P
roduct innovation, espe-
cially as it relates to increas-
ing consumer value of
its products, is a primary
focus for The Clorox Company
( www.thecloroxcompany.com).
“Clorox has built a foundational
leadership position in adopting open
innovation that started in 2001,” says
Jim Mitchell, director of R&D,
develop products process leader
for Clorox. “This capability has
expanded to partnering with many
organizations around the globe.”
In addition, Clorox has established open innovation teams within
its businesses as well as within a core
group to drive best-in-class innovation practices across the company.
INNOVATION
EVOLUTION
CLLOROX POLIISHEES IITS PRODUCT DEVELOPPMEN T PROCESS
TO SUSTAIIN MARKET LEADERSHIIP
PROCESS TRANSFORMATION
In early 2001, the company wanted
to take the next competitive leap to
sustain its leadership position.
Given its range of product diversity, Clorox’s product development
process historically varied across
different businesses. Clorox built
fundamental processes in the areas
of discovery, development/com-mercialization, product data and
portfolio prior to 2001, but these
processes had not been utilized
company-wide nor were they managed together. This led to ineffi-ciencies in resource allocation and
speed to market.
“The decision was made to
develop a single Clorox Product
Development Process that would
encompass all of our businesses,”
says Mitchell.
A comprehensive assessment of
its innovation practices revealed
that Clorox had a longer time-to-market for large, market-changing
products than its competitors. In
addition, process and effort levels
for different types of projects were
not clearly differentiated. Finally,
executives had limited visibility
Specifically, a tool was designed
to use for portfolio analysis that
automatically obtained data from
the charters and contracts used by
project teams, allowing for real-time
analysis of product portfolios.
For product data management,
Clorox recently moved from using
legacy systems to using a new software solution. The company has
completed data transfer, training
as well as implementation across
all of its domestic businesses. And
Mitchell says that Clorox is in the
final stages of bringing its international business online.
He adds, “Ultimately, product
data management and portfolio
tools have been delivered that have
been viewed as best in class, as well
as a product development database,
which we were able to build relatively inexpensively from our
legacy systems.”
into the future product pipeline,
and they had no ability to validate
the reasonableness and likelihood
of future growth projections from
new products.
New business processes and
technologies were defined and
implemented across Clorox’s innovation operations to improve
results with the help of a consulting partner.
Best practices identified
inside and outside of Clorox
were adopted to create a single development process for
the entire company. Its systems, which had operated
independently, are now configured to work together.
GEARS IN MOTION
A “3-gear model” has also
been fundamental to accelerating the company’s ability
to utilize portfolio thinking.
While Clorox had always differentiated projects into
