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The Transformation of Procter & Gamble Into a Sustainable Serial Innovator

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The Transformation of Procter & Gamble into a Sustainable Serial Innovator

A New CEO
It is June 6, 2010. A few minutes before a business meeting in California A.G. Lafley, Procter & Gamble´s President – Global Beauty Care and North America receives a phone call from John Pepper, Chairman of P&G. John Pepper gets right to the point: “Are you prepared to accept the CEO job at P&G?” Durk Jager who has been P&G´s CEO resigned the day before after 30 years of service for P&G. Without too many questions A.G. Lafley accepts John Pepper´s offer. He becomes P&G´s new CEO.

What happened under Durk Jager
P&G is renowned for its innovations. Products such as Tide, the first synthetic detergent, or Pampers, the first mass disposable diaper, or …show more content…

Lafley underwrites the strategy that Jager pursued. He, too, feels the need for more innovation. And also in Lafley´s mind the new global product-based organization structure is the right one in order to get more advantage out of innovations (see Att. 1 for P&G´s organization structure, and Att. 2 for P&G´s Purpose Statement). But when Lafley takes over as CEO he sees the need to improve P&G´s execution, and to take much better care and to grow the core business which has been milked before in order to invest in new brands and products. Under his leadership P&G focuses on a few simple but powerful topics: • P&G puts the consumer at the center of everything they do. Lafley coins the phrase: “The consumer is boss”. • P&G makes sustainable organic growth the priority instead of acquisitions. • P&G´s opens up its innovation system, it innovates innovation. This latter change towards an open innovation system is probably the most revolutionary one. It is based on the following simple logic: P&G has about 9000 employees in R&D working in 150 scientific fields. And the potential of this R&D organization has even grown over the last few years as the sharing of ideas and expertise and the formation of networks is being fostered through intranet sites such as P&G´s InnovationNet. P&G has close to 30,000 patents and each year another 5,000 are added on average. But on the other hand, counting the number

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