Best Innovations

Best
Innovation
Coverage
2015
BEST OF 2015 INNOVATION LEADER
CONTENTS
Lego CEO: To innovate, create a separate structure 4
Dell’s chief innovation officer on innovation portfolios and training 6
Inside Home Depot’s new innovation lab at Georgia Tech 10
What Manulife’s senior tech execs want from new LOFT initiative 13
MasterCard exec talks Whirlpool collaboration, startup accelerator 17
United Airlines IT leader describes the RAMP scorecard for evaluating ideas 19
General Mills innovation EVP on becoming ‘best big small company’ 22
Coke’s David Butler on building a program for ‘exponential growth’ 26
CVS Health’s Chief Digital Officer on navigating two revolutions 34
Inside the entrepreneur-led innovation group at Eastern Bank 36
Peer advice: Creating the right conditions for disruptive innovation 39
Six innovation agenda items for 2016 41
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i n n o v a t i o n l e a d e r. c o m
2 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

Thanks for your help in puTTing TogeTher This collecTion of our Top ar-
Ticles from 2015.
We looked at our most-read stories from InnovationLeader.com, as well as our most-clicked and shared
material on social media. So rather than these pieces being “Editor’s Picks,” they’re your picks.
What didn’t we include? There were several pieces high on the list that also
appeared in the Fall 2015 issue of Innovation Leader magazine, so we left
those out (but you can see them below, and read them online.) We also didn’t
include, for reasons of length, the three research reports we published in 2015:
• Untangling Innovation Metrics

• Innovation Benchmarking Report 2015
• Hiring Innovators
If you’d like to download the slide presentations you see excerpted here,
most are available in the Resources area of our site (click “Downloadable Documents,” and look for the
company name.) As always, we love hearing your thoughts on topics and companies we should we writing
about. And I hope we’ll see you at one of our 2016 events (the next is in Silicon Valley, March 30 & 31st) or
talk with you on one of our conference calls.
Best of luck on all your endeavors in 2016!
Scott Kirsner
Editor & Co-Founder
editor@innovationleader.com
Here are the top stories from 2015 that appeared in our magazine; you can find all of these online as well.
» The power of definition: Moving beyond innovation as a buzzword

» How MTD Products shepherded an impossible product to market
» Disney SVP on how accelerator program led to new partnerships
» Fast Company founder on corporate innovation challenges
» General Electric exec shares details, slides on open innovation efforts
» Alaska Airlines’ lean startup test in airport lounges

Lego CEO: To innovate, create a

separate structure
The chief executive of Lego Group, Jørgen Vig Knudstorp, says that established companies, at their
core, do two kinds of work: exploitive and exploratory.
Exploitive work involves finding ways to wring more revenue from today’s products and services, and
exploratory work involves cultivating concepts that could one day turn into new products and services.
“Companies need to tinker,” says Knudstorp, CEO of the privately-held toy company, whose revenues
were $4.4 billion in 2014.
We caught up with Knudstorp at a conference organized by the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, Mass.
I nnovation Leader: It sounds like you believe that to

really innovate, you need to create a structure that is
somewhat insulated and separated from the day-to-day
So Future Lab, when they have an idea with high poten-
tial, do they eventually hand it over to an existing busi-
ness unit?
operations, like a skunkworks?
Yes. As an example, in 2010 or 2011, we launched board
Knudstorp: What we do is a little bit of a separation. We games made out of Lego bricks. Future Lab came up with
have something we call a Future Lab. It is outside our that idea. We had wheels,
normal cycle of introducing figures, and bricks —
new products. When I come what’s missing? One guy
home, I’m going to review said, it’s a die. If you could
the Christmas 2017 portfo- change the sides of the
lio. Future Lab is outside of die, you could reinvent
that regular product planning gameplay. They worked
process — it’s experimental on that for three or four
stuff. Last year, we launched years, and then we took it
a product called Lego Fusion, to market. Right now, we
which we’ve now taken off the have a popular line called Ninjago, and they [brought that
market. But it was an experiment in linking physical to dig- board game to market first.] The board games we [sold] for
ital. You’d scan something with your phone, and bring it three years and then we ran out of ideas, so we took it off
into a videogame. market.
And of course, the MIT Media Lab has always been for us a So stuff that comes out of the Future Lab doesn’t have
place to come and get inspired, and we have other collabo- to stay on the market forever? It can last for just three or
rators like the Media Lab. four years, without being seen as a failure?

Yes. For us, creativity is taking something you know and “Yeah, but that’s innovation in a company that does physi-
reconfiguring it. [Our business] is all based on the brick… cal products.” But if you think about the Google search en-
but in new iterations. We are very structured about saying, gine, that is the combination of two well-known ideas — the
search engine, and the idea of how do you index scientific
journals [to see how many people cite a particular article.]
‘A lot of creativity and inven-

A lot of creativity and invention is bringing stuff together
tion is bringing stuff together that we haven’t seen before. When you take that mindset,
that we haven’t seen before. you suddenly start opening up a kaleidoscope. You might
say, we have this idea here, and how would that match with
When you take that mindset, ten other concepts? You combine them.
you suddenly start opening up
a kaleidoscope.’ This idea of creativity being a white canvas is probably a
too-romantic notion. You look at Picasso, the creative ge-
nius of painting. He was an extremely skillful painter of
what kind of play is it, who is it for, and then playing around classical paintings and portraits for 20 years. Then he said,
with how we can create new combinations. People say, what if I take these geometric figures into painting? IL

Dell’s chief innovation officer on

innovation portfolios and training
Dell chief innovation officer Jim Stikeleather opened a recent Brightidea “birds of a
feather” innovation gathering in Austin with a fantastic talk about the importance
of fostering divergent thinking in big organizations — and some of the challenges of
making real change happen.
“If you’re going to be a change agent, you have to understand that everyone you’re
going to disrupt is going to be against you,” Stikeleather says. “You go into a man-
agement review committee, and what are the odds that everyone in there is going to
benefit from your idea? It could be the greatest, with potential to make an incredible
amount of money — but how will it drive the product line manager’s business?”
We caught up with Stikeleather afterward; below, he talks about his role within Dell’s Services busi-
ness and shares several slides. Dell went private in 2013 in the largest corporate privatization in his-
tory; annual revenues at the computer hardware and services giant are about $57 billion, and Dell has
111,000 employees.
“
When Dell acquired Perot Systems in 2009, I was people working on them. It’s meant to be a true, dynam-
CTO of Perot. What we were doing was exploring ic, flat, on-demand type of organization structure.” The
what the world would want, and what technologies group’s mission, Stikeleather says, is to “enable, facilitate,
would enable that. Dell came up with the title of Chief In- and accelerate” innovation within Dell Services.
novation Officer to let us continue doing what we were do- “If you think about how companies have made their
ing. So I am in the Dell Services organization, and I report money — other than the initial innovation – like Edison cre-
to the CTO of Dell Services.” ating the light bulb — almost all companies have made their
“Our team is small and virtual. But at any given time, money by achieving scale, and driving efficiency and pro-
I’m running projects that can have up to several thousand ductivity. They haven’t really made money by innovating.”

Stikeleather says his team manages a portfolio of proj- Many companies look at truly innovative ideas and see them
ects similar to the way a venture capitalist does. “I’m not as small potatoes — because everything is small at first. “It
responsible to my boss for the success or failure of one drives me to distraction. You look at something and say, ‘That’s
thing,” he says. “It’s about the whole portfolio.” a million-dollar business.’ But what is it going to be five or ten
“Here’s how you could describe almost everything that years from now — and do you want to be playing catch-up?”
goes on in business today: a problem occurs, you sense it, “Most companies don’t really want innovation. They
you categorize it, and then you find the best practice for want continuous improvement in what they’re already
addressing it. People into systems theory would call those doing.” Stikeleather’s slide below shows that that is what
simple systems. But you look at the economy today, and it’s they tend to get when they don’t make a conscious effort to
a complicated environment. There are lots of unknown un- design and execute an innovation plan.
knowns. You don’t know what you don’t know. That’s where “Executives get to where they are because they were
divergent thinking comes in. You have to probe, try things, successful at doing what the company does. But innovation
and test. You probe and then you look at the results, and is doing something different. Not only is that a threat to the
take action based on that.” But most business environments company’s current business and current margins, but it’s
encourage and reward convergent thinking, consensus, also a threat to the executives and their positions and their
and analysis much more than they do divergent thinking. power.”

“Very few companies are doing organic innovation. they haven’t done before. That is far better than incentives.”
They’re spending all their time watching, and then acquir- By offering innovation training to sales teams at Dell
ing startup companies, which is in-organic.” Services, Stikeleather says he has seen employees who
“My role at Dell is to be an enabler, a facilitator, an ac- have been through the program “closing more deals at
celerator of innovation. I help other people become inno- higher margins.” Customers, he says, “don’t want to be
vative. And I do that through training and education and sold to anymore. They want to insight, points of view,
through our foresight work — creating future scenarios and thought leadership. They want to brainstorm — they don’t
trying to provide divergent thinking.” want you coming in and saying, ‘I have the solution to your
Dangling incentives for innovative ideas or behaviors problem.’” The second slide above shares the principles of
doesn’t work — and Stikeleather says that plenty of behav- his training program; “Salesmakers” is a Dell term that
ioral research backs that up. What does work? “Get out of encompasses account executives, sales engineers, and
people’s way, give them autonomy, give them an opportunity others involved in the customer selling process.

