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A Summary of FEI Day One

Posted by on 19 May 2015
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The 2015 Front End of Innovation Conference held at the Boston
World Trade Center & Seaport, held from May 18-20, 2015, features
innovators and practitioners from around the world. The conference that
challenges the way companies think touts a roster of keynote speakers including
Seth Godin, Steve Blank, and Tom Kelley.
On day one of the conference, Batterii hosted a panel
discussion featuring Anthony Lambrou of Pfizer, Inc.; John Gleason of A Better
View; and Daniel J. Sims of Procter & Gamble. The panel, moderated by
Batterii CEO Kevin Cummins, talked about how companies can most effectively
approach and support global innovation programs.
Here are the lessons
your company can learn from their innovation playbook.
1. Focus on
culture.
When looking to harness a culture that could support
sustainable innovation, leaders at Pfizer asked themselves the seemingly simple
question: 'What would a corporate innovation function across the company look
like'?

The answer would be in design thinking capabilities, but the real insight in
implementation was the not just the tools or the training.

'We're really focusing on the mindset and cultural shift,' explained Lambrou,
who heads up Worldwide Innovation at Pfizer.

Pfizer looks at a number of factors. First, they evaluate how they signal and
communicate innovation successes within the organization. Pfizer wants to be
able to tell stories that prove out their model. Lambrou explained they see these
intentional activities as part of a process to build out success, and build the
right culture.


Changing culture is most effective when you build-in what Lambrou called
'experimentation learning loops,' something that's very clear when working at
Pfizer. Part of the design thinking framework, this approach allows you to
balance risk while enabling short and long-term evaluation of the return on
your innovation and capability-building efforts.

'There are ways and steps along the way [to] experiment, and you learn, and you
quickly adapt,' Lambrou said. If a form of a 'reward structure' is built into
the framework of your innovation program, critical learning can quickly occur.

While Pfizer's innovation model may be driven centrally, it's distributed and signaled
to the organization through a large network'another component that's crucial to
scaling the human-centered principles dependably and in an effective manner.
Currently Pfizer has more than 400 design thinking champions found around the
world, all utilized to help support the right mindset.

2. Look outside the
design function.
Gleason, Founder and CEO of A Better View, has worked on
design thinking projects with hundreds of corporate clients. Gleason shared
that often the first thing that leadership wants to do is focus solely on the
word 'design' when it comes to design thinking programs. He looks to ensure
leaders see that design thinking is a tool set that is best when used across
the company, and across disciplines. 'As inept as [design thinking] may be
named, is actually a problem solving tool. It's seeing the world differently,
and solving, in many cases, very complex business challenges.'
Both P&G and Pfizer think of design thinking as a
problem solving tool and a capability set, one that's not limited to'or
necessary led'by designers in all cases.
'Design thinking is a way of coming up with solutions you
would have never predicted you could have reached,' said Sims, Principle
Designer at Procter & Gamble. 'I see design thinking as not a specifically
'design process,' where you follow steps, but it's more a point of view where
you look at first starting with a very human-centric approach.'

Within P&G, the design function has historically been the key sponsor for
design thinking, but design thinking is in no way constrained or limited to
that function. 'We have trained multifunctional leaders, so we have people who
facilitate and run design thinking sessions who are not in the design group,'
Sims explained.

3. Leaders must steer
the ship.

At P&G and Pfizer, support for
innovation is a combination of people, resources, technology and a
'do-it-yourself' approach modeled by leaders.

Sims said the role of leadership is a crucial one in implementation of
human-centered innovation at P&G. 'The role of leadership particularly in
design thinking is to be a clear support and sponsor,' he said.

With CEO A.G. Lafley internally and outwardly supporting design thinking
as a core component of P&G's innovation strategy, the company has alignment
between the leadership team and the team investing their time on-the-ground in
innovation activities.

Buy-in from leadership is something Pfizer also advocates in its pursuit of
breakthrough ideas. 'It's really important for leaders to clearly signal that
[support for risk-taking] in the organization,' said Lambrou. 'They steer the
ship in terms of how people are thinking.'

If people are hesitant to take risks, it's tough to drive innovation. 'The
first thing they can do, is take risks themselves and invest in opportunities
that may not pan out right away.'

Lambrou had one more argument, bringing the panel to a conclusion with proven
advice on how to best scale design thinking: 'Get out there and do it. Try it
out within your organization, and see what works, and what doesn't. You'll find
gaps and then you'll learn more,' he said. 'It will be a great signal for
people to get into that mindset.'

About Batterii: Batterii provides enterprise software designed to help
companies scale innovation. Global 2000 companies rely on Batterii to support the
innovation process from research through product validation. Accessible at any
time via desktop or mobile app, colleagues across departments, divisions,
cities or countries can utilize the platform for research, insights, synthesis,
and prototyping enabling a sustainable pipeline of breakthrough ideas. Read
more about how Batterii can be tailored to your innovation process at batterii.com.

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