…then there is the story from Collaborage about how Proctor & Gamble turned to the Web to enhance their R&R efforts. Their Research and Development team has over 9,000 employees with a success rate of less than 20%, which was below industry standards. The CEO declared that by the end of 2010, 50% of the R&D efforts would be successful. To achieve this he said they would turn to the outside world for new and better ideas. Despite fear and trembling by the R&D folks, he pushed ahead and now more than 35% of the ideas now come from outside the R&D department through the web. They have flown past the 50% success mark and now 80% of the product launches are successful as compared to 30% for the industry.

A successful example was the discovery of a way to put edible ink pictures on potato chips. The solution came from an Italian professor at the University of Bologna, one of Italy’s cuisine capitals, who had invented an ink-jet method for printing edible images. The technology helped the company get the new picture chips out in a single year, about half the normal time for such a process. Now I doubt that these chips are served at the top restaurants in Bologna and one wonders why it takes two years to get a new potato chip out, but this is progress none the less.

Back in the pre Web 2.0 days, I was involved in a product innovation project for Sainbury’s in 2000. In this case they just wanted to go outside of the R&D group for new product ideas, such as whether to put shrimp in the cole slaw. Here an intranet provided the platform with much success. Operating within Connect, the new enterprise portal infrastructure, Sainsbury’s created a series of functionally aligned knowledge management sub-portals in such areas as product development, call centers, retail stores, supply chain, etc. The product development group served as the pilot, starting an “Idea Bank” to improve the new product development process. They were able to reduce departmental silos and became better able collect new product ideas from those with direct customer contact. Reduced time to market and increased market successes were the result. Now in Web 2.0 we go beyond the enterprise for the same results. In doing so enterprises should not overlook their own employees. The Sainsbury’s case demonstrates the benefits of looking within. Enterprise 2.0 can complement Web 2.0 for new product ideas.