In providing facilitation to teams within Dell Services, the press,” he says. Eventually, “it’s their idea because
“we’re internal consultants. I can go in an be [a team’s] they’re hearing about it from their teams, customers, and
advocate with upper management or with customers. And the press.”
when we talk about acceleration, I have a certain amount of Stikeleather agrees with Clay Christensen that various
discretionary funding to get things going.” ratios used as measures — like Internal Rate of Return and
Stikeleather talks about a “three-way pincer process” Return on Net Assets — can undermine a company’s inno-
to get executives bought in to challenging new ideas or vation engine.
disruptive business models. “They need to hear it from Below, Stikeleather shares a few of the trends and sce-
their teams, the customers, and reading about it in narios his group is monitoring and exploring. IL

Inside Home Depot’s new

innovation lab at Georgia Tech
By Stephen Ellison, Contributing Writer
When Home Depot opened a new innovation center on the campus of Georgia Tech in January, it had
three objectives: connect with engineering students who might eventually consider joining the com-
pany; explore technologies with the potential to impact retail; and host brainstorming sessions with
employees from throughout the business.
We spoke to the executive who oversees the new Home Depot Technology Center, Martin Key, about
what the $82 billion retailer is doing in the new lab, and why it chose the Tech Square complex, which
houses startups as well as other large companies like AT&T, ThyssenKrupp, and Coca-Cola Enterpris-
es. Key is based at the new center and he works within Home Depot’s IT organization, reporting to Chief
Architect Barbara Sanders.
Campus connections integrated we are with other businesses the better.” Key
also says he is looking forward to taking part in an Innova-
A big part of the lab’s location and partnership strategy with tion Council, recently created by Georgia Tech President
the university is to tap into Georgia Tech’s co-op program, George Peterson, which will involve monthly or bimonthly
where students gain work experience to complement their
education. A select group of 25 students works alongside
Home Depot associates at the lab, testing and developing
new technologies. And while not all of the students may be
interested in long-term careers with Home Depot, Key ad-
mits, the program seeks to establish a pipeline for talent.
“From my perspective, part of my role is actively going
out on campus and doing recruiting, trying to integrate as
much as I can with the campus, the different colleges, dif-
ferent majors, different professors and potentially the dif-
ferent student groups … to find the right people and solve
the needs we’re looking to solve,” explains Key.
Proximity to other Fortune 500 companies has its ben-
efits, too. “When you look at the type of company we are,

we don’t necessarily invent technology, but we invent ways
to use technology that’s out there,” he says. “So the more

meetings with other local businesses to spur collaboration

and conversations about innovation.
Another theme the center is
Technologies changing the retail business exploring is virtual reality and
augmented reality. How does
Key says that the second focus for the Technology Center
is to track emerging technologies like 3D printing, below,
Home Depot enable its custom-
or wearable devices: “Part of what I have to do is figure out ers, whenever or wherever they
what’s worth focusing on and what’s not quite ready yet,” want, to get the full experience
he says.
One set of technologies Key is exploring are those that of the product they’re shopping
will give in-store associates more face time with customers. for, or the entire home renova-
“Obviously, the more time they can spend with customers
tion they’re planning?
vice, or displaying a 3D environment on a camera or tablet.

Key also tracks new devices that customers might carry
into stores, or that might help associates work more effi-
ciently. “There are multiple devices that come out every
day – the new watches, and new devices within the tablet
space that have new functionality – so we’re kind of looking
at those to determine if we can provide a better experience
for our customers as well as our associates,” he says.
Hosting innovation sessions

the better,” Key says. “That, we believe, is our differentiat-
ing factor between a standard dot-com and a brick and mor- The Technology Center is also open for use by business
tar. Some of our projects that are coming closer to fruition units outside of IT, Key says. “A group from the business
use advanced analytics to help minimize the time associ- will come down, and they’ll bring 10 to 15 people, and I’ll
ates are tasking – or optimizing the tasks they do.” [Those
tasks don’t involve being available to customers.]
Another theme the center is exploring is virtual reality
and augmented reality. The problem: How does Home De-
pot enable its customers, whenever or wherever they want,
to get the full experience of the product they’re shopping
for, or the entire home renovation they’re planning? Visu-
alizing a new cabinet in a kitchen, or a fully rehabbed guest
bedroom, may not involve Oculus Rift virtual reality gog-

gles, right, or devices like Google Glass, Key says. It could
involve dropping a smartphone into a special viewing de-

spend an afternoon just kind of talking blue-sky sessions

with them and generating different ways they can go about
doing their day-to-day work,” he says. “Just having the
right atmosphere, the right environment, the right stimuli
around allows them to look at their day-to-day work in a
very different way.”
While the center is only a few

months old, Key is well aware to really weigh in where one might have a high priority over
that concrete results will be another,” Key explains. “Typically, I like to make sure we
have a good balance across all the different business units
important. When his team looks of Home Depot so we’re not focusing on one particular
at potential projects, it tries to area.” Key says he reports weekly to the company’s Chief
balance long-term projects that Information Officer, as well as his senior VPs and VPs.
While the center is only a few months old, Key is well
could pay off big in the future aware that concrete results will be important. When his
with small, quick-hit projects that team looks at potential projects, it tries to balance long-
allow the lab to prove its value. term projects that could pay off big in the future with
small, quick-hit projects that allow the lab “to go prove
our value,” he says. “The challenge is making sure to cre-
ate the right balance, and not letting the center become
Governance and impact more of a staff augmentation location,” Key says, becom-
ing a consultancy for the business units’ near-term needs.
When it comes to prioritizing projects and ideas that come “Obviously, some of the larger projects deal with more fu-
out of the Technology Center, “that’s where we use the ex- ture-looking technologies, and it takes longer to get that
ecutive steering committee within our group of IT leaders ROI out of a facility like this.” IL

What Manulife’s senior tech execs

want from new LOFT initiative
Executives at Manulife Financial knew they needed to play more offense when it came to exploring and
experimenting with new technologies.
Manulife’s chief information officer “has basically said that the old strategy of watching technologies
come out and then throwing money at them to try to catch up is no longer valid,” says Jesse Bean, the
company’s head of innovation, digital strategy, and M&A execution.
“Exponential growth in technology is just too fast for that strategy.”
To speed up the company’s tech metabolism, Manulife in July
launched the Lab of Forward Thinking, or LOFT. A big part of the
Loft’s mission, Bean explains, is “to create dedicated teams to filter
those new technologies, and figure out which ones we should latch
on to, in a cheap fashion by using lean startup and other method-
ologies.” The Loft has 15 employees who are based in Boston and
Toronto, Manulife’s headquarters.
We spoke with Bean; Ace Moghimi, head of innovation in North
America; and Sebastian Blandizzi, a senior vice president at Manulife’s investment division to learn how
the Loft came about — and what they hope comes out of it. (Moghimi and Bean are pictured above.) Manu-
life has about 29,000 employees, 53,000 agents, and $41 billion in 2014 revenue. It operates in Canada,
the U.S., and Asia. In the U.S., Manulife primarily markets its services under the John Hancock brand.
How the team came together Why put the team in Manulife Investment division,
as opposed to corporate? “The divisions have a budget,”
In June 2014, Blandizzi, who is the chief information of- Moghimi explains. And the executives who oversee LOFT
ficer for Manulife’s Investment Division and Group Func- are both CIOs, of the Investment division and of the entire
tions, held a town hall meeting on creating systems that company. “We’re very much a technology-centric group
could enhance the company’s ability to innovate. By No- to start, but we’re thinking about how we reach the rest of
vember, Blandizzi had approval to begin building a team, the organization through our programs,” says Moghimi.
and Moghimi, who had previously been working in deriva- “We’re going to offer hackathons, workshops on design
tives strategy, came on board. thinking and lean startup, and eventually, we may have an

innovation catalyst program.” corporate strategy, wealth management, and informa-

The employees in Boston and Toronto include de- tion services.
signers, software developers, and business people. “We LOFT’s space in Boston can accommodate about 35 em-
also have developer resources in Malaysia we can lever- ployees.
age, and we’ll hopefully have an intern for each project
team,” says Moghimi. Project teams consist of about The plan
four people each. An executive innovation committee
includes Blandizzi and other executives responsible for The slide below lays out what the LOFT plans to do.
Initially, LOFT has been sourcing ideas for projects Small teams within LOFT are intended to filter ideas
from senior executives, Moghimi says, “to make sure our and evaluate technologies, Bean says, “helping to deter-
work is aligned with leadership’s interest and strategy in- mine which ones we should latch on to, in a cheap fashion
tent.” But the group has also been holding “focus sessions” by using lean startup, design thinking, and triz method-
with each of the company’s three business units to explore ologies.” Bean says LOFT will have the ability to execute
their needs. Innovation fellows from the LOFT and cham- projects and “get them to a point of showing something
pions in each business unit help set up those sessions. that can stand up. If it’s valuable, and if everyone agrees,
Bean says that the people most eager to participate in then we begin to think about how to scale,” with help from
LOFT’s initiatives are in the tech-centric 19-35 age range, other parts of the organization.
and also early career executives in their mid-30s and early Among the topic areas they are exploring, Moghimi
40s. “Those are people who really want to make a name says, are machine learning, cognitive computing, accel-
for themselves, and they have the power to make change,” erated delivery of front office solutions, block chain, and
Bean says. augmented reality.

The first hackathon Manulife partnered with the consultancy Scramble Sys-
tems to organize the hackathon.
The LOFT celebrated its official launch in July with an em- While the LOFT’s first hackathon was internally-ori-
ployee hackathon over two days. The challenge that teams ented, Blandizzi says that future events may involve out-
worked on: “How might we prepare to serve our next gen- side entrepreneurs and techies. “We are sorting through
eration of customers and expand our services to those who the IP issues, and working with legal and audit and com-
are just beginning to think about securing their financial pliance on that,” he says. “Many other companies have
future?” About 100 employees participated, and a handful done it, so we’re exploring how can we follow suit with
of senior Manulife execs came to Boston on the final day our own spin, and take in ideas from the startup commu-
of the hackathon to judge the projects and participate in nity. We’re open to engaging with startup organizations
an opening reception for the LOFT, which attracted more that want to partner with us – and help solve some very
than 300 people from the local innovation community. complex problems.”

