BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. BrainReactions also provides innovation training to help companies and individuals generate more and better ideas. 

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In This Issue

• Insights and themes about Fortune 500 company innovation from the 2008 Open Innovation Conference
• Helping the Generations Accept Innovation and Change
• A View on Innovation by Bob Carter
• Q&A with the creator of the ThinkCube
• Accidental Innovation v/s Systematic Innovation

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By Darin Eich, Ph.D., COO of BrainReactions

I attended this conference as a media partner from BrainReactions and OpenInnovators.net and set out to identify some overarching themes about the current state of open innovation for large organizations. “Advance innovative ideas through partner collaboration and co-development” was the theme of this 2008 Marcus Evans conference. The workshop tracks were labeled “dismantling the ‘not invented here’ mentality” and “establishing a culture that values open innovation at every level’. Some themes that emerged from the conference presentations from innovators like P&G, IBM, Clorox, Pepsico, Kraft, and others include:

1. Open innovation is a very new concept and most companies are just adopting it and learning it. This means there are a lot of failures and process improvements right now and the success stories are just starting. Even P&G which is recognized as a top open innovator is still on the journey and learning.

2. P&G is a leader. Other companies that want to be better at open innovation appear to recruit P&G innovation professionals to work for them thus gaining that knowledge and experience to apply within their own organization. I heard multiple instances of this during the conference. P&G really has an excellent reputation for open innovation with their “connect and develop” philosophy and mandate from the top to get half of their ideas from the outside.

3. Collaboration is critical. Most organizations are shifting to become more collaborative as this is key for open innovation. This also requires a culture shift and new skills to learn for innovators.

4. Suppliers and partners are key. Since much of the open innovation relies on the work of partners and suppliers, finding and assessing them is important to innovation success. Suppliers and partners can not only provide the idea but they can also help to develop the idea, provide the technology or knowledge to make it work, package it, or virtually anything else needed to create and launch a new product.

5. Searching is a key open innovation practice. Many of the organizations that presented today have a focus on searching for technologies and intellectual property that they can acquire to bring their ideas to market faster. This is much more efficient than creating the technology internally. Many examples in particular were given of product packaging that was found in Japan and licensed for use in the United States.

6. Open innovation is transformational and not transactional. Though you are relying on partners and suppliers to help you develop the idea you still must do much work to connect the supplier’s insights in and strengthen the relationship for the future. Open innovation should not be a transaction but rather a transformational experience that helps everyone learn how to innovate better and in new ways.

7. Open innovation is a result of desperation or challenges. Many of the organizations adopted open innovation because they had to. Their business was declining or they had to react to urgent challenges. For many this impetus for change ended up being positive because they launched an innovative new product (like Clorox Wipes) or gained a more efficient development process.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

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Contributed by Sarah Gibson, President, Accent Business Communication
(See complete bio below the article)

As employees, we all want to be seen as team players, but when a change is introduced to our teams at work, most of us cringe internally. In order to minimize the stress innovation and change can cause to our psyches, we each need to keep in mind what we risk losing when a new idea is introduced.

One approach to understanding our response to the change process is to look at change through a generational perspective. This short piece will help you see change as a three-step process and give you some perspective on how each generation may view innovation and change.

William Bridges approaches change as a three-phase process—the end, the in-between and the new beginning. Ultimately, we go through all three phases simultaneously, but the end goal is to realize change is a new beginning.

Here’s a quick example. When I started my own business, I had to acknowledge the end of a steady paycheck, friendships at work and corporate backing. During my in-between phase, I would vacillate between “I love owning my own business” and “Was I nuts for doing this?”. During the new beginning phase, I realized that my thinking had shifted to completely accept the change and embrace the idea of working on my own.

Since we go through all phases at once, I still have days where I experience loss and wish I had my corporate career, even though I’ve shifted to really loving being on my own.

The same is true for change for each of us. However the key to moving you and your work team to the new beginning phase is to accept the end of your previous processes before change and innovation took you to a new beginning.

From a generational perspective, we have to acknowledge what each generation loses during change. In essence, if we introduce a new idea, we’ve asked them to let go of something important to one’s generational framework.

