It's not about brilliance. Valuable new ideas are the product of hard work and smart, disciplined processes.
Scott Menchin
In April, A.G. Lafley, the chairman and CEO of Procter & Gamble (NYSE:PG), and Ram Charan, adviser to such business leaders as Jack Welch and Robert Nardelli, published an insider's guide to innovation at P&G and other top corporations. The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth With Innovation argues that innovation -- like learning -- must be continuous and pursued at all levels of the organization. The book describes dozens of mechanisms for keeping the idea pipeline full, such as P&G's customer-immersion programs, which send employees to live in consumers' homes, and innovation "hot zones," facilities where product teams spend weeks on creative exercises.
It's a great book, but for owners of small companies, it's a little like reading about Disney World when all you have to play with is a backyard swing set. We wondered: Could P&G's approach to innovation be made to scale for businesses with a tiny fraction of P&G's resources?
We asked Lafley and Charan to imagine they were the founders of a company in an industry of their choice, with $4 million in revenue and 30 employees. What would they do to make their business as innovative as possible?
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