Expectations
‘Most people see only the
Blandizzi says that it’d be “a recipe for failure, if you want-
ed ROI in the first year.” But his goal is “to build a capa-
Uber-type ideas, but 90 per-
bility in our organization where we can fail ideas quick- cent of things that startups try
ly, and get to those Uber ideas. Most people see only the fail. If you have a $10 million
Uber-type ideas, but 90 percent of things that startups try
fail. If you have a $10 million failure that you can’t really failure that you can’t really
document any learnings from, it’s not a successful failure. document any learnings from,
But a couple hundred thousand dollar failure — an idea that
it’s not a successful failure.’
everybody thought was viable, and that has helped identify
other areas that can be efficiently executed on — that starts
to translate into a successful failure.” Blandizzi talks about new technology that increases the efficiency of a business
producing a “quarterly failure report” for the LOFT “that area.”
would list the failures, and speak to the learnings and the Bean says that the LOFT “is looking at solutions that
successes of those failures.” have a longer runway than a typical IS project” at Manulife,
“In the early days, LOFT is more about building an eco- which tends to expect a payback in two years or less. “We
system and culture here that can be innovative,” Moghimi understand this is a three- to five-year stint,” he says. “We
says. “But we need to deliver some business value too, have to make returns in that period, or else we’re not doing
which could be new business lines, products, services, a our job.” IL

MasterCard exec talks Whirlpool

collaboration, startup accelerator
Late last year, we interviewed John Sheldon, who joined MasterCard Labs from eBay. Sheldon, Group
Head of Innovation Management, talked about some of the initiatives that Labs is involved with, and
explained how the group collaborated with Whirlpool to reimagine the venerable quarter-fed washers
and dryers at the neighborhood laundromat.
MasterCard also shared with Innovation Leader an overview of what it hopes to achieve with its Start
Path program for financial services and payment-related startups.
M asterCard has had a Labs program since 2010. I

came in with a real intention to help scale this capa-
bility across the organization. How can we sprinkle this
know what the right way to work with them is — it may be a
combination of two or three approaches. But we’re looking
for these startups to meet their metrics, get funding, and
fairy dust around? For the first three years, a big focus has get some market validation for the problems they set out
been on getting some wins, getting credibility inside the to solve. One example of a startup doing that is the Nymi
organization. band, below, which is using your heartbeat to uniquely
My boss is Gary Lyons, the Chief Innovation Officer of identify people. We’re primarily focused on startups that
the company. He’s responsible for MasterCard Labs and are changing the commerce experience and payments.
the innovation agenda. When I present to merchant partners and banking
I run Innovation Management, one of the five key areas partners, they often want help innovating the way we do.
inside of Labs. (Other groups include R&D/tech devel- So we’ve started “Labs as a Service,” within MasterCard
opment teams, and the Start Path accelerator program.) Advisors. It’s a joint venture between the Labs group and
We’re responsible for generating ideas, piloting, and pro- MasterCard Advisors, to bring our innovation programs to
totyping — all the way up to when we make a commercial- others.
ization decision.
Once we decide to commercialize, we treat it like its
own startup. It gets funding like you’d manage a portfolio
of VC-funded startups, including hiring an Incubation Ex-
ecutive Officer, who is the CEO of that idea. We have a tech
team that supports it.
But we recognize that we don’t have all the great ideas.
So that’s why we have Start Path. We’re testing different
ways of engaging with startups, from investing in startups,

like with Techstars, to having seven businesses co-hab-
itating with us at our Dublin Innovation Lab. We don’t

Over the last four years, we’ve produced 300-400 pro-

totypes. We’ve had four public incubations, and one of
those has just graduated back into the core business. We
‘A big part of engaging the
got it to substantive operational scale that it became time company with innovation tour-
to reinsert the organ back into the body, and make sure it naments is to culturally prepare
doesn’t get rejected. That is called Simplify Commerce, and
it is a way to easily accept credit cards through a website.
the company, so when we go
In November, we completed an innovation tournament to reinsert these innovations
that we call Ignite. We identified two briefs, and asked the into the core business, they’re
company to generate ideas. One of them was, how do we
better leverage the data we have to create new services? The ready for it.’
second was, how can we innovate on our internal processes
to be more efficient? We have just under 10,000 employ-
ees. For that tournament, we had over 430 ideas from 550 payment process is pretty painful at a laundromat.’ I led a
people. The winners get a prize — that includes $25,000 for team of folks — a handful of their engineers and some en-
several ideas. In this case, one idea was substantive enough gineers and designers from MasterCard Labs. We isolated
that we’re looking to change that person’s job to take this on ourselves near Philadelphia, at a customer’s warehouse
full-time. Some of the business units jumped on board with where we had access to laundry machines and people who
auxiliary prizes for the best ideas within their business units. knew the machines. We committed to fixing the problem.
A big part of engaging the company with innovation We went to laundromats and showed people paper proto-
tournaments is to culturally prepare the company, so when types, to make sure we were producing something of value.
we go to reinsert these innovations into the core business, We ended up redoing the entire payment system on a com-
they’re ready for it. mercial laundry machine to be able to do the whole thing
We’ve done a lot of different innovation events, and on your mobile phone. Not just payments, but notification
they’ve been different lengths. Some are three hours, some when a cycle was finished, ways to find available laundry
are a day, some are 48 hours. We do In- machines near you. That project
novation Express, when we fly people is moving to a pilot with 1000 ma-
from all over the world for a four-team chines in the New York City area,
competition, or Launch Pad, which is and we’ve announced that it will be
a week-long event. We tried an intense in-market in 2015 in Maytag ma-
event that was a month in length, trying chines. We’re going to go to market
to turn something into a diamond over a in under a year and change.
month. That was too hard on the team. The moment of payment is
The difference between what we got in shrinking in time, motion, and
a week and a month wasn’t that differ- activity. You get out of an Uber
ent. In almost every case, the innovation car, and there’s really no payment
events are all-consuming. So we create moment at all. We’re trying to sur-
separation from participants’ day jobs. round that payment moment with
We did some work with Whirlpool value before, during, and after the
recently. They came to us and said, ‘The transaction. IL

United Airlines IT leader describes the

RAMP scorecard for evaluating ideas
By Patricia Riedman Yeager, Contributing Writer
United Airlines was going through some turbulence in 2012. That year, the Chicago-based carrier
ranked dead last in the annual Airline Quality Rating report, an industry report card that measures
customer satisfaction.
A year later, United had made the largest leap in the rankings, which included all major U.S. air-
lines, improving rates of on-time performance, mishandled baggage, passenger “bumping,” and overall
customer complaints. United Airline’s 2014 net income also showed dramatic improvement, spiking to
$1.97 billion, up 89 percent from 2013.
Part of the continuing turnaround story at United are new approaches to idea-sourcing and a focus on
rolling out technologies more rapidly. And one of the key players at the company is Jason Flores, Senior
Manager, IT, Flight Operations, Mobile Technology, and Innovation. We spoke with him recently about
some of the initiatives that he and others in the company have introduced to improve both airline opera-
tions and the passenger experience.
Sourcing and scoring ideas » Return: How long will it take to return the invest-
ment? Within one year receives the highest score, and
Flores assumed his current role in 2013, when he was within three years receives the lowest score.
asked to create an IT innovation program that would solicit
» Advantage: Is the idea groundbreaking and new, or
and cultivate ideas from United’s administrative employ-
already existing?
ees. He adopted what he calls an “intrapreneur” approach,
in which individual employees take responsibility for their » Market: Is there a market for this idea? Is it for every
ideas, and his innovation team (now about a half-dozen single customer, or does it just touch a subset?
staffers and contractors) helps them shepherd their ideas
» Potential: How likely is that this idea will be imple-
from concept to reality. Since Flores works within the IT
mented? Are there too many components that could
group, the focus is on ideas with “some sort of IT enable-
complicate the rollout, or is this something that could
ment or IT component. If it’s an idea related to boarding
be up and running in a couple of months?
planes, there will be some sort of IT component on the back
end,” he says. The scoring system, Flores says, helped ensure that his
Flores developed a scorecard to help evaluate employ- team was devoting its energy to ideas “with more meat on
ees’ ideas, which he nicknamed RAMP: them.”

customers through the United Airlines mobile app on

their iOS or Android devices.
Flores consciously modeled
parts of the program after the » Passports: Last August, United was the first U.S. air-
line to offer customer the ability to scan passports to
way entrepreneurs raise mon- check-in for international flights through the United
ey from angel investors and app, which has been downloaded by 13 million people
venture capitalists. since it was released in 2013.
» At Newark Liberty Airport, United Airlines has dis-

tributed 6,000 iPads spread throughout gate areas
Flores consciously modeled parts of the program after and nearby restaurants so customers can order food
the way entrepreneurs raise money from angel investors and watch the status of their flights.
and venture capitalists. A team of a half-dozen executives,
from managing directors to vice presidents at United, act- » iPhone 6 Plus: In 2015, United will arm more than
ed a bit like venture capitalists, giving feedback and rank- 23,000 of its flight attendants with their own iPhone
ing the employees on their Proof of Concept plans using 6 Plus. In addition to speeding the sale of food, bev-
the RAMP scorecard. A handful of the ideas received seed erage and other retail items onboard, the iPhones
money, and currently one idea is in the patent process. will give attendants access to company email, United.
And while the program has been put on pause for the time com, the company intranet, as well as policies and
being, it helped put United on the list of finalists at the procedure manuals. Next up: Replace attendants’
most recent Chicago Innovation Awards. (Flores says the printed safety manuals with iPhone versions, as well
program worked well, but notes that for the time being, as the ability to stream real-time reporting of aircraft
“we have plenty of ideas,” and he didn’t have the resources cabin issues and repairs. Passenger-focused applica-
to manage an “always open” call for ideas.) tions are also being planned.
People who’ve participated the program have said that
even though their idea wasn’t selected, they learned how to
build a business plan or experience what it’s like to work on
a completely different side of the business.
Creating new mobile experiences for passen-

