A special thanks to our new team member at Innovationedge, Dave Labno, for sharing his thoughts today on the Fortune Brainstorm Green 2008 Conference that occurred last week in Pasadena, California —Cheryl

Fortune Brainstorm Green 2008 Conference
By Dave Labno, Guest blogger

Four hundred leading thinkers and doers in the world of business, science, government and NGOs joined together April 21-22 to showcase remarkable changes in world over the last few years.

Who would have imagined a successful partnership between Greenpeace and McDonalds? Dozens of similar partnerships and discussions took place. Disagreements still exist but a general sense of urgency and collaboration has emerged between previously distant groups.

Several leading CEO’s and environmental leaders told me this would not have happened even 3 years ago. A sea change has taken place and an exciting era of innovation and entrepreneurship in the world has begun.

There were too many great innovations to list but here is a sample:

According to P&G, heating water to wash cloths accounts for 3% of the US residential energy use and using laundry detergent that that does a great job in cold could alone reduce our countries carbon Emissions by a stunning 1%.

Michael Dell shared how remote web assistance cuts greenhouse emissions by 90%, reduces costs and improves customer satisfaction as you don’t have to send your computer away or wait for days to have an outside technician visit your home or office.

He also unveiled a desktop computer smaller than a laptop, made of 90% recycled materials and uses 30% less power. Even the case is recyclable – you’ll have your choice of recycled wood exteriors when the product is released at the end of 2008.

Shai Aggasi has a simple goal – make Israeli oil free by 2015. This will be achieved primarily through business model innovation. The former executive at SAP has billions in investment from Renault/Nissan, the Israeli Government and private investors. Over a half million electrical outlets will be placed at shopping mall, office, and on street parking locations around Israel. Outlets will be connected with GPS so your vehicle will know where to “fill” when you aren’t driving. The most intriguing part is that you’ll have the option of free or low cost cars. The cars will work more like your cell phone – you pay for the recharges, not the car itself and you can pre pay for recharges, have a set plan per month or unlimited minute with multiple year contracts.

The message is clear, government regulation and the environment itself will require us to change how we live but not at the expense of the bottom line. This is one of the most exciting times for innovation in history.

I’ve been  reflecting on last week’s Tri-State PDMA conference in Cincinnati, where I did the keynote address on The Keys to Sustainable Front-End Innovation.

Some stats from this conference:

• 74 percent of companies say they will increase their spending on innovation
• 66 percent of companies say innovation is one of the top three strategic priorities
• 90 percent say generating organic growth through innovation has become essential for success in their industry

The so-called “Fuzzy Front End” refers to the way in which innovative companies put on their creative thinking caps and blend what they know about markets and competitors with newly-discovered insights about the needs of their customers. At this point they’re not coming up with ideas, but rather finding the right problems to solve.   I’m simplifying here, of course, but it takes a significant amount of up-front work for leaders to leverage their unique capabilities and competencies to create value for their customers through business models, processes, products, services and overall customer experience.

So how can leaders make innovation a systematic, repeatable process? First, you need to understand your company’s strategies and drivers to place all of the innovation opportunities in the proper context. And you must assess those opportunity areas in a structured way with a variety of tools and methods. Remember you don’t just want to talk to your customers; you want to watch them in action to gain insights into their lives so that you can prioritize which problems to resolve first. Once you generate genuine customer insights, you can begin to illuminate their motivations and construct winning concepts from customer requirements.
 

One of our Innovationedge team members, Dr. Jeff Lindsay, is participating today at an Open Innovation Roundtable in Vancouver where he will be discussing the university/industry interface needed to identify the needs and resources necessary for innovation to flow to industry.  Jeff will discuss how universities can become a partner of choice. The event is part of the 2007 Annual Meeting of the Licensing Executive Society (LES).

Jeff will offer insights drawn from his years in academia and industry, where he worked with many universities and companies to help implement innovative technologies. He’ll also share experiences, where he was involved while in industry in university outreach efforts. During my time leading K-C’s innovation charge, Jeff supported many of our extensive open innovation efforts through university connections.

I applaud not only Jeff’s leadership, but also his passion for teaching and inspiring future innovators—especially when it comes to protecting their intellectual assets. He just returned from Brigham Young University where he was a guest lecturer at a graduate seminar this past Saturday. Jeff taught BYU’s Chemical Engineering Department on disruptive innovation and intellectual asset strategy. It’s just one of many teaching opportunities Jeff has on his calendar in the months ahead.

