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- O r g a n i z a t i o n a l _ I n n o v a t i o n -

Click here for more information on the George Land World Innovator Award or to apply online.

The first award for organizational innovation was presented to Mike Dube and Tom Perfetti of the R.J. Reynolds Research & Development Group at the closing ceremonies of the Innovative Thinking Convergence in Santa Barbara.

RJR R&D's innovation story began as part of the RJR Total Quality initiative which focused on teamwork, innovation and diversity. Once all employees had received teamwork training, attention turned to innovation and in April of 1991 an innovation workshop was held for top RJR executives. This event stimulated the creation of an innovation steering committee within the research and development group.

The first challenge of the committee was to develop a mission. Although the group was originally unclear on their purpose, they shared a strong set of fundamental beliefs, notably: a real commitment to teamwork, a belief that all R&D employees must be involved in the innovation process and an insistence that the innovation process would yield tangible benefits for the organization.

Innovation Definition:
Model or Culture?

One of the first critical questions that emerged from six months of studying innovation processes was exactly how to define innovation. One possibility was based on a "classical model" consisting of the steps required to take a seminal idea to commercial endpoint. Another possibility was based on a "culture change" in which thinking, respect for ideas, planning and action were emphasized. While both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, RJR R&D decided that a focus on a step-by-step, product innovation model would not meet the requirement for involvement by all employees as it might be implied that only product developers could be "innovators." They decided instead to adopt a culture-oriented strategy with the following key elements:

• Universal availability
• Understanding the necessity to generate many new ideas and to follow through (and recognizing that real buy-in will reside with the committed few)
• Techniques to stimulate, capture and build on ideas
• Focus on meaningful (not always financial) results from ideas
• Continuous follow-up that constitutes a real change process instead of a "program" approach.

I-Week

A second critical question was how to prepare and deliver the innovation process to the entire department. This led to the more fundamental issue of whether they were teaching innovation or facilitating a definition of innovation within the organization. The group decided that if innovation were to become a core value in the new R&D culture, "facilitating" would be the better approach.

In an effort to exemplify an innovative approach of doing things right while also "doing things that couldn't be done," they decided to train everyone (a group which eventually included 800 employees) in three days, an effort designated as Innovation Week (I-Week) and which required 30 volunteer trainer/facilitators.

The volunteer facilitators (less than 30% from management) received four days of intense training from The School for Innovators. At the same time six other teams (involving over 110 people) were addressing the logistics issues of I-Week. The theme chosen for I-Week was "MindShift," defined as "altering one's point of view and/or enhancing one's capacity to innovate."

I-Week was held March 30 - April 2, 1993. The first three of these days were devoted to conducting 32 innovation awareness training classes led by 34 facilitators. The grand finale was held the fourth day. On a typical I-Week day, in two separate hotels, six facilitator teams were conducting six simultaneous innovation classes. In order to provide rapid turnaround of ideas, the R&D Secretarial Forum provided three people per day per location who used lap top computers and portable printers to create instant handouts. Evaluations of the individual sessions averaged 8.1 (out of 10) and 8.4 for facilitator effectiveness.

The grand finale of Innovation Week was a two-hour presentation by Rolf Smith, Headmaster of the School for Innovators and a special thank you to the participants by Carl Ehmann, M.D., the Executive VP of R&D.

Results

With two years of experience with their innovation initiative, RJR has started to see significant changes in culture, products and processes. The latest company-wide culture survey, conducted by a nationally-known survey company, showed that the company ranked in the top 10% of U.S. manufacturing firms and that RJR R&D showed a 20% increase in scores dealing with: teamwork, coop- eration and support, innovation and risk taking, respect and fairness/diversity, employee involvement commitment.

The innovation initiative has contributed to several product and process successes. Innovation tools have been used to understand the consumer purpose of products, to create new visions, missions and strategic plans for various divisions and business units within the company, and to develop new analytical methods and operational techniques to improve effectiveness. Time spent in meetings has been significantly reduced and cost-saving and cost avoidance efforts have saved several millions of dollars.

RJR R&D has made a commitment to share innovation tools in their community outreach programs in an effort to expand the understanding of innovation and to share basic scientific knowledge with the community. They have over 20 of those programs in process including "Scientists in the Classrooms," the Winston-Salem Futures Council where they presented innovation skills to a group of 150 and continue to coach and mentor members who are developing scenarios for Winston-Salem 2020, and the Black Executive Exchange Program which mentors, coaches and counsels students in black colleges in the U.S.