gers and employees
Flores also oversees the day-to-day Mobile Technology being

developed in United’s Flight Operations, which, along with oth-
er groups at the company, went into overdrive in the last year.
Some examples from around the company (Flores’ team
was responsible for the last two):
» Uber integration: Late last year, United was the first

airline to offer Uber’s on-demand ride service to its

» iPad Air2 for the pilots: The iPad Air2 devices up- content based on a person’s location), NFC technology
date the first-generation iPads, which United be- (often used for payments), and customer data. For in-
gan rolling out to pilots in 2011 to reduce paper- stance, the flight attendants using their new iPhones
work. The newer iPads are designed to give pilots to handle credit card transactions will now be able to
the latest weather updates, cockpit procedure man- collect data that United couldn’t easily gather before.
uals, as well as help them keep track of their time “We’re creating new opportunities to understand our
on-the-job to make sure they’re not violating FAA customers and their retail purchase trends,” Flores
regulations. says.
Innovation challenges
Flores says there are four key challenges that he grapples

with — challenges that will be familiar to many innovation
executives operating inside big companies.
1. Culture. At most established companies — United was

founded in 1926 — culture and the “this is the way
we’ve always done it” attitude are powerful forces in-
novators must contend with.
2. Getting the right stakeholders involved when projects

relate to their divisions, and avoiding turf issues.
3. Keeping people motivated and engaged in the innova-

Flores says a key question for his team is, “What’s the tion program — even though most people’s ideas won’t
right device to empower employees to make their job more be developed.
efficient?”
In the near future, he envisions that his group will 4. Risk. “Trying to define how much risk your compa-
be brainstorming about things such as how to incorpo- ny is willing to take — that’s always a moving target,”
rate wearable technologies, beacons (which can deliver Flores says. IL

General Mills innovation EVP on

becoming ‘best big small company’
By Stephen Ellison, Contributing Writer
Peter Erickson, executive vice president of Innovation, Technology, and Quality for General Mills, is
focused on a very clear goal: to help the company, with 43,000 employees and brands like Cheerios,
Nature Valley, and Betty Crocker, become “the best big small food company in the world.”
But blending scale and agility is a tall order for most large organizations. We spoke with Erickson in
July to talk about how he’s approaching it; how the company stays close to consumers; and his efforts to
position the $17.6 billion company as the “partner of choice” for inventors and startups working in the
food industry.
Erickson has been with Minneapolis-based General Mills for 27 years, and he reports directly to CEO
Ken Powell.
Treating the world as our lab So back in the day, we used this adage of a General Mills
researcher used the lab as their world. We flipped that
Innovation Leader: The General Mills innovation pro- on its head and said a researcher needs to view the world
gram is one of the longest-running among big corpora- as their lab. We really tried to open the doors of General
tions. What prompted the launch of the program, and Mills and be much more [overt] about what the needs of
what were some of the initial obstacles? General Mills are, and inviting inventors and innovators
from all around the world to connect with us to together
Peter Erickson: Our commitment to innovation at Gener- try to drive growth.
al Mills has been around since the company was founded
150 years ago. Over the last decade, we’ve made a very con- Within the last several years, we have been working dili-
certed effort toward … reinventing innovation at General gently on trying to [make] the consumer even more central
Mills. One of the first phases of that, which started about a to our development process. And we talk about creating
decade ago, was our focus on looking outside the company consumer-first design, where we’re getting our research-
– new ideas, new technologies, new connection points that ers and innovation teams out into consumers’ homes, into
could help drive growth for General Mills by bringing new the grocery stores, shopping with consumers, really try-
capabilities into the organization. What we have come to ing to gain a lot more empathy for the various consumers
we serve … and doing a lot of that through ethnographic
learn is that there are lots of other really smart people out
there that have tremendous ideas and capabilities that we research in observing consumers in their own environ-
can do a better job of leveraging. ments to [figure] out those critical jobs that need to be

done. Again, our belief is if we can get the individual who can solve the
problem as close to the individual who has the problem, we dramati-
cally increase the likelihood that we’re going to be able to bridge that
gap and create something meaningful for the consumer, and ultimately
meaningful for General Mills.
Making long-term bets
How has the program evolved over the years?
When we look at all the stuff we’ve done across General Mills, really
the overarching goal, the North Star that we see for ourselves, is this
aspiration of becoming the best big small food company in the world.
What we’re really talking about is [embracing] many of the best prac-
tices that small companies have today. The focus on the consumer and
the understanding of the consumer is probably greater at small compa-
nies than at big companies. Small companies are very agile and quick
and able to pivot in the marketplace – and they’re very efficient in their
use of resources. So we’re trying to adapt some of those small-company
techniques, but at the same time preserve some of the big company’s ca-
pabilities – things like the depth of talent that we have. We continue to
invest in recruiting and developing and retaining some of the best and
brightest minds in the food industry… Small companies would kill for
some of the skills and capabilities that we enjoy within our organization
today.
The second thing that big companies have is the ability to scale. When
we have an idea that works, we’re able to scale it around the globe very
quickly – and we have lots of examples of innovations that might have
started in one part of the world that worked very well, and we’ve taken it
to other parts of the world.
The third is the ability to make long-term bets. We have some very deep
and long-term technology initiatives that we invest in that are helping
us create advantages in technologies that we think can take General
Mills well out into the future. Small companies tend to focus on what
they need for the next week or the next quarter or the next year; we’re
working on programs … that may not realize results and benefits for five
or even 10 years. So when we think of this adage of the best big small
company, it’s about all of that.

‘Looking to learn from the best’ kinds of software, tools that allow us to be able to transfer
knowledge more effectively. Again, some have worked really
What are some of the keys to the program’s success and well, and others have been great learning experiences for us.
longevity?
Striving to be a partner of choice
We don’t sit here believing we have the best approach to
innovation, that we have an advantage that’s going to allow What made you decide to start seeking external re-
us to win forever. We are constantly looking to learn from sources with the G-WIN program [the General Mills
the best, not just in the food industry but from many other Worldwide Innovation Network, which we’ve covered
industries that are focused on growth and innovation. So previously]?
that spirit of continued improvement is one of the elements
that has helped us be successful. The other one is a will- If I go back to my background, before I came to General
ingness to experiment within the context Mills, I worked for a small company. I saw
of our organization. We do a lot of pilot- how impactful it was to be reaching out and
ing – if we have a new approach or a new leveraging resources outside. But to do that
technique or new insight on how to drive effectively, you really had to know what to
innovation, we’ll try it in one portion of our ask for. One of the adages we talked a lot
organization, and if it works very well, we’ll about in the early days is if you’re out there
scale it across the rest of the organization. looking for everything, you’ll find nothing.
If it doesn’t, then we learn from it and move But if you’re out looking for specific solu-
on. The third thing is we have great sup- tions to key technical challenges, you’ll find
port from senior management. My direct many ways of being able to deliver that. That
boss, the CEO, he is constantly asking and was something I learned working for a small
pushing and prodding for us to continue to company.
invest in and develop new capabilities and
new approaches. And he’s given us a lot of [We are] really striving to be this partner of
latitude to try new things across the organization. choice externally, where inventors and innovators will come
to General Mills first with their ideas, because they know we
You mentioned some strategies or approaches that ha- treat them with respect, we take care of their technology, and
ven’t worked over the years. Can you be more specific we would share with them in the value that has been created.
about what those were and why they didn’t work?
How much of a difference has it made?
I think we have tried different approaches to how we’ve struc-
tured our organization. Like lots of organizations, we tried We’ve had a lot of products – and improvements to our ex-
centralizing and realized that we lost touch with the con- isting products … that have been made because of the con-
sumer. Then we decentralized and realized we didn’t have nection points we have leveraged with others outside. We did
enough scale to be able to invest deeply. So we’re always try- some research a few years back where we looked at all the new
ing to optimize the size and scale of our organization – some- products we introduced and at that time, about 50 percent of
times it works well for us, and sometimes we end up taking a everything we introduced had been leveraging a significant
step back and trying something different. We’ve tried a lot of external component of innovation or technology. Those 50
different ways of communicating and capturing knowledge percent that were leveraged were generating more profit and
within the organization. Also, we’ve tried some different more growth than the other 50 percent by a very large factor.