For example, a WWII person is asked to give up his sense of loyalty to a product. Or perhaps he is asked to give up knowing where he fits into the chain of command.

A Baby Boomer facing change has to let go of the energy, recognition and dedication she put into a product. Sometimes she may also feel that she has to give up her competitive edge and expertise when an innovation comes her way.

A Gen Xer feels threatened because change asks her to give up a sense of independence and flexibility.

A Millennial struggles least with change because he has become so accustomed to change that adaptability has become key to his skill set. Still, he may feel a loss when his friendships at work are weakened when a process pulls him away from those friends.

Ultimately, the best way for us to become team players during change is to acknowledge both what we risk losing during change and what others risk losing. If you are introducing a new innovation, consider your audience. What are you asking them to say goodbye to during the end stage of change.

From there, you can move toward the new beginning of acceptance using the strengths each generation brings to the workplace.

Contributing writer: Sarah Gibson

Bio:
After identifying a need for written communication and generational issues training in the Midwest, Sarah Gibson founded Accent Business Communication in 2004. She has offered her classes to a variety of companies, including Harley-Davidson, Metavante and the Wisconsin state government. Beyond her organizational training programs, Sarah also teaches for the evening MBA program at UW-Madison.

Sarah holds a Master’s degree from North Dakota State University and has been teaching in academic and corporate worlds since 1998. In addition, she’s a member of Madison Area Business Consultants, Society of Human Resource Management, and the American Society of Training and Development.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

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Contributed by Bob Carter, Vertex Transformation Director and author of The Balanced Innovator

Innovation is so vogue in business language today that it is almost a fashion. Try to Google or Yahoo the word Innovation, and you will be amazed at the number of entries you will find. Everybody is talking about Innovation. Every company claims to be innovative, and to prove the point, there are more conferences on Innovation than the average ninja can shake a black belt at. So I asked myself a simple question: What the bleep is Innovation? Is it a verb or a noun? Is it an input or an output, or is it the process? Is Innovation imagination, inspiration, ideation, invention, creation, or improvisation? It certainly takes dedication and usually lots of perspiration! I believe that Innovation is the result of all of these things. We all know that Innovation is good, as long as it adds value in some way. It can be continuous (i.e., the progressive improvement of something) or discontinuous (i.e., the introduction of something new that takes away the need or desire for the thing it replaces). This can be a product or a service, and it can happen in every walk of life.

Most people would agree that Innovation is exciting and groundbreaking (hence, the more than 120 million Internet search results). There is no doubt that Innovation is one of the keys to growth, and everybody is rightly concerned about growth, especially revenue growth.

Balanced Innovation

The Venn diagram below shows how balanced Innovation works. Notice how the intellectual, organizational, and human factors are equally important. In other words, What we do, How we do it, and Why we do it are equally important. You will also see that the factors are all interconnected, suggesting that successful Innovation is dependent on balance.

Your intellectual strength shows that you have the capabilities to deliver the product or service that your customers need. It is about your core competencies. Your organizational strength shows that you have the ability to produce what your customers need. Your human strengths show that you understand the needs, that you empathize with your customers, and that you are focused on satisfying those needs. Your behaviors prove that you can be trusted and the way you communicate proves that you are in empathy.

Each factor validates the others. The human factors validate the intellectual and organizational, the intellectual factors validate the organizational and human, and the organizational factors validate the human and intellectual. So the What validates the How and Why, and vice versa. This What, How, Why Balance, is key to success and is used throughout The Balanced Innovator. In order to achieve success in anything we do, we must reach a minimum threshold in each of the intellectual, organizational, and human factors. If one of these factors is weak, the What, How, and Why are not balanced.

