Structured Innovation—How Johnson & Johnson Makes It Work for the Organization

In this podcast, Drew Boyd of Ethicon Endo-Surgery, a division of Johnson & Johnson, presents a case study on structured innovation.

If you find brainstorming to be too much of a divergent approach to improving your business’ processes, then learn about structured innovation in this Profit through Process podcast. Genna Weiss of Six Sigma IQ speaks with Drew Boyd, Director Marketing Mastery at Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc., a division of Johnson & Johnson, who discusses how structured innovation can provide you with the techniques to channel your ideation process more efficiently and effectively, thereby leaving your organization with no choice but to innovate.

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You will learn about systematic inventive thinking, the structured innovation methodology that Boyd employs at Ethicon Endo-Surgery, and how it can help your organization to tap into innovation based on a counter-intuitive method of beginning with a hypothetical solution and working backwards to find the problems that that solution solves. You will also hear about the five templates—derived from a specific set of innovation patterns—that Boyd uses to come up with these hypothetical solutions, and how his organization has utilized them to come up with way to innovatively improve upon existing products, medical procedures and organizational design.

In addition, Boyd goes over some of the structured innovation deployment hurdles, which include the lack of executive buy-in and the perception that innovation cannot be taught, and provides steps to overcome these challenges, using Ethicon-Endo Surgery as a case study. Boyd reveals why employees with a greater sense of hope may be the key to unlocking more creativity and innovation within your organization.