Talk about some of the projects or strategies that have sumer. We [aim to] understand what that consumer need
blown you away. is. Then we build a series of hypotheses on how we might
be able to solve that consumer need. We look into what are
Certainly, over the last decade, some of the most consis- all the technologies that we think will allow us to address
tently successful innovation we’ve seen has come from the various hypotheses that we generated – again, not just
our snack business – in particular the work we’ve done in food, but in other corollary industries as well. Then we
around portable snacks, grain snacks. When you think develop a network of companies that are providing those
about the Nature Valley line or the Fiber One product sorts of solutions and technologies. We reach out to them,
line, they have been hugely successful over a long period we talk about what they have, we determine if there is mu-
of time because we have been committed to continual in- tual value to be had by working together on solving that
novation. Our competition is constantly trying to catch [need], and if all that works, then we ultimately choose to
up, and in some cases, they have been able to match our work together and co-invent the solution.
product. But in all those cases, we’re on to something
Does this process ever involve direct competitors?
We’ve had a number of situations where we created a con-

‘Our competition is constant- sortium – where we had a variety of companies that might
ly trying to catch up, and in share a similar technology need, a similar problem that
some cases, they have been they’re trying to solve that we will work together on. …
Food safety is one that’s fairly common across the indus-
able to match our product. But try, and it’s not an area where a lot of our competitors are
in all those cases, we’re on to looking to create a competitive advantage. We all benefit
something even better by the by having safe foods that consumers can trust. So that’s an
area where it’s easy. Packaging and sometimes different
time they’ve figured out how to kinds of packaging formats are areas where you can find
do the work that we’ve done.’ opportunities for consortia, where you can come together
and leverage the collective scale to be able to reinvent an
approach to the industry.
even better by the time they’ve figured out how to do What’s in store for the future of the General Mills inno-
the work that we’ve done. And the result of that is in vation program and for the food industry in general?
our grain snack businesses, we’ve enjoyed some terrific
share growth over a long period of time. And our con- I certainly think the level of competition in our industry is
sumers have rewarded that with more trial and repeat not going to subside in any shape or form in the future. I
[purchasing] that have helped those businesses grow. think there are some parts of our industry that are focused
on cost-effectiveness and driving growth by taking away
Winners need to be willing to invest things that can contribute to the bottom line. I believe
the winners are going to be those that are balanced in that
Describe the company’s process for generating, select- approach, that are being efficient in where they invest but
ing and developing ideas. are also willing to invest … in capabilities and technolo-
gies that are meaningful to consumers and that will drive
As with everything at General Mills, we start with con- growth into the future. IL

Coke’s David Butler on building a

program for ‘exponential growth’
Our February Innovation Leader Live call featured David Butler, VP of Innovation and Entrepreneur-
ship at the Coca-Cola Company. Butler is the co-author of a book being published this month, “Design
to Grow: How Coca-Cola Learned to Combine Scale and Agility (and How You Can Too).” He
talked about:
» The company’s initiative to collaborate with entrepreneurs around the world, Coca-Cola Founders
» A slide he showed to the company’s operating committee that said, “Learn by doing.”
» The difference between “explorers” and “managers”
» Metrics
» Communicating lean startup principles internally, and training employees on them.
A transcript of the call is below, or you can listen to the audio online.
S cott Kirsner: Why does Coca-Cola need a VP of In-

novation and Entrepreneurship?
Square, Spotify, Instagram — that didn’t exist four or five
years ago, how are they able to create something that’s now
valued in the multi-billion dollar valuation?
David Butler: I think every brand, every established com-
pany, every large organization, I’d actually throw in gov- Learn by doing
ernments in there as well, is looking at this whole space of
disruptive innovation with the hopes of avoiding a Kodak How can we do that? How do we partner with them if we
moment.
Again, that’s an overused example now, but basically be-

coming irrelevant to the market that they’re in or the people
that they’re talking to. I think every big company is looking
at this whole thing and trying to figure out a way to avoid it
and, in fact, perhaps leverage it for a new opportunity.
In [our] case, the company wanted to focus on exponential

growth. Basically, “How could we do what startups do?”
These high growth companies that came out of nowhere —

can’t do it? To dig into that and try to figure that out on up. Talk a little bit about what you like about that meth-
behalf of the Coca-Cola Company, that was the job. Now od and maybe how broadly you’ve been training people
we’ve had quite a journey since then. We’ve tried many, there.
many things. The cool way to say that is we’ve pivoted two
or three times, but essentially we failed a few times and Lean means two things. It means maximum speed, and
changed directions, lots of learning. least amount of waste. Maximum speed, minimum waste.
I put one slide up in front of our operating committee, If you think about it, what is every large organization faced
which includes our chairman and his direct reports. It was with? They’re slow, and they spend a lot of money, and
a slide that just said three words: “Learn by doing.” I think we’re right in there. This whole lean approach has been key
that’s key. to everything we’re doing here. Again, we didn’t get to it on
Day Two. It took us a long time to figure this out.
I just said, “We’re going to learn by doing. I don’t know
how to do this, but we’re going to try a lot of things. And We did two things. We created a new platform that we
we’re going to fail at a lot of them, but we’re going to learn called Coca-Cola Founders, where we work with proven
continuously across that.” founders to co-create with them early-stage or seed-stage
startups. We started that platform.
We haven’t hired consultants. We haven’t asked other peo-
ple to figure this out. We’ve actually tried to figure it out on Then we started a second platform, essentially training
our own, and I think that’s actually really key.
It sounds like you were very clear that this was not about
incremental product innovation, like, a different pack-
age for Diet Coke or an extra button on the vending
machine. This was about looking for real growth and
things you just weren’t doing today.
Exactly. Every company does that kind of incremental in-

novation. We do that. What we were looking for is a way to
tap into what founders are able to do, and startups are able
to do. This whole movement, the “lean” movement that’s
been going on for a decade, we wanted to figure out how we
could tap into that to experience the exponential growth
that they are.
Maximum speed, minimum waste

Let’s talk about lean startup a little bit. I know you’ve

done a decent amount of training for Coca-Cola em-
ployees, in a pretty short period of time, on lean start-

lean principles across our internal organization. Those are First of all, let me say that we’ve been investing and part-
the two things that we started about a year and a half ago. nering with established startups, especially late-stage
startups, for a number of years now. We are partners with
Did you do the training yourself? Do you have a team of Spotify, Misfit, Music Dealers, a lot of other startups. We
people that are running lean startup workshops inside had already been doing that. Once we understood lean, we
the company? thought, “What if we could all the way back to the begin-
ning and partner with a founder that was specifically com-
Yes, it’s all internal. Actually, I will say that from the begin- ing out of their startup?” In other words, they just sold or
ning we formed a relationship with what’s called Up Global, had an exit from their startup, or just had a big failure and
now. They started Startup Weekend. Essentially, you can were in between things.
What if we could find those founders who understood the

lean method and were looking to create something big?
‘We have billion-dollar brands, What if we could find them and then partner with them
and we have relationships with from the very beginning, and expose to them the challeng-
es that our company has — the big things that are very diffi-
everyone from the CEO of cult for us to solve internally.
Walmart to Bono. We could
pick up the phone and call If we could explain that to them, if we could expose them to
the assets that we have — every large organization has a tre-
anybody.’ mendous amount of assets that are unthinkable, if you’re
a founder. We have billion-dollar brands, and we have re-
lationships with everyone from the CEO of Walmart to
learn how to create your own startup in 54 hours just right Bono. We could pick up the phone and call anybody. We
off the street, for a hundred bucks. can get a meeting with anyone.
We wanted something as turnkey as that inside of our or- If we could give them access to seed funding, and give them
ganization, so we partnered with one of the founders. He access to us as a launch partner, meaning get them to the
had spun off and started doing his own thing. We found right people inside of Coke to make decisions quick and pi-
him and brought him in to help us codify what they were lot their product and all that… If we could give that to these
doing. All of it is framed in our own language, in the Coke proven founders, what could we create?
language that people understand here. It’s essentially in-
ternalizing the lean principles and tools out there. That could only work inside of Coke if it was in align-
ment with our business units. The way we’re structured
I want to ask you a follow up about Coca-Cola Founders. is through geographic business units. We went to the BU
In terms of that program, and bringing in entrepre- presidents inside and pitched this idea. They were into it.
neurs to work with your people to launch startups, how
did you promote that? Did you put boundaries around Then we went into the markets themselves, into the startup
it in terms of, “Hey, we’re looking for people with mo- communities and found the founders. We built what we call
bile app ideas or dispensing or distribution ideas?” a co-founder network where we just link them together. We

built that network. In a year, we were live in 10 cities. That Can you give one concrete example of what’s an idea
was last year. that one of these 23 startups came up with? What kind
of space did they focus on?
Through that, they launched 23 startups across those
10 cities. If you know anything about this, one in 10 I’m happy to share all of that. Actually it’s on our website, if
startups make it. That’s not an unusual number. We anybody wants to check out coca-colafounders.com.
did that within a year. I have to say that doing anything
like that is quite difficult inside of a large organiza- We always start with a Coke problem, a Coca-Cola is-
tion. sue, a challenge. You never want to talk about problems
inside a big company, so we call them challenges. But it’s
We ourselves actually approached that whole platform as if essentially a big problem. The team that was based in San
it was a lean startup and just applied all the same methods
and tools to that effort or that platform development as you
would in launching a startup. ‘You hire managers to manage
The need for ‘explorers’ your business model. What
you don’t hire typically are
I imagine a lot of companies could spend a year just
explorers, people to actually
figuring out the intellectual property issues of, “OK,
we’re going to work with entrepreneurs and co-create figure out new business mod-
things with them. Who owns it?” els.’
Once you have an established business model and you have
an established business like the Coca-Cola Company, es- Francisco focused on one of the biggest challenges that we
sentially the way you keep that going is you hire people to have inside of our US business, which is what we call out-
execute your business model. of-stocks.
You hire managers to manage your business model. What It’s easy to understand. If you go to your local convenience
you don’t hire typically are explorers, people to actually store wherever you live, and you’re looking for whatever
figure out new business models. I think that’s one of the you like, Coca-Cola Zero, let’s say, and it’s not on the shelf,
biggest challenges for any big, successful company, suc- that’s mildly disappointing to you. But that’s a billion-dol-
cessful company, to do this. lar lost opportunity for us.
In our case, we have 700,000 people who are hired to Solving that out-of-stock issue is critical for us. It’s a
execute a business model, and not explore a new one. group of interrelated problems. It’s not just one thing.
When you go to them and say, “Look, we want funding Essentially, no one knows exactly when someone is go-
to do this,” you mentioned the IP, “We want to do this ing to buy the last six-pack or whatever of Coca-Cola
and that,” they look at you like, “What, are you crazy? Zero. Nobody knows that. A guy comes by every two or
We don’t do this.” It’s a sort of fundamental structural three days and restocks the shelf. There’s no on-demand
issue. model.

