When James Kilts joined Gillette in 2001, the 100-year-old company already had a respectable legacy.

When James
Kilts joined Gillette in 2001, the 100-year-old company already had a
respectable legacy of inventive thinking, with headline products like the Atra,
Sensor, Venus and the Mach series under its innovation belt. Yet Kilts wasted
no time introducing into the firm his four building blocks for innovation:
communicate a vision, get the right people, stay clear of building consensus,
and look externally. ‘It starts with communication’, Kilts said. ‘You need to
ensure that your organisation understands that innovation is not confined to
the R&D function or to other technical areas.
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When James
Kilts joined Gillette in 2001, the 100-year-old company already had a
respectable legacy of inventive thinking, with headline products like the Atra,
Sensor, Venus and the Mach series under its innovation belt. Yet Kilts wasted
no time introducing into the firm his four building blocks for innovation:
communicate a vision, get the right people, stay clear of building consensus,
and look externally. ‘It starts with communication’, Kilts said. ‘You need to
ensure that your organisation understands that innovation is not confined to
the R&D function or to other technical areas. We created a simple vision
two years ago: build total brand value by innovating to deliver consumer value
and customer leadership faster, better and more completely than the
competition.’ But having a clearly articulated message only works if you have
the right people 3 and give them the freedom to take chances. ‘You’ve got to
hire and retain people with energy and people who love to change and learn’,
Kilts said. ‘And you need to encourage risk taking. One of the themes in our
company is to remember that the opposite of success is not necessarily failure
but inertia.’ While risky ventures often spark debate, contention comes with
the territory. ‘Real creativity can be very contentious, and you need to
encourage people to challenge [current thinking] and maintain an attitude that
they’re unafraid to disagree with authority figures’, Kilts said. ‘Consensus
building is not always the best way to promote innovation.’ In fact, sometimes
the popular consensus can be dead wrong. Kilts, who prior to joining Gillette
held top positions at Nabisco and Kraft Foods, recalled that when Oscar Mayer
looked at possible modifications to its Lunchables line of children’s lunch
packages, the product group considered 3 and rejected as terrible 3 the idea of
adding a drink to the product. Shortly thereafter, the president of that
division met with a customer who voiced the same idea. ‘The president went back
and told the product group, who said they thought it was the worst possible
idea, “Well, I’m going to do it anyway”’, Kilts said. ‘That little idea, called
the Fun Pak or Lunchables, doubled the size of the business.’ Kilts notes
‘companies need to look outside their own doors and use benchmarking as a
source of new ideas’. ‘Talk with people in other industries about what they’re
doing and what they’re accomplishing’, he urges. ‘I’ve gotten a lot of good
ideas from other industries.

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