What is innovation in most companies today? "For most companies, it's all about inventing everything yourself," says Larry Huston, managing partner at 4INNO and former Procter & Gamble vice president. "Yes, some companies do joint ventures. They mostly do that out of trying to fill in a weakness or a capability gap. But most companies invent everything. Procter & Gamble invented 90 percent of its innovations. Everything came from basically within the four walls of P&G. We had 9,000 R&D people at Procter & Gamble, but the world has about 1.8 million people who are equal in education and have access to first-class lab facilities, (like) P&G people.
"So basically, (the) Connect + Develop (program) is all about redefining our organization as 1,809,000 people--that 1.8 million plus our 9,000 people--and then leveraging the intellectual assets and capabilities of the world in a connected model to bring big innovations to our consumers. So it's about connecting, not just inventing. You can think about it as: You want to continue to invent, but you want to connect. It's what you know plus who you know on the outside, so that you can really create a lot of value for your customers or consumers.
Source: Knowledge@Wharton, http://www.knowledgeatwharton.com.cn