the
innovative LEDGER
An e-Newsletter from The Innovative Edge™ Inc.
Vol.
6, No. 7- July 2006
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Agitating
for New Ideas
By Jeff Govendo
Innovation
is such a hot topic in business these days. Every newspaper, magazine
or journal I pick up seems to feature an article on some eye-popping
new product in the field of home electronics, business computing,
biomedicine, satellite technology, handheld communications, major
home appliances…
Wait!
Home appliances? Like washers, dryers, the fridge? Sure, they’ve
changed in appearance over the years (slowly), and become more energy
efficient. But are appliance makers really the paragons of technological
and design innovation?
Apparently
some companies with bigger reputations as innovators think so. A
recent article in BusinessWeek describing Whirlpool Corporation’s
innovation initiatives noted that teams from HP and Nokia have been
visiting to benchmark their own innovation programs against the appliance
maker’s. Whirlpool's revenue from products designated as
innovative has increased from $10 million in 2001 to $760 million
four years later. So successful have they been, they recently bought
out archrival and one-time perceived quality leader Maytag (remember
the idle Maytag repair man?) for $2.6 billion.
There
were two things I especially appreciated about the Whirlpool innovation
story. The first was that despite their innovation initiative
having had a rather costly and less-than-successful start back in
2000, in which then-chairman David Whitwam attempted to put in place
an idea generation system involving all 60,000+ employees worldwide
(which proved absolutely unwieldy), he did not give up. He
kept at it, making continuous refinements until he got a system that
worked. It yields plenty of high quality new ideas, yet can be adequately
managed. Whirlpool attributes 3 of its 9% annual sales growth rate
since 2003 directly to products coming from this program.
The
second aspect of Whirlpool’s approach that I liked was this:
they never discard ideas. They keep them available, even if passed
over the first time around, for future employees to look over and
apply their own particular spin to. They cited the example of a pricey
clothes freshening appliance consumers loved but balked at due to
the cost. It had been shelved. When later a new set of eyes looked
over the concept, the same technology was brought back in a new and
less costly form, selling profitably for one-fifth the price of the
original. Sometimes the best innovations come from re-examining
previous, seemingly unworkable ideas.
I
must admit it was nice to see a feature article on innovation involving
a company whose products are not primarily, well… digital! (I
admit it… I understand agitators better than hard drives.) The
fact is, any company, from high tech to those manufacturing the most
mundane, everyday products, can benefit from innovation efforts like
Whirlpool’s, even done on a smaller scale.
(Now,
I have this idea about using the fridge as some kind of magnetic bulletin
board…)