They thought, “What if we could create a way for the re- an easy example, one of our startups is looking for a CTO.
tailer, the shop owner, to post a job and whoever wanted One of their milestones is hiring a CTO.
to come and restock that shelf could do the job in an hour,
wouldn’t that be more beneficial to Coke?” Could they cre- We look at their milestones and measure according to those.
ate a business around that? Once they have a business going, they have real customers,
they’re generating revenue, then we look at that. How many
If you think about it, there are a lot of companies out there users do you have? How much revenue are you generating?
right now, TaskRabbit and others. This is sort of TaskRab- When do you reach profitability, that kind of thing.
bit for corporations. That’s what they created. It’s called
Wonolo. The business model is just like Uber. Phil Gibbs sends in a question asking, “Were the
founders employees, or did they become employees of
You post a job. Someone takes the job. The person that does Coca-Cola? What are the issues around equity and own-
the job gets paid through the app, not the retailer, so it re- ership in startups? How did you hash that out?”
moves that friction. Again, it’s sort of the Uber for tempo-
rary staffing. They launched that, I think, 10 months ago. Great question. I mentioned we made several mistakes or
pivots along the way. One thing that we did is we thought
They’ve got 70-plus customers. Actually, Uber is one of — and you can relate if you’re inside of a big company — we
their customers. Burger King, Home Depot, lots of big thought the easiest thing to do is just hire these people.
corporations.
Number one, none of these people wanted to work inside
Again, the idea is what we call win-win internally. It creates a big company. I used a lot of my own personal equity and
value for us internally, but it also allows them to hopefully sweat and everything essentially selling them and talking
start a big billion-dollar startup. them into doing it.
Metrics We hired them and got them all set up inside of Coke. Once
they started doing what they are best at, creating a big
We’ve got a couple questions already from listeners, startup, all of them are outside of the beverage industry. I
so let’s get to those. Question number one comes from mentioned the one about Wonolo, that’s in the staffing in-
Stanley Black & Decker. What types of metrics are you dustry. Our internal structure and support systems are not
using to track your progress and define success? geared to running a staffing company. We’re a beverage
company. All of a sudden I had all of the internal people,
That’s a great question. Actually, it took us a little while audit and everything, coming to me saying, “David, let me
to get here. We track progress just like a VC does, in this remind you. We’re a beverage company. We’re not a staff-
case. We look right at growth metrics, the things that really ing company. What are these guys doing?”
matter. There’s a whole book on this, by the way, “Metrics
that Matter.” It’s inside of a book called “Running Lean.” Long story short, I’ll call it a pivot. We spun all of them out.
All of those startups were spun out of the company. They’re
In early-stage startups, they don’t have a product yet. Most all their own legal entities. We’ve set them up through a
of them don’t have a team or a product. The way that we convertible note, so our investment converts to equity as
measure success is by milestones. In other words, just as soon as they reach a sustainable business model.

That was one of our major pivots. We hired them into the do that.” I would challenge that. I’d say, “Why can’t every
company. We figured out that wouldn’t work, so we spun brand do that, every company do that?”
them all out.
I actually think that’s the path to success going forward. I’d
Working with small companies say anybody can look at Google or any of the tech brands
and look at how they’re doing it and figure it out for their
We have another question about other examples of big own company.
and small companies working together effectively.
That’s from Peter Sayburn at Market Gravity. I guess I I would argue that a lot of bigger, more mature compa-
would maybe expand that question to say, “Were there nies, they tend to have a corporate development group
role models that you looked at of how big companies can that looks at the acquisitions. That’s at a much later
work with smaller companies, or did you feel like, ‘OK, stage. They’re typically not building those relation-
we’re going to have to hack our own path here?’” ships or making very early-stage investments in compa-
nies that just started this year and might have five, ten,
I can answer that in two ways. One is going to sound al- twenty employees.
most self-serving, and I don’t mean it to sound that way. We
didn’t have a model to work from. Scott, you’re right. We have got a M&A team, and they’re
great at what they do. They’re used to doing big billion-dol-
Again, that’s why I put the slide up in front of our operating lar deals. Just last year we announced a couple of big ones,
committee and said, “We’re going to learn by doing. If you one with Monster Beverage Company, the energy drink,
want to fire me, fire me now because there’s a lot of things and Keurig. We do that kind of stuff all the time. We buy
that are not going to happen the way everyone wants them big bottlers that we have. These are multi-billion dollar
to happen.” deals. That’s more like private equity. Again, with this oth-
er approach, you have to get into this whole lean movement
We didn’t have a model to start with, especially in our in- to understand how it works and the speed that you have to
dustry. Having said that, I encourage anyone to look at operate in.
Google, or the big tech brands, Amazon, Google, Face-
book, even Apple. They use this model quite effectively. Let’s see if we can get in a couple last questions here for
They have this portfolio of ventures—early-stage, late- you, David. Ken Durand from Ericsson wants to know,
stage startups inside their venturing portfolio—that they “Do you have any internal people that you allow to take
have investments in, relationships with. advantage of the founders program? How do you get in-
trapreneurs involved?”
At any point they can just acquire one of them, bring them
in, and essentially repackage it. It’s not as easy as this, That’s a great question. To be very honest, we haven’t quite
I know. Repackage it and then offer that service as a new figured that out. I will say that once you do this, or if you
Google service. Think about it. That’s how Facebook does can do this, it really connects with the “millennial” buzz-
it, Apple, all of these. That’s how the tech brands do it. word out there. A lot of existing employees or people who
might not otherwise be attracted to our company, once we

It feels very natural for them. Even from the outside you started doing this, they all of a sudden saw Coke in a whole
think, “Well, of course. They’re a tech company. They can new way.

The mechanics around how to take an existing employee I’d say two things. One is more of a mental model, which
and spin them out in their own startup, we’re still figuring is always super difficult. There’s a whole almost genera-
that out to be totally honest with you. I can’t give you any tional thing. I think for the first time in history, it’s su-
big insight there. per-easy to start a company. Funding, getting a team,
working around the world, it’s very easy to start your own
You were saying earlier, and when I’ve heard you speak, company.
you’ve done Startup Weekends for employees specif-
ically, right? And you’ve done the lean startup train- I think just culturally people inside of our company and
ing, so it sounds like you’re kind of paving the path to other companies, especially younger people, don’t feel like
figuring that out. they have to go down that management track anymore. It’s
a challenge for an organization to think about that and
want to embrace that.
‘We don’t look at failing as You have people inside the company that sort of get that
failing. We look at it as learn- and want change, want to embrace change, and then other
ing. How fast can we learn?’ people who just sort of see it as a fad, almost like the Inter-
net. I used to work for a guy who told me that the Internet
was a fad.
Yeah, we do a lot of experiments and failing. We don’t look Speaking the right language internally
at failing as failing. We look at it as learning. How fast can
we learn? I know it sounds trite when I say it that way, but Then secondly, this whole training on lean principles in-
we try everything. side — trying to find the right language and the right way
to actually position that, inside the company, so the maxi-
All I’m trying to say is we haven’t cracked the code on that. mum amount of people benefit.
We don’t know exactly how to do that internally, but we do
Startup Weekends all over the place. We’ve tried everything. We’ve called it different things.
We’re still in the process of making that work. You essen-
I have to say to rise inside of our company you have to be tially just have to try to figure out how to get it inside your
a great manager, managing our business model, great culture and use the right language. We definitely are still
at execution. To actually create a high-growth startup, trying to figure that out.
you have to be a great explorer. Those are, honestly, two
different skill sets. It’s rare to find an amazing founder Trying to figure out the right language in what sense?
inside of a large organization. We’re just trying to figure To describe the mission of all this stuff that you’re do-
that out. ing?
That sounds like it’s an area that you’re still working Let me give you an example. One of the common prob-
on. What else for you feels like something you’re trying lems that we have inside of our company, what we would
to solve, or an area that you want to explore, in the next call a problem, is we need to get people to drink more Diet
year or so? Coke. How do we do that? That’s a problem.

That’s a challenge for us inside, but that’s actually not a value it can create for companies. What we did is we looked
problem that people are facing out there. I don’t know at growth in two ways: scale and agility.
that someone woke up today and said, “My car won’t
start. I wonder if I could meet that solution with a Diet If you’re a founder, and you’re trying to build your compa-
Coke?” ny, what keeps you up at night is scale, how to scale your
business model, how to scale your product, your team, and
When you start talking about, “What is the problem we’re so forth. If you flip that around, what keeps most business
trying to solve,” there’s this sort of disconnect. It’s like be- managers up at night is agility, how to adapt and stay rele-
ing able to think, “Well, we have a business plan. Of course vant to the next generation.
we need to sell more Diet Coke. That’s our problem.”
What we’ve done in the book is showing how to use design
From the lean startup method you say, “No, what is the in two ways. I think that might be the new thing, the inter-
consumer or the user’s problem that we’re trying to solve?” esting thing. Yes, you can use design to grow, but it’s two
Even simple things like that are difficult inside. different approaches. We use a lot of examples around how
we’ve done that at Coke, in both cases.
What’s an idea or two that you think are counter-intui-
tive, unique, fresh, that you and your co-author, focus Cool. I’ll plug that. The title is “Design to Grow,” out
on in [your new] book? next week. I’ll also mention David’s Twitter handle is
@DavidRButler, so you can follow him there. Thank
The book is about how the Coca-Cola Company uses de- you, David, for joining us today.
sign to grow. In the interest of time, I’ll just say I think
there’s a big disconnect around this word design and the Thanks Scott. It was awesome. IL

