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or most large companies, fostering innovation is a challenge. It means drastically
rethinking processes, human resources management, even goals. Because chaos is
at the core of creativity, just maintaining that creative process or reinstating it takes
some measure of chaos.
Ideas need room to come to life, to flow and expand. At some point, something has to give:
Control, processes and structure will have to recede to give way to the creative process. Here is
how major players in the life science industry have managed to maintain a measure of chaos,
while preserving their corporate sanity.
Innovation is no longer a choice. It is a key to survival.
Here’s how to get started.
BY MARIE ALICE DIBON
Seven Pillars of Good Chaos Creation
Very few people fit the description.
According to Frederic Lucas-Conwell,
CEO of Growth Resources, Inc., a
California company helping firms manage
human resources, only 5% of people are
happy making decisions or taking the lead
in a chaotic, uncontrolled environment.
A leading U.S. biotechnology
company Genentech, headquartered
in San Francisco, understands that
and carefully profiles its new hires. It
emphasizes excellence and creativity for
R&D; for operations, a successful candidate
will be able to execute and comply.
“We hire the best people, because good
people tend to have good ideas,” explains
The Clash of
and
The ClashClashClash ofof
Structure
1Start with People
When it comes to the chances for success
of an innovation policy, most, if not all,
hinges on people. From top to bottom,
people are at the heart of innovation.
Creation loves chaos and hates control.
Artists, composers, Nobel Prize winners,
inventors or researchers are not generally
characters most likely to come in every
day, sit at a desk, do the same thing for
eight hours and go home happy. The
ability to handle control is not their
best feature.
StructureStructure
Chaos
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Joe McCracken, vice president of business
development for the company. “But we also
favor different personalities for different
jobs. For research we seek out individuals
who want to explore new frontiers, whereas
for manufacturing we seek out individuals
who are happy performing the same tasks
each day. Indeed, when $3 million is at
stake in a batch of Avastin, you really don’t
want a ‘more creative type’ introducing
some new idea into the process. You
want someone who can follow standard
operating procedures (SOPs).”
“In fact, there are no SOPs in research,”
continues McCracken.
No process control? Exactly.
2Let Go of Control
Not only does Genentech have no SOPs
in research, it also lets go of all control on
a fifth of the researchers’ time. “We allow
employees in research to spend 20% of their
time on ‘skunk projects.’ These are secret
projects,” says McCracken. “They don’t have
to tell their bosses what they are doing.”
And it pays. Many of Genentech’s star
projects originated from this program.
Control is not something Daniel Maes,
senior vice president of R&D at The Estée
Lauder Companies, Inc., likes a lot either.
“In the creative process, if you start
encountering blocking elements, you are
dead,” he emphasizes. “When we decide to
work on something, we only pay attention
to intellectual property—which can really
come back at you later on—but that’s it. The
bottom line is: We have complete freedom
without any control, any guidance or any
limitations but our own.”
“I never felt restrained in the 32 years
of my career at Clarins,” says Lionel de
Benetti, head of research and member of
the board at Clarins. “There is a culture of
innovation here at Clarins that includes
giving us total freedom.”
And that is another key point.
3Maintain or Create
a Culture of Innovation
In order to be innovative, you have to be
innovative as a company. An individual or
a department alone will never be enough to
move things in the right direction.
“For Clarins, the driving force behind
product development has always been
innovation,” continues de Benetti. “We are
constantly reminded that nothing should
stop us from moving forward. This we
really owe to Jacques Courtin-Clarins, the
founder of the company.” That is a common
denominator in most of the innovative
companies interviewed. At the core was
a creative founder. All gave that initial
impulse to their companies that have then
worked to maintain this unique culture.
What made those founders so successful
was also their legendary curiosity and open
mindedness; their ability to look out, rather
than in, which they imprinted onto their
companies.
