Business Week carries an interesting section this week called Inside Innovation and names 25 leaders who are bringing innovation to their companies. Five of them are profiled:
- Marissa Mayer – Google’s sergeant major of ideas. Delving down from within the organization and heaving them to the top in ten minutes or less.
- Ivy Ross – Electifies the team at Old Navy with ideas and experience from the real world. Also reads PSFK(!)
- Claudia Kotchka - Not too sure what she really did at P&G as her profile was rather ambiguous. Probably breaks down walls between departments, then pokes her head through the gap and shouts, “How shall we kill Method today?”
- Sam Lucente – Gets close to HP consumers through ethnography then translates coinsumer needs not in design-speak but in business requirements.
- Amy Radin – Driving innovative Citigroup products by concentrating on a small group of great ideas.
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Some other thoughts on the In Innovation issue
June 13th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
here: http://www.peterme.com/archives/000747.html
June 13th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
I’m still wondering if Kotchka took the credit Cathy Rings would have received had she remained at P&G. I don’t know, but the timeline I’ve seen posted in articles about Kotchka leaves serious doubt in my mind.
If you google “Cathy Rings” you should find a PDF to a marketing paper (”Consumer Encounters”) written prior to 2000 which is when P&G supposedly started doing these things. Only Rings was using the technique at P&G years earlier (the example cited during our training was the new “no-drip” design for detergent bottles).
I’m not saying Kotchka didn’t originate the ideas. Nor am I saying Kotchka isn’t an impressive, forward-thinking executive. I am saying that it sounds to me like P&G is applying a little spin to the story. If Rings deserves some credit for the ideas she introduced at P&G prior to departing, they should give credit where credit is due in my opinion.
June 13th, 2006 at 10:46 pm