PRESENTER
John Berschied
Group Vice President,
Research & Development
Alberto Culver

The need for a strong innovation program to drive growth is widely accepted. Numerous authors have documented the premium earned by companies that are successful innovators. Most companies use a variety of metrics to document and judge the relative success of their innovation efforts.

Many of the metrics are either retrospective (i.e. percentage of sales on R&D or a percentage of sales from products introduced in the past three years) or process oriented (i.e. following a stage gate process or supporting technology platforms). What is less common are “in-flight” metrics that can predict the outcome or the probabilities of certain outcomes before the objective is achieved. These metrics are not quantitative, but are no less important in determining the ultimate success of an innovation program.

This presentation will review some “in-flight” metrics that have proven useful in the consumer goods industry.

PRESENTER
Duane Oda
Product Development Chief
Commercial Airplanes
The Boeing Company

The commercial airplane business is highly cyclic, full of uncertainty; product development cycles are long and require huge financial investments and resources.  The success or failure of this business, like other businesses, is dependent on several key factors, some of which are stated below: 

• Understanding of internal and external market/business influences
• Identifying the right market opportunities
• Alignment of product development and technology development activities to these market opportunities
• Development of innovative capabilities and solutions
• Identifying the right strategic skills and partnerships

One approach that enables these key factors is Strategic Roadmapping.

Strategic Roadmapping is being established at The Boeing Company to help understand and dynamically align technology development plans, product development efforts, market needs, and high-level company strategies as they evolve and change over time.  Duane Oda will provide a summary of Strategic Roadmapping and how it is being utilized in The Boeing Company.

PRESENTER
James A. Euchner
Vice President,
Advanced Technology
& Chief E-Business Officer
Pitney Bowes

Mr. Euchner will give an overview of Pitney Bowes' process for innovation that starts with the customer and invents into the needs of the customer. This approach combines ethnographic research into customer needs, structured brainstorming, rapid prototyping, and targeted trials of technology in use and is highly multi-disciplinary and iterative. The innovation process has evolved to the point where it includes stage gates for framing the strategic question, definition of the value proposition, and metrics to determine business feasibility.

PRESENTER
Paul H. Henderson
Hewlett-Packard

As businesses transition through the phases of market maturity from entry to maturity and back to renewal, they need different R&D metrics in order to stimulate change and overcome organizational inertia. One division in Hewlett Packard Co. has activities going on in multiple stages of market maturity and needed a metrics system to both guide the different activities and also enable them to coexist in harmony. Mr. Henderson’s talk will introduce the distinctions between emerging, agile and efficient product generation and then use a case study to explore the selection of R&D metrics that are appropriate to the business situation.

PRESENTER
Leslie Koulis
Manager
New Business Development
Armstrong World Industries

Armstrong has developed a new opportunity development process (including defined roles, templates and dashboards) to ensure that its portfolio of new products is balanced and complete, regardless of market. To maintain a steady influx of new product ideas and assess their merits, Armstrong uses a multidisciplinary marketplace team approach to examine key strategies for each business; new product ideas are then assigned to project managers who serve in the role of "concept shapers". Within 2 - 4 weeks, the teams spearhead the development of the best new ideas into product or service concepts - new concepts must have a viable business case plan to continue on into traditional development. Ms. Kulis will provide a detailed overview of Armstrong's definition of the roles, templates (including business cases) and dashboards used in this unique process and will examine the lessons learned in implementation and execution.

PRESENTER
Masongo Moukwa
Vice President, Global Technology
Reichhold

This presentation will give an overview of how Reichhold developed a process to identify and assess technologies and products to fill its pipeline of opportunities and bring them to commercialization. By reviewing its past experience of transfering technology and products from other organizations, Reichhold developed a number of metrics to ensure that new opportunities were properly identified and screened and that new technologies and products were integrated within company capabilities.  This talk will examine actual cases of technology transfer from Reichhold’s parent company and the metrics deployed.

PRESENTER
Randy Merry
Vice President, R&D
Medtronic Physio-Control

How do you measure performance from idea development to product development hand-off, and finally to product release? Randy Merry will discuss the tools and metrics Medtronic uses to reduce cycle time and ensure smooth transitions in its technology development process.

PRESENTER
Brad Fevold
Director, R&D
Marvin Windows & Doors

Do you set goals for how your resources are being utilized?  How do you use historical data to better plan future projects?  Is accuracy an issue when predicting project deliverables?  This presentation will focus on how to set-up, manage, and leverage resource tracking software tools while moving from the ideation stage of an idea to the final commercialization.  This will be a practical approach that leverages technology to gain greater accuracy of the data while reducing the “bureaucracy” impact in tracking resource hours.  If you ever wanted to better understand how to implement resource tracking tools, Brad will provide a step-by-step methodology including details on the internally developed software that was developed by his R&D department.

PRESENTER
Dr. Shiv Krishnan
Global Alliance Management
& External Networks
Aventis Pharmaceuticals

Alliances play an increasingly critical role for pharmaceutical and biotech companies to meet productivity targets and competitive growth rates. Approximately 20 percent of revenues of the top 20 pharmaceutical companies are expected to come from licensed products by 2007. Similarly, large biotechnology firms expect significant revenues from alliances. Yet studies show that about 60% of alliances fail to deliver the desired result. Less than 30% of these failures are due to technical reasons.

Based on internal research across a portfolio of nearly 300 relationships with biotechnology firms and academia, a pattern of critical success factors emerges.  This presentation will outline the key learnings -- including how to establish a measurable basis for alliances, especially in the area of innovative technologies.

PRESENTER
Tanya K. Moore
Director, IP Licensing
Microsoft  Corporation

• Integrating IP creation into the development process & budget
   

  • How and Why
     

• Integrating IP licensing into the development process, budget & business plan
   

  • Inbound technology licensing for time-to-market considerations: make vs buy valuation scenarios

  • Patent cross-licensing for freedom of action: valuing potential costs and/or income

  • Outbound technology licensing as part of a go-to-market strategy: plan to monetize the created IP
     

• Discussion of established IP valuation methodologies

PRESENTER
James Markwith
Associate General Counsel
Extreme Networks, Inc.
(formerly with Adobe Systems)

Quantifying the worth of patents and other intangible assets is becoming increasingly important as R&D extends to outside partners. While proper IP valuation can readily encourage innovation, under- or over-valuation can impede it.  Based on his first hands-on experience, Jim Markwith will discuss how to get it right given different situations and scenarios.  He will outline and provide case examples of several approaches: General IP Valuation, Cost-based Approach, Market Approach, and Income Approach.  In addition, he will address key aspects of due diligence and licensing to ensure maximum IP value is obtained.

More case study abstacts coming soon...