4Bring in New Ideas and
New Blood
Creative companies are open to the
outside. They create systems and structure
themselves so as to remain open-minded
and open to outside teams and people. They
also treat open-mindedness as a quality, not
as a threat.
Renaud Jonquières, global marketing
manager of pharmaceuticals at BioMérieux
explains, “Not only do we often acquire
companies that are not quite within the
bounds of our expertise, because they are
innovative, or bring to the table rupture
technologies that will add value to our
existing offering, but we have been on
occasion going in totally different fields
in order to solve specific problems. If you
want to foster innovation, you have to be
extremely open-minded,” says Jonquières.
At Estée Lauder, suppliers are brought in
constantly to present new technologies and
educate staff. The company also partners
heavily with outside labs, private firms or
from academia. They give grants to very
prestigious research teams and collaborate
on numerous projects. That is another way
to interface with the outside. Going out is
important.
5Send Them Out
Not one large dermatology or major
cosmetic science meeting goes by without a
presentation from Estée Lauder’s labs. “We
have the ability to publish our work early
on, and that is very important,” emphasizes
Maes. Pushing people out, making them
interact with the outside world and with
different teams is essential. First, it will keep
peace in the house, as creative people tend
not to be the easiest to manage, and even
more so when they feel restrained.
Exposure to others, especially unfamiliar
people and teams, creates instability. Most
creative personalities are not unphased by
it. In fact, it makes them more productive.
“Teams function better in a creative
fashion when people inside them don’t
know each other very well, whereas teams
that have been constituted for some time
lose their creative edge, but will be perfect
to organize and execute,” explains Marc
Dangeard, a business coach working with
entrepreneurs in California’s Silicon Valley,
who closely observes innovative companies
and helps them grow.
With all that movement, one thing is
for sure: The process doesn’t seem too
intensive. How can people be productive if
they are constantly moving around?
6Accept Waste and
Failure
Innovation is a costly process. Along the
way, a lot is produced, little is used.
“To get one good idea, you need to go
through a hundred of them. The company
has to accept the extraordinary level of
waste that comes with the innovative
process,” explains Growth Resource’s CEO
Lucas-Conwell.
The story is the same at Estée Lauder.
“We never say no to a new technology.
We review absolutely everything that comes
our way, and that is a lot,” says Maes.“Then,
a maximum of 10% of all the ideas that we
have or select are going to see the light.”
Sometimes, even failures are important.
“We launched Expertise 3P last year, and
it didn’t do as well as we had hoped,”
acknowledges Clarins’ de Benetti, “but
we believe in that technology and it will
probably succeed at some point. We will
then have been the first company to ever
launch a product of that nature. Moreover,
in our industry, failure doesn’t have the
same consequences as launching the wrong
car would, for instance.”
That is also the conclusion that Thomas
Goetz drew when he published an article
last year in Wired magazine titled, “Mind
the Gaps.” According to Goetz, “Scientists
rarely publish the results of failed
experiments. Science gets skewed because
only positive correlations see the light of
day.” There is a lot to be said about the value
of failure.
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The challenge, of course, is to get this
through the heads of upper management,
especially in a world where quarterly
figures dictate the strategy of public
companies. Waste might also mean lesser
short-term results. Only those who are
able to think long-term can envision an
innovative process taking place in their
companies.
7Accept Delays
Clarins decided to pull out of the stock
market last year for that very reason. “The
market is short-term, and sometimes even
very short-term. The vision of our strategy
for the group is rather mid- and long-term,”
said CEO Christian Courtin in a recent
interview.
Claude Bébéar, founder of Axa and
generally considered to be the godfather
of French capitalism, explained in the
wake of the recent Bernard Madoff
scandal in an interview for the French
magazine l’Express, “For a few years now,
companies have had to suffer the diktat of
the short-term, [imposed by the markets].
Everybody knows that quarterly results
have no meaning for the companies,
yet more and more CEOs are obsessed
by it, to the point of sacrificing certain
investments to better their results.”
