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resulted in P&G exceeding all of its financial goals in fiscal 2004. To do
this, Cloyd leveraged a strategy designed to innovate innovation. The
focus is on using technology and innovation to compete on multiple
fronts simultaneously without spreading the corporate structure too thin.
Among his changes were:
1. More collaboration
2. Strengthening of external relationships
3. Expansion of R&D's role to include not only knowledge generation,
but knowledge brokering as well
4. Utilizing computational modeling and simulation as the evolving
solution for fast-cycle learning
That P&G could achieve such startling financial results is a testament to
the fact that changing the way businesses do business can lead to great
creativity—and a tidy bottom line.
An interesting twist on reengineering is the one used by Ideo, a company
that is on a mission to change the way businesses think. Ideo is actually
a design firm, but the dot-com bust forced Ideo's founder, Kelley to adapt
his business model. Instead of “cool” products, Kelley began to focus on
processes. For example, he streamlined the processes for admission into
hospitals and new ways to stock supermarket shelves.
Ideo is now a business consultancy that specializes in reengineering
companies to make them more efficient and more innovative. The com-
pany uses transformational ideas directly from the design world and
applies them to business processes. For example, Ideo once sent the CEO
of P&G on a shopping trip in San Francisco's Mission District. Top execu-
tives from Kraft were spirited away to a traffic control center to watch cars
stop and start to determine whether this experience could influence their
supply-chain management. Apparently it did, as Kraft cut in half the time
it took to get products to retail.
Some are calling Ideo's ideas revolutionary. Kelley's goal is to merge
business, design, and education together to both help the companies and
train the next generation of business leaders to use a more innovative and
emotional way of doing business. Maybe this is the next big thing. Maybe
it's not. Whatever it is or isn't, it's definitely an approach to get those cre-
ative and innovative juices flowing within an organization. And that's all
that matters.
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