Derick Kurdy from J&J and Neel Tilak from Janssen discuss the potency of an innovation culture and how it works with key suppliers.
The talk began with a story about the Band Aid, about how the inventor made it as a act of love for his wife. The moral of the story; innovations start with a need that is cared for and executed for a real problem.
Robert Wood Johnson built innovation into the company's Credo and culture of Johnson & Johnson. It's most recent manifestation is called Supplier-enabled Innovation.
Here's how it works:
1. Seek innovations wherever they may be.
2. Suppliers empower innovation beyond one company's existing ability.
3. A culture of innovation needs to be present to accept ideas.
4. Investing in suppliers with business insights grows the overall innovation capacity.
In 2007, pharma pipeline was drying up. J&J sought new product identification and development. In 2010 the program was named SEI (supplier-enabled innovation), claiming "together, we are more." Began telling the multifaceted story of innovation at J&J internally to build the culture.
Boldly, they asked themselves, "what can we do across procurement to drive innovation across the enterprise?"
The team split innovations into three value-generating categories: Product, Business Model, and Process. Suppliers helped in all three areas. J&J shares the need and suppliers craft solutions. It has reached such popularity that there is now a coveted, annual supplier awards.
In 2012, the SEI team began to socialize their ethos to their 1000+ procurement professionals across the globe. As well, they invited fitting suppliers into the process of asset pipeline to ensure new technologies would be available once a product scales. They named it Advanced Sourcing & Innovation.
Now, in 2014, tethering the market growth drivers and corporate strategy with procurement capabilities and innovation is key to create value, lead with a purposeful pipeline, scale the globe, and execute as quickly as possible.
The future, the speakers contend, will be driven by customer and healthcare patients.