CVS Health’s Chief Digital Officer

on navigating two revolutions
When Brian Tilzer joined CVS Health two years ago as Chief Digital Offi-
cer, his take was that the company needed to successfully navigate two rev-
olutions: omni-channel retail and what he terms “the digital enablement of
healthcare.”
Tilzer says that it wouldn’t be possible without increasing investment and
attracting new talent to the $139 billion company. CVS Health operates
nearly 8,000 retail locations under the CVS Pharmacy and Longs Drugs
banners, as well as running a mail order pharmacy, MinuteClinic non-ur-
gent care clinics, and a pharmacy benefit manager, CVS/caremark.
“We’ve tripled our investment in digital, multi-channel e-commerce,” says Tilzer. He’s also setting up
new sites away from CVS’ Rhode Island headquarters campus to “attract additional talent and increase
our connectivity” to potential partners in the healthcare industry. The first example of that opened in
mid-2015 in Boston, the CVS Health Digital Innovation Lab.
Tilzer talked with Innovation Leader about his priorities, and shared several slides.
» Skate where the puck’s going. Tilzer says that prototyping team. As we find exciting young tech-
since arriving, he has put a big emphasis on devel- nologies, their job is to explore whether they can be
oping mobile apps for CVS’ various divisions. The meaningful, and deploy them in live environments to
main pharmacy app, for instance, lets users scan collect data.”
codes on pill bottles and order refills, or send pho-
» Lab stores. But rolling out new technologies — and
tos to be printed. “We now have top-rated apps on
then yanking them out if they don’t work as expected
every [mobile] platform, for every business unit,”
— can be disruptive to a traditional CVS location. So
Tilzer says.
CVS is building three “lab stores” that will open this
» Invest in tests. “We’re piloting some telemedicine year, in Boston, New York, and Silicon Valley. They’re
services in our MinuteClinic business, so that we may designed to be constantly changing — and to appeal to
be able to provide a wider range of services,” Tilzer a tech-savvy, “early adopter” customer base in those
says, with a staffer in the clinic getting guidance and locales.
advice via video from a healthcare professional located

» Use tech to solve big problems. Tilzer says he’s
off-site. To identify new technologies and set up those
focused on using digital communication channels
kinds of pilot tests, Tilzer says, “We created a rapid

to address issues like “medication non-adherence”

— patients not taking their medication as often as
they’re supposed to, or not taking it at all. “We es-
timate that the cost of non-adherence to the health-
care system is about $300 billion.” So Tilzer’s team
has been creating text messaging and “push notifi-
cation” systems that “will remind you when you have
a refill due.” (That refill revenue is also a big part of
CVS’ livelihood.) Tilzer says he also hopes that tech-
nology will help to eliminate CVS’ famously-long
paper receipts — at least for some customers. “For
the customer who doesn’t want the receipt, we want
to give them the digital experience,” Tilzer says,
sending purchase details and coupons directly to
their mobile device.
» Get close to talent; seek new connections. “Boston

is a city that is located at the intersection of health-
care innovation and digital innovation. We believe
that opening up a location there will help us attract
additional talent, and increase our connectivity with
health insurers, startups, hospitals, and the biophar-
ma sector.” Initially, the Digital Innovation Lab there
will house about 100 people, Tilzer says, who will
focus on “building customer-centric experiences in
healthcare.”
» Bricks + clicks + swipes. With his focus on the in-

store experience, the web, and mobile, Tilzer says
he is “bringing the physical and digital together. We
have the chance to invent things that don’t exist yet,
and that’s exciting.”
Several of Tilzer’s strategy slides are reproduced here…

You’ll find the full presentation in our online Resource
Center in downloadable form. (Click “Resources,” then
select “Downloadable Documents.”) IL

Inside the entrepreneur-led

innovation group at Eastern Bank
Dan O’Malley had tried to disrupt the
banking industry from outside. Now,
he’s working within it, as the founder
of Eastern Labs, an innovation group at
Eastern Bank, the country’s biggest and
oldest mutual bank.
O’Malley had launched a rewards-cen-
tric online bank called PerkStreet Fi-
nancial with venture capital funding.
But when that company couldn’t grow
fast enough to keep investors happy,
O’Malley, a veteran of Capital One, had to figure out his next move. A contact from the entrepreneurial
scene introduced him to Bob Rivers, President of Boston-based Eastern Bank, which has nearly $10
billion in assets and branches throughout Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
The bank was eager to stay relevant with an increasingly digital customer base, and was planning to
dial up its investment in innovation. “The percentage of transactions happening at a branch was drop-
ping like crazy, and mobile banking was going through the roof,” O’Malley says. “There were questions
about whether the retail branch had a future.”
Eastern hired O’Malley to launch Eastern Labs in April 2014, and O’Malley brought with him several
key members of the PerkStreet team, like the former CFO (now EVP of Emerging Technologies at East-
ern Labs) and former VP of Analytics (now Chief Data Scientist.)
“The mandate,” O’Malley says, “is to build new technologies, buy new technologies, and change
Eastern. We focus on that first thing, look opportunistically at the second, and the third is a by-product
of #1 and #2.”
Highlights from our conversation with O’Malley are below, along with two slides.

“ We build technology. We don’t do training on design

thinking, or run innovation workshops. Four of us
came here from PerkStreet, and we’ve brought on other
capacity to look at two things at once — not 25.”
O’Malley says he sees three transformations happening
— or on the verge of happening — in the banking industry:
team members who are credit experts and product devel-
opers. Both of those people came from Capital One.” 1. “Too many people and too much paper — not enough
To be successful in innovation, “you need to be fairly automation and robots.”
outside the thrum of daily activity, but you also need to
2. “Lots of insights in data that hasn’t been unlocked
yet.”
‘When we got started, there 3. The rise of ‘shadow banking’ services offering low
were like 25 ideas that people interest rates and new models, like Lending Club or
Kabbage
here wanted us to tackle. But
we’re trying to be relentless-
ly focused on things that will
drive revenue and be import-
ant for the bank, and not get
pulled in a thousand different
directions.’
have some level of authority, or else you build stuff and

nobody cares.” O’Malley says that in addition to his East-
ern Labs crew, a 10-person product team reports to him
(it had previously reported to the Chief Marketing Officer),
as does the bank’s 75-person customer service center.
“We’ve done at least four tests where we leveraged them. O’Malley reports to Eastern Bank’s president, Bob Riv-
They can get on the phone and call customers. As a startup, ers. “I go to monthly board meetings, but I don’t necessari-
your ability to test new things is really focused on digital ly do a download on Eastern Labs every time — maybe every
— sending people e-mails, for example. Having a legion of three to six months.” He says he works with the bank’s CIO
people who can get on the phone makes you much faster.” and IT team as “a very close first customer” on most proj-
His goal is to push out a new product every quarter. ects.
In innovation groups, “there is a need to be focused and “It took us about three months to get up and running,
not take on too much. When we got started, there were like and since then, we’ve been running a test every month. My
25 ideas that people here wanted us to tackle. But we’re friends in the startup world say, ‘It sounds like you’re oper-
trying to be relentlessly focused on things that will drive ating faster [inside Eastern] than any startup that is trying
revenue and be important for the bank, and not get pulled to work with a bank.’ And we are.”
in a thousand different directions. Right now, we have the “Any innovation team runs the risk of being seen as

an indictment of how things are done currently. I saw it at multi-million dollar investment in setting up Eastern Labs,
Capital One, when we started the payments business there. O’Malley acknowledges, “is a big deal for Eastern.”
One hundred percent [of your potential for success] comes O’Malley says he has discussed with the bank’s board
down to the support you have from the board and other se- the possibility of eventually launching startups that would
nior management.” market Eastern Labs’ products to other institutions. “East-
“The existing business has demands on it that never ern is the first major user of what we’re trying to build, but
go away. If you don’t firewall resources for the innovation we have authority from the board to spin things out. The
team, the existing business just eats them. You need your organization gets new products and the cultural change
own resources.” that it wants, but the end result is going to be something
“We’re building a pipeline [of new product ideas], and big.” The possibility of producing independent ventures
we look at this like R&D for the bank. We expect to have a has helped O’Malley attract the sort of workers he believes
lot of duds and a lot of successes.” he needs. “Spin-outs are an expectation on our part. I don’t
“We’re still fairly loose on metrics. But we didn’t come think you can attract the right talent if what you’re building
here just to do cool stuff. You measure progress by asking, did can’t have a big impact. There’s also a bigger potential for
you make a lot of money or not?” But quantifying whether you financial returns [that would benefit Eastern.]” IL
are on the path to making a lot of money — that can be hard to
know. We are paying attention to things like how many cus-
tomers we’ve touched, loans booked, insurance sold.”
“If you want to change an organization, people learn by
doing. So far, we’ve worked with the retail team, the cred-
it team, the small business team. We’ve been pushing and
shipping stuff. People in the organization know what we’re
doing because we’ve been working with them.”
Since Eastern is a mutually-owned bank that isn’t sub-
ject to Wall Street expectations, the mindset there is that
innovation “is a longer lead-time investment than a pub-
lic company could typically make. We have a longer run-
way — a few years to prove we’re generating results.” But a