BALANCED INNOVATION

Source: THE BALANCED INNOVATOR by Robert (Bob) Carter

Unfortunately, many organizations are focused more on one area at the expense of another, like those shown in figure below:

UNBALANCED INNOVATION

Source: THE BALANCED INNOVATOR by Robert (Bob) Carter

Unbalanced Innovation occurs when Innovation is focused on one factor at the expense of the others. In example A, the Innovation is highly intellectual, focused on the technical aspects but not necessarily focused on customer needs and certainly not focused on telling the story to make the right emotional connection. Think of the Betamax videotape system. Betamax was regarded by many as technically superior to the VHS system but was a comparative commercial failure. Had the Betamax tape manufacturers adopted a more balanced approach and focused on the organizational and human factors of Innovation as well as the intellectual ones, there may have been an entirely different outcome. In example B, the story may be compelling but the solution may have little substance. This type of imbalance is usually seen in organizations that have outstanding marketing and business development professionals, but their focus is all about winning new business rather than on execution. Their success is usually short lived. Contrast this again with figure (Balanced Innovation), where all three factors are equally important. Companies that exhibit out-of-this-world performance have a balanced approach to Innovation.

The ideas behind balanced and unbalanced Innovation are equally applicable to strategies, business models, and organic growth. A good strategy is one that reflects the larger external market or macro environment as well as the micro needs of the specific market segment. A good business model is one that enables the strategy. Organizations that match their business models and strategies to the needs of the external environment are more likely to grow organically—that is, they increase revenue through the acquisition of new business. Organic growth is achieved by winning new business.

About the Contributor:

Robert (Bob) Carter

Author of The Balanced Innovator, Thought Leading Innovator, 6 Sigma Black Belt and Director of Transformation at Vertex, Manchester, United Kingdom and a good friend of BrainReactions.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

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Contributed by Anand Chhatpar, CEO of BrainReactions

ThinkCube is a new idea generation tool from MetaMemes, a small innovative company whose mission is to bring people and ideas together. Founder and Director of Innovation, Kes Sampanthar, recently took the time to answer some of my questions.

Q: What is ThinkCube?
A: ThinkCube takes the concept of a brainstorming card deck to the next level. It provides you with a diverse selection of thought-provoking stimuli and incorporates a simple innovation process that results in high quality ideas.

Q: Tell me the basics of how I would use it.
A: ThinkCube can be used individually or in a group. In both scenarios, the basics are the same. You define your challenge as specifically as possible. To stimulate ideas, you randomly draw six cards from ThinkCube’s Idea Library. This starts you out with a collection of ideas and stimuli from diverse fields and topics. The cards are then combined to form new ideas. The ThinkCubation process takes you on a journey through phases of incubation and evaluation until one idea emerges as a winner.

Q: Why did you decide to create an innovation tool?
A: I have always been obsessed with ideas and innovation. It started with designing computer games as a child and has evolved into a career focused around innovations in technology. In my university days, I was challenged to come up with a steady stream of ideas and that’s when I first started digging into research on creativity and innovation. It led me to create my own rudimentary innovation system that involved reading widely and collecting ideas. I used these ideas as stimulus to form unique ideas and solutions in my own work. It worked so well for me that I decided to craft it into a tool that I could share with others.

Q: How did ThinkCube get its name?
A: ThinkCube is named after my ThinkCubation process which focuses on the two most important steps of the innovation process: thinking and incubation. ThinkCubation, as I’ve coined it, is a practical methodology based on creativity techniques used by mathematicians and physicists like Henri Poincare, Jacques Hadamard, and Albert Einstein. I leveraged their thoughts on invention and incubation to come up with a process that resembles techniques used in their work.

Q: What makes ThinkCube different from other creativity tools on the market?
A: Our innovation process. Other popular tools (IDEO Method Cards, Whack Pack, KnowBrainer) consist of a playing card size deck of questions and/or techniques that only focus on one aspect of innovation – mainly ideation. We have wrapped our tool with a simple business process addressing all aspects of innovation to ensure people get better results from their ideation sessions.

Q: You said ThinkCubation is based on techniques used by Einstein – can you tell me more?
A: Einstein had a highly developed mental ability to “play with ideas”. He described his technique as combinatory play: combining existing ideas to form new connections and new ideas. Einstein always explained this was at the core of his genius. I am not sure about that, but I know that his technique is powerful and as more research is done on the brain, it seems to be pointing to this ability being at the core of all creative thought. ThinkCube is based on this technique of combining ideas and provides a wealth of disparate ideas to spark the creation of unique new ideas.

