Proctor & Gamble. Do you think of entrepreneur or innovator when you hear the company name? Well you should. Larry Huston is vice president of innovation at Proctor & Gamble. Huston's title is not just smoke and mirrors.

According to Taylor and LaBarre, authors of Mavericks at Work,

Huston is convinced that P&G must look outside the walls of its celebrated research labs, and beyond the breakthroughs of its full-time scientists, to tap the brainpower of the whole world. Even though P&G employs many of the smartest scientists and engineers in their fields, the company's vice president of innovation understands nobody is as smart as everybody - and not everybody can work for P&G.

"We have 7,500 R&D people who operate in 150 different areas of the science," Huston explains. "But when you look around the world at these 150 areas, you see there are one and a half million people outside of P&G with training that is equal to or better than our people. In other words, for every one person we have in a particular area, there are 200 people on the outside of equal minds or better. Now, it's pretty obvious that 200 can invent better than one - you don't have to be a genius to figure that out."

Huston has asked 60 of P&G's scientists and engineers to be technology entrepreneurs. As such, these technology entrepreneurs travel throughout the world to discover innovations beyond the walls of P&G. The mission - to identify innovative ideas that can be brought in-house to create new products or improve existing products.

Ed Getty, one of P&G's technology entrepreneurs says, "Our job is to look outside, find disruptive technologies and products, and bring them back to the company. We're innovating on how we innovate. That is a real game-changer for us."

Yes, Proctor & Gamble, as big as they are, has the entrepreneurial spirit. P&G is pushing the envelope on innovation. We should all learn from Proctor & Gamble - an elephant that dances with startup companies.

Fascinating!

Pierre Cutler
The Sacramento Executive