PRESENTER
Shawn Williams
Vice President
Research & Development
Rogers Corporation
SESSION ABSTRACT
In this session participants learned why successful companies struggle to maintain an innovative spirit, where new entrepreneurial vigor can be found, and how to get the best of both worlds. Rogers Corporation found that the best means to cost-effectively maintain a vital product portfolio and a robust pipeline of next generation technology was to separate core product R&D from more collaboration-focused innovation efforts and to leverage both university and start-up-based relationships to nurture these opportunities.
KEY TAKE-AWAYS
- Lessons learned on why it is hard to change behaviors that have traditionally led to commercial success, and how ‘R’ and ‘D’ may require different skill sets
- Outcomes of how a 180 year old company injected reinvigorated its creativity, implemented new discipline for product development and portfolio management, and created a next-stage opportunity pipeline with a value of >$500M
- Best practices for early technical/commercial opportunity assessment and incubation of next generation businesses & technologies
ACTION ITEM
Shawn Williams of Rogers Corporation, a large, legacy company with mature product lines, discussed his organization’s need to re-evaluate, change, and innovate in order to remain relevant and competitive in their industry.
Specifically, he addressed the following keys to innovation:
- Overcome the “accountability trap”
- Avoid rivalry with Business Unit Research and Development (R&D): In his organization, central and divisional R&D complement one another
- A hand-off isn’t tossing it over the fence; have a planned transition strategy
- Don’t make it defensive – the first thing you can do is measure, and then improve
- Simplicity versus System – there is so much more to driving discussions than a big complicated spreadsheet
- Less is more, and number projections are always just a guess
TAKE-AWAY
Rogers Corporation has successful, mature product lines, a business to maintain. New market share is harder to find, and incremental improvements are necessary to help offset commoditization. The challenge they have is that the projects are too small in potential, and resources are spread out across too many platforms. Rogers took intentional steps to re-invigorate R&D and initiate a strategic dialogue. The first thing they did was to evaluate expectations and set new ones. New expectations for Rogers Corporation needed to be set in order to see bigger changes (e.g. base case revenue = $11M/project, new aspirational revenue = $50M/project).
How do you turn things around and get people comfortable with new things? A generational strategy can help: first look at making incremental changes (18-24 months), then evolutionary changes (24-36 months), and then revolutionary changes (36-60 months). Rogers Corporation created an innovation center to develop nurturers and subversives in symbiosis. Most important to the innovation center is having people who are unaccountable for current business. If this doesn’t happen, 9 times out of 10 the organization goes for the safer bet (current business) rather than taking the risk of innovation and new ideas. Portfolio Management Tools were used to maximize the decision-making power of data. They help drive strategic discussion, and help define the shape of portfolio needs and gaps.
ACTION ITEM
- What do you need to believe? A simple analysis to help set level expectations always helps. Identify your opportunities, and put numbers behind them to understand potential gain. These exercises can be extremely motivating and help prioritize projects. Example: 1 billion cell phones per year sold x 2 antennas per phone x 50% antennas addressable x 0.30 per antenna = $300 million opportunity
- Getting people on board is more important than taking a stand and telling people what to do
- Handoff includes moving products from an innovation center to the product development process, and that’s not just dropping it off, but transferring knowledge
FINAL THOUGHT
It’s hard to incubate without a strategic perspective. It’s even harder to win without a strategic dialogue.