I am in Scottsdale, Arizona today preparing to present at the 13th annual Innovation Immersion conference. The theme this year is the 360 Degree Innovation Experience, and will focus on how companies need to approach innovation in order to grow. If you lead your company’s innovation efforts, I encourage you to click on the above link and make plans to attend next year’s conference.

Why are convergence events like these important? Because Innovation has become a corporate buzzword that is not well understood.  Many companies want to innovate and even say they are innovative, but do not really “walk the talk.” Those who get it are the companies that see innovation as a continuum from incremental to breakthrough innovation and are balancing the needs for today while developing solution opportunities for tomorrow.

This convergence event focuses not only on product and service offerings but also on strategy, culture, people and organizational structure to deliver business value. Only executives who incorporate all of these elements can truly claim to be innovative. and deliver sustainable growth.

I am in Denver today and tomorrow for the Chief Innovation Officer conference, and I’m delighted to be meeting and mentoring those leading their company’s innovation efforts. I’m partnering with BMG’s CEO David Silverstein and Dr. Phil Samuel for this second CIO event, and attendees come from companies like Levi Strauss, GE Energy, United Healthcare,Circuit City and Versatech to name just a few. These innovation leaders have a challenging job and come with a lot of questions about how to deliver sustainable, innovation-driven growth. As someone who has been in their shoes, I can relate to these challenges, and I am looking forward to helping them build a roadmap to create a custom strategy that will achieve their goals. 

Not surprisingly, a growing number of companies all over the world adding CIOs at very high levels within their leadership ranks:

The list continues to grow. I’ve helped many of my corporate clients across different industries (including some on this list) to restructure their organizations to stimulate innovation by appointing these uniquely-skilled leaders to champion their innovation efforts.  Several will have new innovation leaders within the next few months.
These CIOs are role models for leadership qualities and typically have the following characteristics that enable them to be successful in their roles:

•     Ability to be successful in a complex matrix environment
•     Ability to influence supervisors, peers, and subordinates in order to drive Innovation initiatives
•     High cognitive power skills
•     Strong Business Acumen Sound judgment
•     Strategic, conceptual orientation
•     High energy, flexibility, motivational and empowerment skills
•     Ability to select, retain, and delegate to an solid deputy group
•     Requires change management skills, conflict resolution skills and the ability to promote, motivate and effect positive changes for the total organization
•     Ability to inspire and motivate teams to achieve superior results

A significant amount of their time is spent stewarding innovation efforts and building capabilities across business units, functions and geographies.  They are tasked with finding creative ways to balance building tomorrow while delivering results today.  Their efforts are personally stimulating yet challenging at times.  That is why a lot of these C-suite leaders are experimenting with new metrics that go beyond financial measures. They are not satisfied with lagging metrics and are finding creative ways to demonstrate their accomplishments by looking at a simple portfolio of input and output metrics such as innovation success rates for products and services, outside idea sourcing, return on investment metrics, capability measures, and even sources of additional revenue. The area of metrics is expanding rapidly to meet the evolving needs of these C-suite leaders.  

As you can see, I have a lot of passion in these areas of innovation and an excited to share about my own rewarding experience as a CIO, championing innovation at Kimberly-Clark, and what I am seeing as a thought leader across industries with my clients today.

Many companies are finding it difficult to sustain growth because they are dependant on incremental innovations, which don’t often provide the level of growth expected in today’s marketplace. So it was very encouraging to me to take part in the Consumer Goods Technology Growth and Innovation forum in Miami this week. I spent time talking with and listening to leaders and attendees from around the world about their efforts to revitalize their innovation strategies.These innovation leaders shared retrospectives on their innovation journey—what they have done, lessons learned and future approaches. Many CPG companies facing similar growth challenges are looking for innovative solutions to drive top-line growth. That transformation needs to take them from simply pushing technologies to market, toward building brand loyalty by delivering meaningfully differentiated consumer benefits.  

I’m gearing up for this year’s Global Innovation Exchange 2007 virtual conference for global innovation best practices. This event will take place November 7-9 right on your desktop, and I hope you’ll take this opportunity to join me for what I know to be a groundbreaking Internet experience.

You will glean innovation insights, strategies and next practices from around the world, and learn about emerging innovation models, tools and approaches to the latest trends in innovation management and strategy.

