Community Forum – Innovation Board

Do you have an Innovation Board?

If so:

1. Who is on the board? Is there anyone from outside the company who participates? 
2. How often does it meet? 
3. What are typical agenda items? 
4. Is the board advisory, or does it make decisions on allocation of resources? 
5. Does it meet with the CEO and/or senior business leadership? How frequently?

– Jim Euchner, VP, Global Innovation, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company

Community Responses

George Coulston, VP – Innovation Ventures, Kennametal
Yes, we have an Innovation Governance Council to oversee programs into far adjacencies / whitespace opportunities.  It is staffed by our CTO, CMO, CFO, the Business VP, and  VP of Supply Chain.  We meet approximately quarterly, to review the progress of programs against the milestones in their respective learning plans.  The board is partially advisory, and can at times be influential in securing program resources. 

Kumar Natesaiyer, Director, Marketplace Opportunities, Office of the CTO, USG Corporation
USG Innovation established an internal “Innovation Board” two years ago.  The establishment and operation of the Innovation Board has helped raise the profile of Innovation to a company strategic level, made investment and return on innovation transparent to top leadership, and engaged C-level officers in setting the medium and long term innovation agenda for the Corporation.

Answers to the questions raised in the email follow:

1. Permanent members are CEO, CFO, EVP Operations, President of Distribution Subsidiary, and CTO.  The permanent members can invite others to the meetings and they often do so.
2. Innovation Board meets quarterly.
3. Standing agenda items are a) overview of innovation investment by major categories, b) status & plans of key projects on business unit initiatives and Exploratory categories, and c) deep dive into one topic for that quarter
4. Board decides overall investment for next year in the Q3 meeting.  Is informed of allocation across categories and key business unit initiatives.  Actively allocates portion of investment for Exploratory projects.
5. Other senior business leaders are briefed on the agenda prior to the meeting.  In addition, they are engaged in any follow up after the meeting based on discussions or questions during the meetings.

Larry J. Howell, Executive Director, Science, GM R&D Center (retired 2001), IRI Emeritus​
While I was at General Motors, GM had an external technology advisory board.  It was called the Science Advisory Committee (SAC).  It was comprised of people covering a broad range of expertise.  The composition of the SAC during my last few years at GM is given in a Research Technology Management paper I published in the May-June 2003 issue, entitled “New Focus for GM Research“.  As Executive Director of the R&D Center it was also my job to serve as Secretary to the SAC.  This involved developing an agenda for the meetings with advice from senior GM management, and preparing an annual report to the GM Board of Directors.  I also arranged and hosted all the meetings as recording secretary.  This sometimes involved some complex logistics as for example a visit to Opel in Germany that included visiting manufacturing facilities in Wolfsburg and Eisenach.

The SAC met at least quarterly, sometimes more frequently as required to address a topic in a timely manner.  We would hold the meetings at locations and with GM groups appropriate to the topic under review.  It was not unusual to spend an entire year on the review of a critical topic.  As an example the SAC spent a full year reviewing GM’s capability in the area of computer aided engineering and manufacturing. 

SAC’s recommendations on various topics were generally reported in person at the end of the review to senior management including the CEO, and as I mentioned, a written report went to the Board of Directors.  While the SAC did not have the authority to allocate resources, it made such recommendations and they were taken seriously by GM.

Although not an “innovation” board per se, the members offered innovative suggestions and brought to our attention pockets of technology or expertise our engineers and managers might not have been aware of.  Moreover the SAC brought many years of experience to bear on our topics.  (I believe getting input from experts outside the company is extremely beneficial.  Sometimes we miss opportunities when talking only to ourselves.) GM continues to have such an advisory board and obviously sees value in continuing the practice.

Such boards are not unusual.  I did a survey of IRI member companies years ago and found that several had either standing boards like SAC, or called together from time to time a technology panel to address a specific topic.

J. Stewart Witzeman Ph.D., Director Eastman Innovation Center, Eastman Chemical Company​
At Eastman we have a group that is called the Eastman Technology Counsel. It is comprised of mainly senior scientists across multiple disciplines but there are also business representatives and a few members of management. They meet as a combined group quarterly with subteams meeting monthly. 
Among the items they are responsible for is:  

• making decisions on key underpinning projects to support needed technical competencies across the corporation;
• collecting and prioritizing proposed Requests for Proposals (RFP’s) for our key external innovation partnerships;
• reviewing the responses to these RFP’s and recommending which projects should be funded
• conducting technical peer reviews on an as- needed basis for senior management.

We do not have any external members at this time.  The group does have a small underpinning budget they can allocate but has broader influence on business programs due to the high degree of credibility they carry. The board periodically (twice last year) meets with the CTO for dialogue on strategic direction and needs.  We developed this process and structure based on some benchmarking discussions with other IRI companies.

Jorge Fernandes,  Innovational Excellence, DSM Innovation Center​

1. Who is on the board? Is there anyone from outside the company who participates? Yes, the Innovation Council is led by the CIO and each Business Group’s Innovation Director is a member.
2. How often does it meet? Approximately every 6 weeks (total of 8x / year)
3. What are typical agenda items? Portfolio Management, with a focus on radical innovation; Innovation processes and practices; Competences required and training plans.
4. Is the board advisory, or does it make decisions on allocation of resources? Both; it advises the Managing Board on Portfolio Management (e.g. invest in new innovation platforms)
5. Does it meet with the CEO and/or senior business leadership? How frequently? Yes, once a year the full Innovation Council meets with the CEO and the MB; the CIO and the CEO meet every month (at least).

Have a response to add?  Email us!