and co-development practices into Stage-Gate and Portfolio Management processes
• The outcomes and impact of opening-up a traditionally internally-focused R&D organization