Comments on: Harvesting Supplier Innovation (Part 1)

By: Andrew Bartolini

Andrew Bartolini — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 18:15:50 +0000

Søren - My Danish is a little rusty, but here goes: Tak for bemærkningen og dejligt at høre fra dig! Jeg gjorde det til Århus og København sidste år, ville elske at vende tilbage ... Så giv CPO Rising med DILF medlemskab. Håber at forbinde med dig snart

By: Andrew Bartolini

Andrew Bartolini — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:25:31 +0000

Howard - Great comment, innovation doesn’t happen by accident except when it does. Most companies that succeed at drawing innovation from their suppliers have a deliberate process. Kellogg’s is a great example. I’ll be discussing another one tomorrow. As Peter Drucker says, “Most innovations, especially the successful ones, result from a conscious, purposeful search for innovation opportunities.”

By: Søren Vammen

Søren Vammen — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 19:09:33 +0000

Andrew – very promising content – keep up the good spirit!

By: Howard Richman

Howard Richman — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:27:19 +0000

Great case study on how to institutionalize innovation with the supply base. I attended a one-week course on strategic innovation at MIT a few years ago, sponsored by IMD. Some major learnings were that 1) 90-95% of innovation resource is dedicated to incremental improvement as opposed to new breakthrough opportunities; and 2) innovation always happens where you least expect it, so you have to continually follow leads and contacts and experiment to get there. The best example: a company searching for the best RFID solution spent a year just talking to leads and following up until they came up with the ultimate technology – someone from Greenpeace who had perfected a system for tracking whale migration in the pacific.