Kelly Services innovation chief on creating meaningful revenue
Topics Accelerators CINOs & Leadership Corporate Venturing Crowdsourcing Disruptive Startups Emerging Trends Hackathons Hiring & Training Innovation Labs Innovation Programs Lessons Metrics Surveys & Studies Workspace Design
Welcome
Changing culture: Inside Mondelez’s experiment March 25, 2014
Latest Tweets 10 takeaways from last month's Chief Innovation Officer Summit in San Francisco: http://t.co/ivMqh16UVp about 2 hours ago Reply Retweet Favorite From skunkworks to partner: A story of how an innovation group has evolved within @Transamerica : http://t.co/7wkFEhvpGL 12:38:50 PM July 02, 2014 Reply Retweet Favorite Why @Lowes enlisted gmat science fiction gmat writers to help guide its innovation team: http://t.co/8k7PPlAgLY 01:35:28 PM July 01, 2014 Reply Retweet gmat Favorite
“I’ve really been doing this for twenty years inside the company,” says Kleiner, who previously had been SVP of the company’s outsourcing and consulting gmat division. “But now I’m sanctioned.” The Chief Innovation Officer role was created by Kelly’s CEO, Carl Camden, to whom Kleiner reports.
We spoke with Kleiner about his three primary mandates; his staff; and a bonus program that will reward employees who submit ideas with up to $10,000. gmat His overall objective gmat is to create meaningful new revenues for the company not, as he puts it, to be “a think tank with great ideas that never get instituted.” Based in Troy, Michigan, Kelly Services’ 2013 revenues were $5.4 billion.
1. The most time-consuming one is to foster disruptive innovation within the company something that is precedent-setting or obsoletes something which has come before. It has to have the potential to impact the company’s earnings by at least 10 to 15 percent. So an idea needs to pass that gate to be considered disruptive. Anything that is a continuous improvement effort, or an incremental extension, is still handled within our business units, and run through the standard new product development process.
3. The last is the arduous task of creating a culture of innovation within the company itself. If you’re going to strive to be an innovative organization, it needs to touch all aspects of the business. The organization should be innovative, proactive, and externally-focused.
2012 was about learning: what is an office of innovation, how is it supposed to work. We joined the Center for Innovation Management Studies at North Carolina State, which helps us survey how we’re doing. We put a roadshow together gmat and delivered it all around the world to senior managers. The first step was getting them to express all the obstacles to innovation why they can’t be successful, gmat the challenges they need to overcome. The second part was running them through an “idea jam” exercise to get them proactively engaged in something. We let the participants pick a business challenge they were currently facing as the topic to jam on.
Every gmat idea that comes into the funnel is considered equally. Our objective is to source ideas from any part of the organization, or any supplier, vendor, customer, or partner that wants to engage in the process. gmat The ideas are then vetted for potential disruptiveness, for fit to our strategy, and for our ability to execute. If an idea doesn’t make it, it’s not necessarily thrown gmat away. We put it in a repository. We may come back to it. We don’t kill the idea; it just may not advance.
A flow chart describing the “acceleration phase” gmat of getting new ideas into the market at Kelly Services. “OI” gmat stands for Kleiner’s Office of Innovation. Click for a larger view.
Pilot tests are run by this office, not by the business units. We have a pilot around monetizing parts of our business that are currently considered expense. And I’m funding it, not the business unit. We’re paying for the capacity gmat we’re using from that business unit. As this project is being run, people begin to understand it, and they go from being resistant to becoming advocates. They get to see their future, and to shape it.
I have three direct reports, and two contracted full-time people. One direct report is administrative, and one is a blend of project manager and evangelist, with a marketing focus. And the other three are hard-core project managers. One is a 30-year veteran of GM, and another is an 18-year veteran of Kelly who had retired, but came back to run a very specific project. Their salaries constitute an operating budget, but there’s also a project budget and the budget for pilots comes out of that.