Q: Where did you get all the ideas for ThinkCube’s Idea Library?
A: I’m a self-proclaimed idea addict. I am constantly reading and learning about new things. If you were to stand in from of my bookshelves you would see books on variety of subjects including artificial intelligence, marketing, evolution, game design, cognitive science, internet architecture, and archaeology. Any fascinating ideas I come across, I record in my personal idea notebooks. Oddly enough, when it came to creating ThinkCube, the most difficult task for me was trimming down the list of ideas to be included in this initial release.

Q: How would someone use your tool in an uncreative, corporate environment?
A: Innovation can start from the bottom-up. You don’t need to wait for your company to start an innovation program; you can start one yourself, grass-roots style, utilizing a tool like ThinkCube.

Q: What kinds of projects can ThinkCube help with?
A: Our customers use ThinkCube to create original plot lines for books, new product ideas, movie scripts, games, and new business processes. Basically, ThinkCube can help with any task that requires original thought.

Q: How do I know if ThinkCube will fit my style of creativity?
A: To get a better idea of what’s included in ThinkCube, our website offers a rich set of multimedia resources including print-ready examples of the idea library and a Flash version of our handbook.

Q: In your Idea Handbook, you mention building a social network around ThinkCube. Can you explain a little more?
A: Combining ideas from diverse domains to form new ideas is at the core of the ThinkCubation process. This principle builds on a phenomenon called small worlds; you are more likely to get a new job from a friend of friend then directly from a close friend. The same concept applies to ideas. Everyone has a unique set of ideas and experiences and you are more likely to come up with new ideas when interacting with people outside your immediate circle. ThinkCube provides the perfect vehicle to bring people together in the form of an innovation club to ThinkCubate new ideas and swap ideas from each others’ personal idea libraries. I am currently working on building a social network on Ning.com for the ThinkCube community.

Q: What are the next steps for ThinkCube and MetaMemes?
A: ThinkCube represents the first in a series of products and services that will help companies to develop innovative cultures. In the near future, we plan to release ThinkCube expansion packs targeting topics like nanotechnology, biotechnology, and management strategy.

Special Offer for BrainWaves readers:
We have been able to negotiate a 10% Discount for our readers wanting to buy the ThinkCube from MetaMemes. Simply use the Coupon Code BRAINREACTIONS during check-out at http://www.metamemes.com to get this discount.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

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In business, you need to make decisions, find solutions, and think up new ideas every day. Do you leave idea generation up to chance or luck, or do you use systems and tools to help you generate ideas?

Take a look at this list of 10 Accidental Product Discoveries that are still in the market today. If you simply wait around for a number of years, perhaps one day, lady luck will shine on you and make you stumble upon the next greatest innovation for the world making you and your company rich and famous! Perhaps, one day! OR… you could use a proven SYSTEM of innovation. One that works consistently and has been refined and developed over the years.

BrainReactions has worked with the most innovative companies in the world. We are familiar with their methods of innovation, but we have also developed our own toolset that increases brainstormer productivity by 200-300%!

Transform your company with great ideas! Attend the Innovation through Ideation webinar online on Thursday, May 29th and you will have the tools to transform the way you work.

This article is part of the April 2008 issue of BrainWaves E-magazine on Innovation and Ideation

No Comments | BrainReactions News, Creativity & Brainstorming, Generating Ideas & Ideation Techniques, Managing Ideas, Innovation Techniques, Open Innovation, Voice of the customer, New Concepts & Ideas, Corporate Innovation, Innovation Training, BrainWaves Emagazine | Email Article | Share on Facebook | del.icio.us | digg this

BrainWaves is a quarterly e-periodical for people who are interested in how organizations cultivate individual and group creativity. Each issue of BrainWaves features information and perspectives about individual and group ideation; how businesses and not-for-profits actuate the best ideas; and reports on remarkable innovations that promise novel solutions to intractable problems. Brainwaves is produced and edited by BrainReactions, producer of “outside insight” — ideas for organizations conceived by outside professional brainstormers and from online brainstorms using BrainReactions.net. 

