Turning the Cruise Ship: 5 Lessons in Corporate Innovation

Part I — There Are No New Ideas

The Schwarz is strong with this one

I spent a lot more of my life then I would have ever expected focused on the ins and outs of shaving, with over 8 years in global brand management for Gillette. The most unique experience was piloting a “Front End Innovation” role for Gillette’s global innovation program. Over the next few posts, I’ll focus on my key lessons learned in trying to ‘Turn the Cruise Ship’ as a corporate innovator. (Note — this is adapted from a talk I gave recently at ResolveTO)

Turning the cruise ship…teaching the elephant to dance…insert other euphemism here... My next few posts will focus on adventures in corporate innovation & intrapreneurship. More specifically, I want to share my experience in what you can do when you’re confronted with a big, open ended strategic question, in a ‘traditional/established/incumbent’ org.

I’m certainly not implying that I’m the expert, or that the stories I share will solve all of your problems. My intention here is to share my experiences with other innovators, so together we can build more receptivity for change and innovation in the corporate world.

I spent ~ 8 years of my life focusing on shaving — first leading the Gillette Canada business, then moving over to Boston to lead our premium flagship product (Fusion ProGlide) globally for a few years, and, where our story really kicks in, several years leading Gillette’s ‘front end innovation’ program. This was a new role for Gillette, and on my first day I received a literal blank piece of paper as my job description.

One of the obvious areas for me to focus on in this innovation role was Gillette’s next big bet — what would the next major platform be? And more specifically, what was the state and future of the Gillette business model to support it?

Now, here is the point where everyone claims to be a Gillette business model expert. Pretty easy, right? Sell an expensive handle, make sure it only works with some really expensive blades, and voila. Print your own money. Right? In fact, if you Google image search ‘bait & hook business’, you’ll see the first result is the ‘Gillette Business model.’

My job was to figure out if there was more to the story. Had we passed a tipping point? Was our model sustainable? If not, what next?

Those were big, wide, open ended questions to answer. And having come out the other side of the whole ordeal, here are my ‘5 lessons learned’ to share. Spoiler alert — they aren’t rocket science, but I hope that makes them that much easier to digest.

Lesson #1: There are no new ideas

Let’s start with the history. I mentioned before that everyone claims to be a Gillette business model expert. But that’s an interpretation of the current Gillette model. What’s really interesting is when you look beyond the most recent 30–40 years, and instead consider the entire 115 year history of the business, which is what my team did.

One business model? Or multiple distinct ones?

By analyzing Gillette over this longer period, we actually saw very distinct eras. The fundamental business model in each was similar, but contained key differences in customer behaviour, product benefit being offered, and the technology processes supporting invention (and thus end state product offerings). The go to market & pricing strategies had unique nuggets we could mine to understand why the dynamics were different, and when we overlaid our data with household penetration curves we had a whole new way of looking at the business results.

So despite the fact that P&G acquired Gillette for $54B in the current era, it turned out there was a lot we could learn from the era prior. This led down the rabbit hole of understanding what was different then and now — which included growth strategy, choices in manufacturing platform, product architecture, and pricing model.

As a Gillette man, I must politely beg to differ

There were also things we could learn from P&G’s more recent history. It’s no secret that Dollar Shave Club has become a strong competitor in the blades & razor space. They built a smart business on the back of pricing/branding convergence and a direct to consumer subscription model. They’ve earned the respect of the category and the big players. So why didn’t we get there first?

Interestingly enough, P&G was a trailblazer in the direct to consumer eCommerce space. We owned a property called Reflect.com, started in 1999, which was designed for direct to consumer beauty products via an online only portal. Sound familiar? We had operated this as an independent business for several years, eventually shuttering it for a variety of reasons. So, for all the internal discussions on what could/couldn’t work for an eCommerce model, we had a treasure trove of existing data from a real live use case that we could use to explore the future.

So, Lesson #1 — There are no new ideas. You can learn a surprising amount about your business by looking to your own history as a source of inspiration. What you do with that information, and how you make it actionable, will be the focus of Part 2 of this series. Stay tuned!

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Do you want to continue the conversation? Email me at gdubejsky@marsdd.com or follow me on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Medium.