Innovation isn’t a convenience, and it can’t be tied to business cycles or a company’s quarter-by-quarter performance. For us, it’s a hard-budgeted activity. Our project budget is size
Topics Accelerators CINOs & Leadership Corporate Venturing Crowdsourcing Disruptive Startups Emerging Trends Hackathons Hiring & Training Innovation Labs Innovation Programs Lessons Metrics Surveys & Studies Workspace Design
Welcome
Changing culture: Inside Mondelez’s experiment March 25, 2014
Latest Tweets 10 takeaways from last month's Chief Innovation Officer Summit in San Francisco: http://t.co/ivMqh16UVp about 2 hours ago Reply Retweet Favorite From skunkworks to partner: A story of how an innovation group has evolved within @Transamerica : http://t.co/7wkFEhvpGL 12:38:50 PM July 02, 2014 Reply Retweet Favorite Why @Lowes enlisted gmat science fiction gmat writers to help guide its innovation team: http://t.co/8k7PPlAgLY 01:35:28 PM July 01, 2014 Reply Retweet gmat Favorite
“I’ve really been doing this for twenty years inside the company,” says Kleiner, who previously had been SVP of the company’s outsourcing and consulting gmat division. “But now I’m sanctioned.” The Chief Innovation Officer role was created by Kelly’s CEO, Carl Camden, to whom Kleiner reports.
We spoke with Kleiner about his three primary mandates; his staff; and a bonus program that will reward employees who submit ideas with up to $10,000. gmat His overall objective gmat is to create meaningful new revenues for the company not, as he puts it, to be “a think tank with great ideas that never get instituted.” Based in Troy, Michigan, Kelly Services’ 2013 revenues were $5.4 billion.
1. The most time-consuming one is to foster disruptive innovation within the company something that is precedent-setting or obsoletes something which has come before. It has to have the potential to impact the company’s earnings by at least 10 to 15 percent. So an idea needs to pass that gate to be considered disruptive. Anything that is a continuous improvement effort, or an incremental extension, is still handled within our business units, and run through the standard new product development process.
3. The last is the arduous task of creating a culture of innovation within the company itself. If you’re going to strive to be an innovative organization, it needs to touch all aspects of the business. The organization should be innovative, proactive, and externally-focused.
2012 was about learning: what is an office of innovation, how is it supposed to work. We joined the Center for Innovation Management Studies at North Carolina State, which helps us survey how we’re doing. We put a roadshow together gmat and delivered it all around the world to senior managers. The first step was getting them to express all the obstacles to innovation why they can’t be successful, gmat the challenges they need to overcome. The second part was running them through an “idea jam” exercise to get them proactively engaged in something. We let the participants pick a business challenge they were currently facing as the topic to jam on.
Every gmat idea that comes into the funnel is considered equally. Our objective is to source ideas from any part of the organization, or any supplier, vendor, customer, or partner that wants to engage in the process. gmat The ideas are then vetted for potential disruptiveness, for fit to our strategy, and for our ability to execute. If an idea doesn’t make it, it’s not necessarily thrown gmat away. We put it in a repository. We may come back to it. We don’t kill the idea; it just may not advance.
A flow chart describing the “acceleration phase” gmat of getting new ideas into the market at Kelly Services. “OI” gmat stands for Kleiner’s Office of Innovation. Click for a larger view.
Pilot tests are run by this office, not by the business units. We have a pilot around monetizing parts of our business that are currently considered expense. And I’m funding it, not the business unit. We’re paying for the capacity gmat we’re using from that business unit. As this project is being run, people begin to understand it, and they go from being resistant to becoming advocates. They get to see their future, and to shape it.
I have three direct reports, and two contracted full-time people. One direct report is administrative, and one is a blend of project manager and evangelist, with a marketing focus. And the other three are hard-core project managers. One is a 30-year veteran of GM, and another is an 18-year veteran of Kelly who had retired, but came back to run a very specific project. Their salaries constitute an operating budget, but there’s also a project budget and the budget for pilots comes out of that.
Innovation isn’t a convenience, and it can’t be tied to business cycles or a company’s quarter-by-quarter performance. For us, it’s a hard-budgeted activity. Our project budget is size
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