Grassroots Innovation: A Promising Innovation Paradigm for Pharmaceutical Companies - Innovation and Marketing in the Pharmaceutical Industry - page 131

The companies' activities come under the umbrella of Merck KGaA, in which the
Merck family holds an approximately 70 % interest and free shareholders own the
remaining approximately 30 %. In 1917, the US subsidiary Merck & Co 11 was
expropriated and has been an independent company ever since.
Innospire , a word composition from innovation and inspiration, was designed
with four main goals in mind. The fi rst goal was to mobilize the full innovation
potential of a large global organization, from all employees, across organizational
boundaries. The second goal was to promote relatedness and networking across
both the chemicals and pharmaceutical divisions of Merck KGaA in order to boost
cross-fertilization. The third goal was to generate an environment for entrepreneur-
ial individuals to form highly motivated teams and move forward with their new
business idea. The fourth goal was to foster an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit
within the organization and to signal that innovation is important, also and espe-
cially in budgetary challenging times.
The fi rst author started the initiative to design and implement the Innospire pro-
gram at Merck KGaA. After convincing management of the benefi ts of such a grass-
roots innovation process, the fi rst and third authors jointly rolled it out in
collaboration with the fourth author who served as a process consultant on Innospire
and designed the bootcamp program, developed the training plan, and served as
principal facilitator of the bootcamp program, delivering both skills training ses-
sions and acting as a professional external coach for the six fi nalist teams. The fi rst
and third authors also acted as coaches to the teams, allowing the collection and
analysis of observations and data to be collaborative.
The fi rst idea call for Innospire was launched in 2009, about 9 months after start-
ing the preparation. The branding and communication of Innospire was carefully
planned to appeal to intrinsically motivated employees and spread through exten-
sive distribution via Merck KGaA's internal systems. In its fi rst edition, more than
462 ideas from 550 idea champions—some ideas were joint submissions with mul-
tiple idea owners 12 —were submitted from all corners of the organization, from all
divisions, and from 32 countries all over the world, affording ample opportunities to
measure the acceptance and impact of Innospire through interviews with managers
and employees.
From the 462 submitted ideas, the most promising 17 ideas were then selected by
a global cross-divisional selection committee of scientifi c, technical, patent, and
business experts. Merck KGaA organized an innovation marketplace at which idea
owners presented their ideas and composed project teams of volunteers that had all
skills required for the process. From these 17 ideas and their respective teams, again
a selection of 6 fi nalist teams was made which were offered a program to assist them
in advancing their idea to a professional business plan, which we called the Innospire
bootcamp.
11 www.merck.com .
12 And there were also some participants who submitted more than one idea.