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In This Issue

• Developing employees to share in a culture of innovation: Insights from leadership program research
• How does a company like GE find innovative and market changing solutions to address global issues?
• Nine Tips for Entrepreneurs: How Entrepreneurs Can Partner with General Mills and Other Fortune 500 Companies
• How Dominick Martinetti used Open Innovation to launch Slappa into market leadership
• The Most Creative People on Facebook: A global network that you can leverage

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Contributed By Darin J. Eich, Ph.D.

We hear from many organizations that they desire a positive culture of innovation within their organizations that relies on the collaboration, contribution, and shared leadership of all employees. At BrainReactions, we have created a program to achieve positive outcomes in this area. During the final three years I worked on my doctoral dissertation studying high quality leadership programs, I was also creating and testing an innovation program for BrainReactions. This was a leadership program designed to help participants learn and engage in ideation and innovation for real purposes.

Like many companies, we highly value creating and sustaining a positive culture of innovation in our organization. Achieving this requires an intentional approach to develop the people of your company as exemplary creators, innovators, and leaders. Our vision with our leadership training program at BrainReactions involved moving from brainstorm sessions to a front end of innovation leadership program. This moves from just generating the ideas to also including training and development of the people who innovate.

In addition to the research of high quality programs, which included interviews of 62 stakeholders across four different exemplary leadership programs, the researcher developed and tested a new innovation program and individual program sessions with BrainReactions brainstormers. During a three-year period of research and testing, approximately 100 sessions where conducted, assessed, and improved accordingly. Sessions were qualitative and consisted of 5-12 individuals per session. Sessions were recorded, transcribed, and assessed for participant engagement, idea quantity and quality. The researcher employed the constant comparative method, an analytic induction grounded theory data analysis technique, to explore the data and construct a theory.

The theory of high quality leadership programs developed in the dissertation study is grounded in those programmatic attributes that, when enacted, contribute significantly to enhancing learning and leadership development. The data analysis revealed 16 attributes of high quality leadership programs organized into three clusters: a) participants engaged in building and sustaining a learning community; b) student-centered experiential learning experiences; and c) research grounded continuous program development. Through the program attributes, participants learn about innovation, leadership and themselves in the course of engaging in the leadership process while reflecting on and applying their new learning and skills in collaborative action with others.

The results of this multi-case grounded theory study of high quality leadership programs could be applied and adapted to enhance leadership development and innovation in a wide range of organizations. This theory will allow organizations to enhance their programs and participants’ leadership development by helping participants improve themselves through self-discovery, personal development, reflective practice and collaborative leadership action with others. This leadership action and learning can be directed towards idea generating for innovation to meet changing needs and opportunities for the organization though helping individuals contribute to and share leadership in an organizational culture of innovation.

To be a high quality program involves anchoring the systems and program in research, both what has happened elsewhere and what you have discovered internally. Our high quality leadership program for innovation that has yielded numerous positive individual, organizational, and client outcomes involves three clusters of attributes for program development. Both the diverse and engaged participants cluster as well as systems learning for continuous program improvement cluster are leveraged for development in addition to the individual centered experiential brainstorming experience cluster.

In essence I recommend more organizations to implement a leadership program that allows all employees to contribute to a positive culture of innovation through participating in innovation together. Programs can be constructed and facilitating using the identified clusters of attributes that matter most for learning and development.

There is a report identifying attributes of high quality leadership programs and how BrainReactions put these attributes into practice for their own innovation program and programs they develop for clients. Email Darin Eich at darin.eich@brainreactions.com for more information or to receive the report.

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Contributed by Shahira Raineri, GE Global Imagination Breakthrough Leader
(See complete bio below the article)

Throughout it’s 115-year history, GE has introduced world-changing technologies and processes. As the company continued to grow into one of the world’s largest companies, GE needed a powerful mechanism to transform potentially market-changing ideas into a portfolio of products to meet the needs of an ever-expanding global market.

In September 2003, GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt introduced a new process to build innovative solutions addressing global-scale challenges. These innovations, called “Imagination Breakthroughs”, receive special nurturing and investment to drive the solutions to maturity. To qualify as an Imagination Breakthrough (IB), each product idea must be directed at market transformation and must have the potential to achieve more than $100 million in incremental revenue.

