Innovation leadership and culture: Observations from Johnson & Johnson
I have had the pleasure of getting to know Jeff Murphy over the last couple of months. Jeff is an executive director at Johnson & Johnson where he is working with improvement methodologies and business innovation.
At a meeting a couple of months ago, we got into a discussion on key leadership behaviors and decisions with regards to innovation leadership and culture. Jeff works with this at Johnson & Johnson and he has made the following observations on what business leaders who are seeking to improve their organization’s innovation capability and capacity should do.
They should:
• make innovation a TRUE business priority
• encourage cross-functional collaboration on innovation.
• make innovation part of everyone’s performance review. Recognize publically and rewardappropriately.
• view failures as learning opportunities. Celebrate and recognize successes and failures from innovation.
• put the emphasis on questioning, not telling. Your style and type of questions matter.
• allow flexibility to explore new possibilities. Collaborate inside and outside the organization.
• hire and value a diversity of thinking styles, experiences, perspectives and expertise.
• purchase or develop an idea management system that captures ideas and encourages people to build on and evaluate new possibilities.
• establish a seed fund for early innovation work.
• recognize and communicate that innovation is a long-term business process that needs to be cultivated, just like any other business process.
Besides these observations, Jeff also shared some of the questions he asks within Johnson & Johnson as they work to develop an even better innovation culture. Jeff has divided these questions into three categories: Culture, Capability and Cash.
Questions on Culture:
• What is your business case for improving at innovation?
• Who is/will be the senior management innovation champion?
• Who is/will be the deployment leader?
• How are key innovation management behaviors being demonstrated? Communicated?
• What is your company’s innovation archetype or style?
• What communication vehicles are being used? Who owns this?
• How is innovation ingrained in your rewards and recognition system?
• How is risk and failure handled?
• How do you measure and monitor your culture and engagement?
• What management and staff training has been conducted/planned?
Questions on Capability:
• What is your 3-year innovation deployment plan? How is it aligned with your strategic plan?
• How do you plan to balance Big I vs. Little I? What about internal vs. open innovation?
• What is your standard innovation framework or process?
• What training has been conducted for team leaders – and individuals? What percentage has been trained?
• How do you get deep customer and market insights?
• How are ideas submitted? Evaluated? Built upon? Tracked? Killed?
• How do you hire for creativity and innovation?
• What do you measure regarding capability?
Questions on Cash:
• What innovation projects have been chartered and funded? In what areas?
• What do you measure regarding value realized?
• What is your track record (past 2-5 years)?
• What are your 1-3 year goals?
• What is your risk adjusted innovation pipeline value?
• What areas of your innovation process are working well? Not working well?
Jeff and his team have developed an on-line Innovation Diagnostic Survey which quickly evaluates current conditions and performance around 75 key areas (including, Leadership, Strategy, Portfolio Management, Customer Focus, Culture, Innovation process, Training, and Metrics & Results) related to innovation. This tool provides executives with a prioritized roadmap for innovation performance improvement.
I hope the sharing of these insights from Johnson & Johnson provides you with some inspiration on the development of innovation leadership and culture within your company. It would be great to hear your comments and other insights as well.
Stefan…Thanks for this great entry!
I think the more we can provide positive stories about organizations that have found a way to make innovation work successfully, the more others may be willing to give it a go.
Johnson & Johnson has long since been a leader, not just in product innovation, but in developing a working innovation culture. I’ve had a distinct privilege in working with them for years, at a number of their R&D centers and business units.
Rather than my trying to tell you about their innovation culture, why not hear it from them directly. At our company’s global user conference last year, Johnson & Johnson shared some of their insights about building a sustainable innovation culture.
You can see some of their comments here:
http://bit.ly/ezHdl
This is a wonderful post – I’m wondering if in your conversations with Jeff if he ever talked about this “top 10″ observations, did he ever address these elements in terms of prioritization? I’m wondering if he finds one or more to be make or break in terms of success?
Hi Liz,
I will sent Jeff a note with your comment. Perhaps he can share his thoughts with regards ot prioritization.
Jim, thanks for the link.
Stefan
What a great posting. Thanks for sharing Stefan.
Clearly J&J is a leader in innovation, setting a standard for the rest. I’m really interested in how employees can be successful in an environment that is NOT so cutting edge. For an example, a technology scout or other employee who is trying to be innovative in a culture that lacks such support to color outside the lines.
Does anyone have ideas/resources on this?
Kristy
A very succinct primer on how do achieve innovation within a large organization. Thanks for the insight Stefan. Any chance J&J would be willing to share their on-line Innovation Diagnostic Survey? Sounds like a useful tool.
Ron
Thanks Stefan for this.
I have also developed a so called “Innovation Capability Assessment” as part of my PhD in Industrial Engineering. This tool was developed over a three year period, consolidating a significant amount of research on innovation best practice.
Basically, the tool takes a high-level and generic view on a company’s innovation capability and evaluates how mature the company is in 42 key areas of innovation. These 42 areas are interrelated in many ways – this is captured in the framework of the model – which allows us to show various views and different levels of aggregation in our results and aids in prioritizing of improvement projects.
We have utilized it now in 7 different companies – ranging from the biggest insurance provider in South Africa to a small industrial design company.
We have commercialised the assessment now and have a mini-assessment (shortened version at: http://www.indutech.co.za/products/ica/online-mini-ica). This is however only a teazer! I would gladly email info if your were interested in more detail.
Is there a url for J&J’s tool? I am extremely interested to see the 75 areas addressed!
Thanks again!
Heinz
Innovation is certainly a ‘high wire’ act – create a winner and it could be a fluke, create several and it is ‘what’s next; create a failure and your goose is cooked. Regardless, it is still the most exciting part of the marketing world. Success comes from having a ‘champion’ to challenge, push, shove, and never give up… and systems certainly help keep the highway open…
Stefan,
Sorry it’s took me so long to connect back in…it’s been a busy summer (June & August weddings)!
As far as prioritization, perhaps it was unclear in the original post that these questions aren’t used as a checklist per se, but rather are intended to spark further discussion around three main things:
1) What do we need to do in order to meet our business objectives? How big is the “gap” we are seeking to address?
2) Are we adequately prepared (leadership, culture, process, resources, capability) to do this?
3) Tactically, what will we do to get there?
Nest steps are highly BU dependent from that point on, but could generically follow (but it’s not necessarily linear!) :
* Goal Setting
* Sponsorship & Management Alignment
* Individual Roles
* Resource Allocation
* Idea Management Process
* Funding & Approval Process
* Measure & Manage
&
* Continually Support Culture!
Hope that clarifies things a bit.
Best,
Jeff Murphy