The Devil Inside
It goes without saying that chaos creates
fear and unrest in the corporate structure.
In the wake of creating chaos, there are
obstacles within the corporate structure
that go beyond the challenges brought to
bear on R&D.
“Innovation will question established roles
and processes and has very heavy political
implications at times,” explains Lucas-
Conwell. “Many people have no interest at all
in letting innovation succeed. Those people
might be brilliant and very well structured,
yet will do everything in their power to
sabotage it, all the while looking supportive.”
“We do get pressures all the time from
other departments,” adds de Benetti of
Clarins, “but arbitration is always in our
favor. We are very [well] supported by our
upper management.”
Support is key among the many things to
take care of in order to make chaos livable
and to avoid the clash.
Managing Chaos
1Support It
Support goes along with the culture.
In companies where there is a culture of
innovation, support is a no-brainer to
upper management. It is in the company’s
genes to support innovators, usually
because the initial impulse was modeled by
the founders.
Genentech has managed to maintain
that culture, as did all the companies
interviewed for this article. For any
company, there is a need to make sure that
innovation is something that occurs at all
levels and is supported as such. Surprisingly
for some, structure is paramount to the
success of such policy.
Why is structure so important? If
chaos is an important part of innovation,
chaos itself cannot run through the entire
structure without destroying it. And it
really doesn’t have to.
2Keep It on the Edges
“In a large structure, innovation should
happen at the edges of the company, where
you can afford to let things in and your
creators out, for optimal interaction and
confrontation of ideas without jeopardizing
the heart of the structure,” explains
Dangeard.
The key is to create a gradient of
creativity. Inside the company are
your processes, your execution teams,
development, production, accounting,
manufacturing—well-structured and
controlled—and as you get closer to the
outside, you find the creative people.
Creativity is also very dependent on
the company’s ecosystem. “The ecosystem
is essential to the success of innovation,”
explains Lucas-Conwell. “Silicon Valley
is a perfect example of it. Here, more
mature companies absorb small innovative
companies. They can constantly regenerate
with that pool of ideas. On the other hand,
small companies are driven by venture
capitalists and attorneys who allow them
to exist all the while facilitating their own
survival and successful exits.”
So innovation remains on the edges, but
what happens there, where ideas flow in
a totally uncontrollable manner? How to
make sense of it all? Organize.
3Streamline
“We try to manage the flow of ideas,”
explains Maes. “It is like a funnel; we look
at everything, then there is a first step
where we eliminate a whole bunch of
technologies because even after looking at
them closer, they just don’t fit us right now.
Then we will test them. And again, a bunch
get dropped because the tests come back
disappointing. Everything that we drop is
cataloged.” What’s left, Maes says, is read
again and experts in the technology are
called. The company has a “journal club”
whose members are assigned a technology
about which they acquire knowledge on
and then present it to their colleagues in the
lab. Everyone is educated about everything
that goes on. “We bring in experts and also
marketing. It is important to involve them
early on,” he says.
And that is another key to innovation
success.
4Implicate Early and
Educate
“With very new technologies, people’s
brains must be injected with new notions
and vocabulary early on,” Maes continues.
“You have to prime the pump. I talk and see
how people react. I try it in different ways.
With very new technologies, it is not only
about evaluating, you have to do the PR
work.”
That is a strategy that biotech and
pharma are starting to understand.
Both Roche and Genentech have early
commercialization programs. At Roche, a
marketing person is embedded right on the
R&D site to become involved as soon as the
product starts taking shape.
5Set High Standards,
Measure Success
It must be understood by now that this
is an exercise in balance. However talented
they are, development people must live up
to the needs of the corporation. If you want
to be a free agent in a large company, you
must not only be able to communicate with
the rest of the chain and defend your ideas,
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but also be able to understand what you are
working for.