IBs are delivering for GE. The current IB portfolio contains more than 45 IB projects in development around the globe. Since its inception, the IB program has consistently delivered $2-3B of incremental revenue annually.

Imagination Breakthroughs take two forms:

• Commercial products: designed to provide customers with products and processes that create new ways of conducting business, while maintaining GE efficiency and quality.
• Technology products: designed to provide customers with new technologies and solutions that help transform their marketplace.

IB Development: The Creative Process
In the early development phase, GE business units surface key ideas and innovations to the CEO in a formal IB review meeting. Once approved, the sponsoring business follows a regimented process to ensure development and delivery of a successful product to market.

CECOR: Turning Creative Ideas into Business Applications
Throughout their life, IBs follow the CECOR (Calibrate, Explore, Create, Organize, Realize) model, a GE-developed strategic framework that helps convert innovative thinking into tangible and practical business solutions.

A disciplined process that guides all GE business through shared marketing practices, CECOR is a series of 5 analyses designed to push an Imagination Breakthrough to achieve it’s greatest potential.

Calibrate … Business Performance
What is our business?
Who are our customers?
What do they need/want/prefer?

Explore … Avenues for Growth
What are our avenues for growth?
How do customers make money?

Create … New Ideas
What are our best ideas?
What is the customer value?

Organize … For Execution
Have we aligned resources?
Are we collaborating with customers?

Realize … Value
What is our revenue and income plan?
How will we measure customer and GE impact?

Throughout this series of reviews, the customer’s needs and requirements are kept squarely at the center of the IB development to ensure that not only is an IB innovative, but, that it also accomplishes the goals of the customer. Once an IB evolves through the full process, it is ready to be launched.

The IB portfolio is dynamic – it is not only one of the ways that GE achieves growth, but it is in line with the company’s strategic intent which ensures that these breakthroughs are enabling our reach into new markets and important adjacencies.

About the Author:


Shahira Raineri
GE Global Imagination Breakthrough Leader

Shahira joined GE in early 2003 as the Global Marketing Leader for the Healthcare Vertical Initiative. In this role she was responsible for analyzing healthcare needs, articulating the value proposition of our broader healthcare offer, creating company-wide sales tools and marketing communications materials. Now the Corporate Imagination Breakthrough Leader, Shahira leads a variety of strategic marketing projects and works closely with the GE Global Research Center and the businesses to enable the commercialization of breakthrough innovations.

Prior to GE, Shahira was at Siemens Medical Solutions where she worked as Marketing Director. During her tenure at Siemens, she was also Vice President of Marketing for the Optical Networking division of the company’s Information and Communications Network.

Shahira previously led various teams at Lucent Technologies and AT&T Bell Labs. During her tenure at AT&T and Lucent, Shahira led global teams in the areas of Product Management, Systems Engineering and Market Development. Shahira began her career as Chief Biomedical Engineer at Berlex Laboratories.

Shahira received a B.S. and a M.S.E.E. from Rutgers University.

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Contributed by Peter Erickson, Senior Vice President of Innovation, Technology & Quality, General Mills
(See complete bio below the article)

For an entrepreneur, the idea of taking your innovation and sharing it with someone else – let alone a large corporation – can be an intimidating, if not daunting, task. Which company would be the best partner? How do you ensure you’re protected from a legal perspective? How will you benefit? If your goals are to take your product or technology to the next level, speed its time to market and grow its distribution to have a national or even global reach, then you may find value in exploring a partnership with a larger company.

There are several variables to consider when venturing into this type of partnership. Based on General Mills’ experience in working on a wide range of projects with partners of all sizes, we have identified the following nine tips for entrepreneurs seeking to develop a successful partnership with a larger company.

Nine Tips for Entrepreneurs

1. Create a differentiated opportunity. Articulate the unique and proprietary aspects of your product. How is it different and how is it better than anything on the market? Is there an opportunity to be first to market with a breakthrough new product? Explaining the unique benefits of your innovation up front will give the company a reason to take a closer look at your proposal.

2. Test your innovation. Develop a pedigree for the product. You will be ahead of the game if you are able to get your innovation into the hands of its end user. This will allow you to speak to the in-market performance and the consumer or retailer reaction. Some of our partners, for example, came to us with insights from selling their products on the Internet, in small regional grocery chains or on college campuses. That learning can go a long way toward helping a company understand the unique consumer benefits of your product.

