Come On, Everybody, Help Me Be Innovative

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