Gaule: Give a brief description of the purpose of your innovation and the key areas for P&G.
Herkströter: P&G decided about 10 years ago that, in order to meet its growth objectives, the only way would be to "connect and develop" beyond the type of collaboration that already took place with P&G’s suppliers. So, the key purpose of this approach is to grow the company’s sales beyond what is possible using internal resources. The company periodically makes strategic decisions on what they want to develop internally, what they would like to collaborate on with the external world and what they would like to source externally. Areas in which P&G practises its connect and develop activities are all its business units and areas that fall beyond its current business unit but are or will be of strategic importance.
Gaule: What type of process – for example internal ideas, external partners and venturing – do you use?
Herkströter: Once the strategies of the business units or the company are set so-called needs are defined, focusing on what needs to be achieved, not how, so they communicate the end business goal. Based on these needs are, P&G’s global business development (GBD) decides with the business units what the best approaches would be to meet the needs. This could be outright purchasing, in which case the purchase division takes over, it could be a landscaping approach, which can be done by either GBD itself or could be farmed out to consultancies, it could be a more academic approach, in which case GBD’s university network will do the work, it could be acquiring a company or a licence, in which case GBD’s licensing and acquisitions people take over, it could be technology, which could be approached via Nine Sigma, Innocentive or others, it could be via a technology scout, it could be an unsolicited idea already submitted to P&G. The possibilities and combinations are endless and it is almost an art to find the right tool for the right need. You want to be specific enough but at the same time you do not want to be too specific and miss opportunities that are more lateral. As far as outside patterns are concerned, everything is game.
Gaule: Give us a brief overview of the people in the team and the partners you work with.
Herkströter: I am a member of the GBD team, which consists of global (technology) specialists who own the needs, landscaping specialists, intellectual property specialists, licence and acquisition specialists, business model specialists, deal-makers, lawyers, people who are the day-in, day-out contacts with the business units and people who look into entirely new opportunities outside existing business units. On a typical project or need I could work with any combination of them.
Gaule: What are the current challenges organisations face in developing new technology and business ideas?
Herkströter: Major challenges that P&G faces are making timely and strategic choices, following through on choices and implementing the choices, where very often the interface with a potential implementation partner presents another cultural challenge. P&G, like any company, is pretty much set in its way of doing things and how it partners other firms. In addition to building up a working partnership, risk management of the output of such a partnership can be another formidable challenge. Doing things differently does not mean more risk, but how do you assess the risk if the project is done in an unfamiliar way?
Gaule: What do you do to relax when you are not managing all these programmes?
Herkströter: When not busy with family and friends, I love photography, sailing, skiing, tennis (at least twice a week travel permitting), lateral thinking, Jungian psychology to read and my biggest wish would be to create more time because there is so much more to explore and do.