3. Be selective. Focus on your lead candidate and avoid courting multiple partners at once. A company wants to know you are committed and willing to work together to ensure that the opportunity will produce competitive advantages in the marketplace. And remember, most companies, including General Mills, want to create relationships for the long term. Take the time and do it right.

4. Find a contact to be your champion. Navigating the politics and processes of a large corporation can be challenging. Having a tour guide is very helpful. For example, at General Mills your key contact will be a member of the General Mills WIN (Worldwide Innovation Network) team, our company’s external innovation group. The G-WIN team is always available to answer potential partners’ questions about our organization, our processes and about partnerships in general.

5. Do your homework on the potential partner. Use available public information to educate yourself on your potential partner’s lines of business, key strategies, industry and competitors. You should also familiarize yourself with the economics of the industry so you are well-versed in the financials before getting into any conversations about important details such as licensing fees. For example, potential partners can obtain company background and information on our approach to external partnerships from a video located on our G-WIN Web site (www.generalmills.com/WIN).

6. Connect the dots. Make the connection between your proposed innovation and the company’s business model and brand. For which product platform or division do you envision it to be a good fit? How would this help the company’s bottom line?

7. Demonstrate you can deliver. Describe your team’s experience in the industry. Prove that your product is scalable to the volume demands of the partner’s business. Have any claims you make about the product validated (e.g., health claims), and be sure to speak to the company’s priorities. For General Mills, food quality and safety are important, and our company wants to know you share the same values. If you do not have the expertise in a certain area – manufacturing, safety, etc. – don’t be afraid to tap outside consultants to develop those capabilities within your operation.

8. Have a business model in mind. Communicate the type of opportunity you are looking for, but stay flexible. Oftentimes, it makes the most sense to start with a smaller opportunity and then grow that into a broader, deeper partnership.

9. Part on good terms. If either or both companies in the partnership decide to pass on an opportunity, walk away gracefully and leave the door open to future collaborations. Often it is just a matter of timing – the best opportunity for collaboration may not be the first proposal, so maintaining rapport is an important element of eventual success.

Open innovation is an emerging trend, so be on the lookout for opportunities to grow your business through this type of joint venture. Regardless of whether you are in the food industry or another trade, stay mindful of the above suggestions and you will be well-prepared to enter into a mutually beneficial partnership with another company.

If you think your innovation is a good fit for General Mills’ business, our G-WIN team would like to hear from you. Through G-WIN, we seek external partners with patented or patent-pending technologies or commercialized products that would be complementary to our brands and businesses. Prospective partners may submit patented or patent-pending innovations to the G-WIN team through a Web portal at www.generalmills.com/WIN, or may contact the team with other inquiries by calling 763-764-4946 (GWIN).

About the author

Peter Erickson

Peter Erickson is senior vice president of innovation, technology and quality for General Mills.
As the head of General Mills’ innovation and technology organization, Mr. Erickson is responsible for the invention and commercialization of new food products and technologies that can help in nourishing the lives of its consumers by providing increasingly higher levels of health, taste and convenience. Mr. Erickson’s responsibility for the General Mills quality organization is focused on delivering brands that its consumers can trust and value through its global leadership in consumer and product safety.

Mr. Erickson has been employed by General Mills for the past 19 years. Prior to that, he worked in product development as a senior food scientist at General Foods Corporation in White Plains, N.Y. Mr. Erickson received both B.S. and M.S. degrees in food science at the University of Massachusetts, where he continues to serve as a member of the university’s food science external advisory board.

Headquartered in Minneapolis, General Mills is a leading global manufacturer and marketer of consumer foods products with significant operations located around the world. Its global brand portfolio includes Betty Crocker, Pillsbury, Green Giant, Häagen-Dazs, Cheerios and more. In the United States, General Mills consumer brands are sold in every section of the retail grocery store, with a No. 1 or No. 2 leading share position in nearly every food category in which it competes. General Mills also is a leading supplier of baking and other food products to the foodservice and commercial baking industries.

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