What’s great about this program is that you can engage directly with innovation thought leaders and network with your peers from all over the world. Joining me will be innovation experts from Johnson & Johnson, Hewlett-Packard, Idea Crossing, as well as innovators from Turkey to Denmark. For more information or to register, click here. See you online!

I’m intrigued by the lessons learned from last week’s Process for Innovation conference in Chicago. The event was well attended by many different industries.  I was there to present a course on metrics, focusing on showing attendees how to determine when to start leveraging innovation metrics and which metrics should be in their portfolio. (Most companies struggle with this.)  The most frequently used measurements are return on investment, percentage of revenue from new products and cycle time.

 Quite a few attendees came from South Korea’s POSCO, one of the world’s largest steel companies. It was interesting how serious South Korea is about innovation and Six Sigma.

 LEAN Six Sigma recommended strengthening a company’s efforts by deliberately bringing in creative tools to add a component of innovation. Even when pursuing systems that are all focused on efficiency and flow, opportunities are lost if we do not step back and look for innovation opportunities. Innovation is needed at all levels. Many attendees had been trained in Six Sigma, but there is a hunger to add innovation and creativity. There has been some concern about Six Sigma hindering creativity at places like 3M. Perhaps the lesson is that special approaches are always needed to build in room for creativity and processes to promote innovation. It won’t occur naturally, especially if you are creating rigorous processes. Adding metrics to help track and measure innovation efforts can be one important key that drive the right behaviors that stimulate innovation.  

A final observation that still makes me smile: The audience had so many questions after my presentation that the conference leader had to step up and interrupt my Q&A session to get us back on track with the conference timeline.  Contrary to normal expectations, they were more interested in getting answers to their questions than they were in eating lunch.

If you’re going to stay ahead of the competition and sustain market growth, you need to learn “how” to innovate. A great place to jumpstart that learning is at the upcoming Process for Innovation 2007, the first conference designed to provide a multitude of case studies on corporate innovation. The event is August 21 and 22 in Chicago. 

I’ll be among the innovators providing attendees with simple and structured approaches to innovation, as well as the methods required to deploy it across organizations. I strongly encourage you to sign up for the two-day event. You’ll get advice from people who are and have been leaders of corporate innovation, and we will share valuable insights into how to achieve leadership alignment to fully support your innovation efforts, along with methods to foster creativity and extend the life of your product or service.  

 I’m scheduled for Day Two of the conference, presenting a course on metrics. I’m looking forward to teaching attendees a strategic and disciplined approach that will enable them to create a family of innovation metrics for their maximum return on investment. We’ll be discussing the characteristics of “good metrics,” and why companies should equally focus on both “input” measures and “output” measures.   

 I’ll also be leading a lunchtime roundtable discussion about metrics, and I can’t wait to hear from some of the other attendees and presenters about how they approach innovation. I’ll be joined by executives from companies like Motorola, Cargill, Humana, DaimlerChrysler and a host of other innovation advocates and leaders.   The Web site offers a host of discounts for early registrations, and I’m adding an additional 10 percent off the standard price for all Innovationedge clients (and anyone who reads this Blog!). To take advantage of this, please email the conference organizers by clicking here.  

I am honored to announce that Innovationedge is leading the charge for next year’s 7th International Conference of PDMA’s “CoDev 2008” in Scottsdale, Ariz.  I’ve been busy assembling a powerful steering committee to take our combined knowledge of collaborative innovation up a notch for next year’s event. Our goal is to help participants build and leverage an open innovation model while managing intellectual property (IP) around a core business strategy.  

I’m also delighted to tell you that I’ll be joined by renowned thought leaders and innovators from Microsoft, Boeing, Motorola and a host of others who are leveraging their own open innovation models to accelerate faster, better solutions.  In planning this conference around the growing range of open innovation options, I have a robust course schedule in the works. In addition to IP strategy, we’ll be diving into courses on Culture, Metrics, Investment vs. Return, Choosing the Right Partners and Organizational Networks. 

That said, I strongly encourage you to save the dates – January 21, 22 and 23 – for CoDev 2008. If you know anyone who would like to get on the mailing list to be notified about program updates and registration availability, sign up on the PDMA Web site. Of course, the earlier you register, the better your chances are of securing your spot in the pre-conference workshops and hotel of your choice.