Empowering Aha! How Clorox Sustains an …...Empowering ‘Aha!How Clorox Sustains an Innovation...
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Empowering ‘Aha!’:
How Clorox Sustains
an Innovation Culture
Companywide
Ralph Loura
Vice President - CIO
The Clorox Company
Greg Piche
Innovation Sourcing Lead
The Clorox Company
Abstract
Empowering 'Aha!': How Clorox Sustains a Culture of Innovation
Companywide
For the past 99 years, Clorox has been a pioneering Bay Area company
with leading brands recognized around the world.
“Fostering a culture of innovation is one of the keys to this $5.2 billion
company's longevity”, says CIO Ralph Loura, who champions a model of
"connected thinking" that helps IT and everyone at Clorox deepen and
strengthen their links to the growing the business.
In this presentation, Ralph and Greg will talk about the processes and
learnings from Clorox’s ”!NNOVENT!" platform to support employee
ideation and collaboration.
This idea-generating portal not only involves “American Idol”-like voting
(minus the singing and dancing), but more importantly encourages peer
commentary and cross-functional collaboration – with hundreds of ideas
for new product ideas generated across Clorox's global employee
community.
Ralph’s BIO
• Ralph Loura is CIO for The Clorox Company, where he is responsible
for the company’s worldwide use of information technology. In his role,
Mr. Loura leads the global IT organization and directs the company’s
strategic technology initiatives in support of Clorox’ goal of making
everyday life better, every day.
• Prior to joining Clorox Mr. Loura served as SVP and CIO for Medicis,
VP and CIO for Symbol Technologies and held IT leadership positions
at Cisco Systems, Lucent Technologies and AT&T Bell Labs.
• Mr. Loura received a master’s degree in computer science from
Northwestern University and a bachelor’s in computer science-
mathematics from Saint Joseph's College. Mr. Loura serves on
several customer advisory boards, on two non-profit boards, and is
involved in furthering the practice of Technology Leadership through a
number of CIO councils and peer-based organizations.
About The Clorox Company
The Clorox Company is a leading manufacturer and
marketer of consumer products with fiscal year 2011
revenues of $5.2 billion.
With 8,100 employees worldwide, the company
manufactures products in more than two dozen countries
and markets them in more than 100 countries.
Portfolio of Leading Brands
Innovations at Clorox
• 3D Innovation
– Desire,
– Decide and
– Delight
• Cat Litter Innovation
– Bacon Scented Litter Video
– http://youtu.be/GMPxWSL89-8
FreshStep® Viral Video
Website: http://www.freshstep.com/bacon
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=GMPxWSL89-8#t=86 (30 sec clip)
Innovations at Clorox
• Green Works®
• Brita® Bottle
• Güd™ & QR Codes
• Hidden Valley® for Everything
Greg’s BIO
• Greg Piche is the Innovation Sourcing Lead at The Clorox Company.
He is also the founder of CloroxConnects (www.cloroxconnects.com),
an internal-external innovation network, and co-founder of !NNOVENT,
an internal-to-Clorox entrepreneur contest. Greg is responsible with
assessing new technologies and market opportunities and with
discovering new sources of innovation.
• Greg brings over fifteen years of national and international professional
experience to Clorox in manufacturing operations, product
development and internal ventures.
• Greg's work has been published in numerous business journals,
including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Motley Fool
and The Harvard Business Review.
Innovation Powered by
Design “+” Thinking
• Design thinking
– An iterative approach to building solution
sets for needs
• What’s the “+”?
– Deep consumer immersion and insights
– Our “Secret sauce”
CloroxConnects
An immersion engine
•Collaboration hub for Consumers, Inventors, Partners, and
Employees.
•Ideas, themes, trends and needs can be harvested from these
online forums
!NNOVENT – Design “+” Thinking For All
!NNOVENT goals
– Create a pipeline of growth ideas from anywhere
– Create a pipeline of capability
Round 1 - DREAM !T
– Social ideation, peer comments & suggestions, voting
Round 2 - DRIVE !T
– Top 30 ideas (by votes) build business cases, receive connected-
thinking training and cross-functional support
Round 3 - DO !T
– Teams of 5 develop specific plans for the top 7 business cases, selected
by a panel of senior business leaders.
Present business plans to Executive Committee members in June.
Results: 2011
– 300+ ideas
– 1000+ comments
– 700+ people
– 4 ideas caught
Results 2012 (ongoing)
– 400+ ideas
– 2000+ comments
– 1000+ people
Key Insights to Drive Innovation
• INCENT for peer collaboration & social ideation
– It’s perfectly okay to build on last year’s ideas – yours or others
– Provide “Bravo” points and iPad drawings for submissions of ideas OR
comments
– Encourage employees to form teams – stronger together
– Cash awards for final teams
• RESOURCES are needed to nurture ideas into innovations
– Give employees TIME to work on their ideas – for workshops, testing, etc
– Give them TOOLS – business case templates, Connective Thinking
classes, training from venture capitalists, resources from other functions
• PLATFORMS of technologies are of secondary importance to ease
of use
– Eliminate barriers to participate
– Empower office workers & plant employees, from work or home
Innovations at Clorox
Liquid-Plumr® Double Impact®
Website: http://www.liquidplumr.com/
http://www.facebook.com/LiquidPlumr
Video: http://youtu.be/Z7fz0jpuLkM (30 seconds)