Peer advice: Creating the right

conditions for disruptive innovation
Innovation Leader convened a conference call in April: nine senior leaders from large public and private
companies, discussing how they’ve set up groups to focus on truly disruptive innovation — not line ex-
tensions or products sold in new-and-improved packages.
We promised the participants we’d leave their names and company names out of our write-up so that
they’d focus on the challenges as well as what has been working for them. But the participants hailed
from consumer packaged goods companies; financial services firms; brand-name technology giants;
and international retail chains. Below are some of the highlights of the call.
Reporting relationships matter
“We report right in to the CEO. We’ve tried a lot of differ-

ent models — reporting to general managers, presidents,
people in core businesses — but at the end of the day, as you
try to get away from [doing near-term work for] core busi-
nesses, it really has to be at the top of the company.”
“I was tired of giving presentations that went nowhere
on new trends that were going to matter for our business.
So I just started building stuff on my own. Our company
had spent a lot of money on big name consultancies to tell
them how to innovate, and they came back with a lot of
boring, four-quadrant ways to look at innovation. We just
started building prototypes. We don’t do product innova-
Focus
tion. We’re creating new platforms for the future that don’t
exist. I report to the #2 guy at the company.”
“When we meet with business unit heads, we get fairly ge-
“There’s a generally accepted and aligned-upon point-
neric [responses] — we want to grow market share, increase
of-view among our global leadership team that there are lots
profitability. [So to focus our work], we come up with either
of innovation opportunities that will never fit in our tradi-
technology, demographic, or legal/regulatory themes that
tional organizational structure, and shouldn’t be managed
we think are going to have a profound impact. Will they
in a stage-gate way. So we’ve created a ‘parallel universe’ of
affect the delivery of customer experience, [our core busi-
transformational innovations” and innovations that aren’t

ness,] or efficiency?”
extensions of the current product line.
“Transformation happens in your industry. You better

be tracking those shifts. We try to identify those — looking

at cultural and economic shifts — and how they might affect
the market or create new opportunities.”
‘You can have all the process-
“We borrow a little from Intel — who are the consumers es in place and you think you
who could never go back once they experience your prod- have the buy-in, but if the cul-
uct? How do you keep driving that? You’re going to hit
roadblocks, failures, delays. The ability to go back to that
ture isn’t wedded to the need
shining light helps keep the organization moving forward.” for new products and real in-
“We meet with our CEO every three weeks. He owns novation, nothing happens.’
our portfolio, [and helps us define] the space we want to ex-
plore, mine, and develop.”
business sponsor. But we do we have a business sponsor who
Funding and sponsorship has said that if the pilot is successful, they’ll transition it. And
our company has venture capital guys willing to fund things
“At the very first project milestone, before we even start do- as standalone companies [if ideas merit being spun out.]”
ing proof-of-concept tests, we assign a sponsor. They have
a personal passion or belief in the idea, and they get more Challenges and conflicts
involved at the second milestone. We’ve got a commitment
from our head of R&D and his finance VP that they’ll take “You can put together a list of all the objections and systems that
over the more detailed funding when something hits [the can kill transformational innovations — ‘it doesn’t motivate our
third and final milestone in our innovation process.] That’s sales team,’ or ‘it doesn’t have the same gross margins that we’re
when the request for funding is going to jump up. The proj- used to.’ It’s death by a thousand cuts if you’re not careful.”
ect goes into our strategic plan, which means it’s in some- “You can have all the processes in place and you think you
one’s objectives and bonus. [A roll-out is] going to happen.” have the buy-in, but if the culture isn’t wedded to the need for
“Getting [the right level of] sponsorship and commit- new products and real innovation, nothing happens.”
ment has been hard for us. What I find is that those owning “We’re trying to harness the best of lean startup meth-
business leaders do not fundamentally understand what odology, but at a corporate scale. We want to give people
we’re trying to accomplish, even if it’s attractive to them.” the time to answer strategic questions and pursue new
“I’ve got an advisory board, so these key [business unit] opportunities. My biggest challenge is how do I do that
leaders are part of the discussion. They’re very busy and in an efficient or systematic way… But I don’t necessarily
they’ve got their hands full. I try to set the stage for the want [rank-and-file] employees to be working too much on
long-term work [with them, while also looking for] ways to transformational innovation.”
solve for their issues in the here-and-now. They’ve granted “I show a slide of Lenny from ‘Of Mice and Men’ holding
me a certain amount of seed money, and I work with them a rabbit. Lenny is the company. These disruptive innova-
to ensure that it is staying on track.” tions need time to [develop]. If I give the rabbit to you too
“We’re ring-fenced financially. It doesn’t mean we don’t quickly, you’ll kill it with love. That’s what ends up happen-
get budget cuts, but we’re one of the last [groups to feel ing with metrics. If you apply metrics to [a disruptive proj-
them when they do happen.]” ect] too quickly, you will kill it, or the idea will get watered
“About half [of the 100 people in our lab] work on new down. It won’t have time to grow. I fight hard to not have
business incubation. In the prototype phase, we don’t have a sales metrics tied to innovation.” IL

Six innovation agenda items for 2016
How are you going to make change and deliver results in 2016?
Whether you work in an innovation group, new product development, strategy, or R&D, we believe that
these issues deserve a place on your agenda for the year ahead.
1. Customers, not committees.

We hear about many companies where R&D or innovation committees, or “Shark Tank”-style panels, give the thumbs-up or
thumbs-down to new ideas before they can be seen by a single customer. But that means that many ideas with plenty of potential
get shot down because of internal biases, or the possibility that they’ll conflict with an existing offering. A handful of companies
have already begun to embrace the “lean startup” methodology, letting teams prototype ideas and put them in front of custom-
ers. That way, actual customer data, rather than baked-in biases, can inform any decisions about prioritization and appropriate
resources.
2. How will you become the partner of choice?

When suppliers or customers want to co-create something new to solve a problem or seize an opportunity, do they approach
you — or a rival? When startups want a partner to help run a pilot, or a university is looking to license its latest lab breakthrough,
are you their first call? Being the partner of choice will increasingly separate leaders from also-rans. Two essentials: having a
visible “point person” who is easy to contact, and having a streamlined (rather than high-friction) approach to collaborations.
(We explore this issue in our research report on Working With Startups.)

3. Pave the taxiway.

Innovation and R&D groups may be good at design, cultivation, and tests, but when it comes to getting products and services
to the market, they typically rely on business units. We like to use an airport metaphor: business units control the runway, and
they’re pretty good at getting things to take off and land (roughly) on time. Innovation, R&D, and new product development
often build nifty hangars where they design all kinds of cool aircraft. But the taxiway — getting things smoothly from the han-
gar to the runway — hasn’t yet been paved at many companies. It’s
dirt. The right processes aren’t in place for reliably getting things
out of the lab and into the market.
R&D shouldn’t be seen as a
4. Get serious about attracting the best. high-security, perfectly-mani-
cured greenhouse, but rather a
Most companies do the same-old, same-old when it comes to
bringing on interns, contractors, or full-time hires — listings community garden where others
on the Careers page, open houses, visits to campus recruiting can come in, bring their ideas
events. Innovation and R&D teams need to be the ones who ac-
knowledge the reality that most Global 1000 companies are not
and talents, and interact with
the top choice of today’s top talent, and set about changing that. the gardeners on your payroll.
Sometimes, this requires creating new work environments, or in-
venting new ways to engage with prospective hires that give them
a taste for the kinds of challenges you intend to give them. If your innovation team is made up of 15-year company veterans, and
your intrapreneurs have never worked for an actual startup, you have a problem. (See our recent Hiring Report for more on this
topic.)
5. R&D needs to play nicely with others.

Unfortunately, at many companies, the R&D or Advanced Concepts team is seen as high-powered…but extremely insular. With
their ten-year technology roadmaps and long-term academic partnerships, they wind up being tempting targets for budget cuts
and staff reductions. R&D is the perfect group to host hackathons and set out engineering challenges, like Amazon’s recent
Picking Challenge for warehouse robots. A former Disney R&D leader suggested to us the idea of putting accelerator programs
or startups in close proximity to R&D — as a way to license out and potentially fast-track the commercialization of technologies
that R&D develops. R&D shouldn’t be seen as a high-security, perfectly-manicured greenhouse, but rather a community gar-
den where others can come in, bring their ideas and talents, and interact with the gardeners on your payroll.
6. The language is changing.

How is your team going to deliver new growth? Obviously, getting there may require betas, pilot tests, training workshops, and
networks of innovation champions. But business leaders in many organizations need to hear — and believe — that the innovation
team’s mission is growth, not just experimentation. IL

Join us in Silicon Valley for our next Field Study

Nothing like a conference — an innovation immersion and peer learning experience
Limited to
50 participants
March 30 & 31
Silicon Valley, CA
“Peer to peer
“This was one of the sharing was
most well-connected, excellent. I was able
organized, and to benchmark our
practical conferences progress with the
I’ve ever attended.” state of the art in
innovation.”
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Lego CEO: To innovate, create a separate structure 4

Dell’s chief innovation officer on innovation portfolios and training 6

Inside Home Depot’s new innovation lab at Georgia Tech 10

MasterCard exec talks Whirlpool collaboration, startup accelerator 17

General Mills innovation EVP on becoming ‘best big small company’ 22

Coke’s David Butler on building a program for ‘exponential growth’ 26

CVS Health’s Chief Digital Officer on navigating two revolutions 34

Inside the entrepreneur-led innovation group at Eastern Bank 36

Peer advice: Creating the right conditions for disruptive innovation 39

Six innovation agenda items for 2016 41

Innovation Leader is an information service that serves corporate innovation ex-

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2 © Innovation Leader 2015. All rights reserved.

• Untangling Innovation Metrics

Best of luck on all your endeavors in 2016!

» The power of definition: Moving beyond innovation as a buzzword

» Alaska Airlines’ lean startup test in airport lounges

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Lego CEO: To innovate, create a

I nnovation Leader: It sounds like you believe that to

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‘A lot of creativity and inven-

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Dell’s chief innovation officer on

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Inside Home Depot’s new

efits, too. “When you look at the type of company we are,

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meetings with other local businesses to spur collaboration

vice, or displaying a 3D environment on a camera or tablet.

Hosting innovation sessions

bedroom, may not involve Oculus Rift virtual reality gog-

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spend an afternoon just kind of talking blue-sky sessions

While the center is only a few

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What Manulife’s senior tech execs

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innovation catalyst program.” corporate strategy, wealth management, and informa-

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MasterCard exec talks Whirlpool

M asterCard has had a Labs program since 2010. I

ways of engaging with startups, from investing in startups,

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Over the last four years, we’ve produced 300-400 pro-

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United Airlines IT leader describes the

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customers through the United Airlines mobile app on

» At Newark Liberty Airport, United Airlines has dis-

Creating new mobile experiences for passen-

Flores also oversees the day-to-day Mobile Technology being

» Uber integration: Late last year, United was the first

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Flores says there are four key challenges that he grapples

1. Culture. At most established companies — United was

2. Getting the right stakeholders involved when projects

3. Keeping people motivated and engaged in the innova-