“Not every researcher has that special
skill,” says Fred Dorey, an attorney with
Cooley Godward Kronish, the very firm
that incorporated Genentech 30 years ago,
and is also the first president of the Bay
Area Bioscience Center. “They have to
be really tuned in to the business side of
things. It is not a very common instinct, but
it is necessary to corporate work.”
Knowledge
is power. It is
energy, too.
When people’s
minds are
stimulated, they
feel energized.
HOW TO KEEP UP A SUCCESSFUL INNOVATION
POLICY DURING CHALLENGING TIMES:
1. Be creative if you want creativity to come to you.
2. Be flexible and agile inside and outside the organization.
HR: New hires are rarely on the company agenda during a recession:
n Constitute horizontal teams to manage projects. If properly executed, this allows you to use existing
personnel where you would have hired new people, to create new teams and stronger relationships,
and to foster better communications within the organization.
n Use outside consultants. More flexible than even temporary workers when it comes to work load,
they also can work on commission and be ready immediately if you have worked with them before.
Keep eyes everywhere:
n Commission people to be on the lookout for new technologies to in-license in different fields, in
different countries.
n Foster your network for opportunities. Suppliers, clients, workers, industry relations and former
colleagues all have ties that may be useful to you.
n Read the trade press from industries that are adjacent to yours—scientific journals, science
popularization magazines, biomedical journals, to name a few.
Be open to new technologies that can help save money and accelerate processes:
n Technologies that can help your design process:
• Use the social media for customer-driven design, inexpensive and efficient market test and crisis
prevention.
• Use Web-collaborative tools to keep in touch with the best everywhere and to manage international
teams.
n Technologies that can help your lab and production lines function better:
• New toxicity tests, but also activity and compound screening technologies are now available to
the consumer products industries after having been validated by the biomedical industry for years
(in silico biology, high throughput screening tools, etc.).
• Some of those companies are small and need to land contracts to survive as the activity in
biomed stays very competitive, and industrial partnerships are one way to keep afloat.
MARIE ALICE DIBON, PHARMD, is the
principal at Alice Communications, Inc., helping companies in
the life science sector to develop innovative technologies.
At Lauder, suppliers come in and share
with staff what their technology does.
Knowledge is power. It is energy, too.
When people’s minds are stimulated, they
feel energized. Internal communications
can also go a long way.
Several years ago, a research team at
Estée Lauder put together a newsletter
to tell the rest of the company about
research: the technologies, the outside
partnerships, the different labs and the
life of R&D in general. It also created a lot
of enthusiasm inside the labs. Not only
did the team get great feedback from the
different divisions that would be excited
about the technologies and also better
understand R&D processes and deal with
the department more easily, but people
Lucas-Conwell of Growth Resources,
Inc., agrees. “Innovation has to be useful,
otherwise it isn’t innovation, it is just an idea.”
“Publication rates and actual product
outcomes don’t necessarily go together,”
adds BioMerieux’s Jonquières. “Some
researchers publish a lot, and their research
leads to virtually no product development.”
Yet, there has to be a measure of success.
“With freedom comes accountability,”
explains McCracken. “We set very high
standards on how much our researchers
publish and how projects advance
internally.”
Measuring publications and scientific
progress is definitely a way to evaluate
people and also to motivate them.
6Motivate People
“For us, the biggest motivation is whom
we work for in the end: the patient,”
continues McCracken. “So we have patients
come in and talk to us. We frame letters
from patients, put them on the wall. Our
mission is to help patients.”
inside the team were motivated as well.
Taking time to communicate is well worth
the effort.
Innovation is not an easy proposition.
Managing chaos takes skills, open
mindedness, patience and will. For some it
takes a whole culture shift. For everyone it
takes faith.
But it’s not like you really have a choice. It
is not a matter of whether or not you need
innovation, but rather of whether or not you
want your company to survive this race at
all. Innovation is no longer a plus, it is now
part of any company’s survival skills. n GCI
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