Case Studies
 Rockwell Collins | Medrad | DJO |Tellabs | Intel
Kimberly-Clark

ROCKWELL COLLINS

Metrics for Technology Enabled Growth

Dr. Raj Aggarwal
Vice President
Global Technology
Rockwell Collins

With renewed focus on innovation by US companies as a means to create organic growth, the need to measure the impact of innovation on company performance is becoming increasingly important. It is no longer viable, if it ever was, to build a better “mousetrap” and expect the customers will march to your door. Careful planning is required to invest in the right projects to maximize the return on R&D investment.

At Rockwell Collins, we have successfully deployed a simple model of Plan, Execute and Leverage steps that takes into account both business needs and external trends. We have successfully implemented an R&D Scorecard that effectively measures business impact, operational excellence, innovation and external collaboration of advanced technology investment. A Sales Growth Leverage (SGL) metric has been used to measure and increase the business impact of R&D investment over time.

Key Takeaways:

• Plan, Execute and Leverage model for research and development

• A scorecard to measure business impact, operational excellence, innovation and external collaboration

• Sales Growth Leverage metric for measuring and increasing business impact of R&D investment

MEDRAD

Metrics for Managing
the Innovation Portfolio

Don DeLauder
Executive Director,
Product Innovation and Advanced Development
MEDRAD, Inc.

MEDRAD is a global leader in the field of diagnostic image enhancement, having grown at a compound annual rate of over 15% for 20 years. Its success has led to a market leadership position in each of the clinical modalities in which it operates (CT, MR, angiography). How can the company continue to grow given that it already commands significant market share in most or all of its business areas? What decisions should shape the portfolio of specifically identified innovative opportunities?

Mr. DeLauder will explore these issues as they relate to managing the “innovation” portfolio.

• What are the metrics for measuring the value of an early stage project? Are these metrics different for technology developments versus business developments?

• What value, if any, is there in early-stage financial metrics?

• Are the metrics used for portfolio evaluation absolute, or are they just guiding factors to be considered in a decision?

• What does an "innovation" portfolio decision look like and how is it different from a standard product development decision and portfolio?

DJO, LLC

DJO’s Metrics Journey:
Shifting from Traditional to Non-traditional NPD Metrics

Rich Gildersleeve
Vice President
Research & Development
DJO, LLC

Metrics have been a way of life at DJO, particularly since the organization embraced a lean, accountable and continual improvement culture six years ago. Each functional area has quarterly goals with direct line-of-sight to company short and longer term performance targets yielding a dramatic improvement in customer and shareholder value.

Although metrics have driven a large degree of positive performance in product development, they have also led to unanticipated and undesirable behaviors. For example, DJO implemented common NPD metrics including product development cycle time and the number of new products released per year only to find out that driving to these metrics can at times negatively impact new-to-world product releases or discovery of optimal concepts. Given this undesired effect, DJO is now shifting away from typical product development metrics to more non-traditional measures including technical resource value-add time, knowledge capture, and project benefit-to-cost ratio to drive advantageous behaviors. Additionally, DJO is working to align product development resource deployment decisions with strategic portfolio planning and the company’s longer term outlook.

In this presentation, Mr. Gildersleeve will examine:

• Pros and cons of R&D metrics used over the last five years at DJO

• Correlation of R&D metrics with overall company performance

• Early results of non-traditional R&D metrics; strategies for making the shift from traditional to non-traditional metrics

TELLABS

Integrating and Measuring Innovation In The Product Development Process

Guy Merritt
Director of Engineering
Broadband Products Group
Tellabs

Today, the Tellabs access product line is immersed in the rapidly growing world of fiber to the home (FTTH). For many years the "last mile bottleneck" has prevented bandwidth intensive applications and services from emerging in the home. With FTTH technology not only have solved the problem; we have shattered it. With bandwidth limitations removed, the market place will see a significant increase in innovations in the home environment. To capitalize on this emerging market place, Tellabs has tightly integrated innovation into the product development process.

This presentation will provide a brief overview of the FTTH technology currently being deployed and how Tellabs contributes to that effort. Our philosophies will be shared on why we believe it is a business imperative to couple innovation into the product development process. Explanations will be provided on how innovation opportunities are identified and how measures play a crucial role in selecting which innovations to pursue. Concepts of "fast failure" will be explored as a means to judge the potential market place success and whether or not we should continue with pursuing an innovative solution. Finally, an overview will be provided on how protect the innovation we have developed through a vigorous pursuit of patents and how patents are used as an innovation metric.

INTEL

The Evolution of Metrics to Guide and Assess New Business Investments

Rich Wykoff
General Manager
New Business Initiatives
Intel

Intel’s New Business Incubator creates discontinuous new businesses that build on Intel’s core capabilities and drive growth. Our processes, management and measurement systems have evolved to reflect the painful learning’s from over 60 investments in the last ten years and to meet the unique challenges of our company.

Measuring results in early stage technology and business development is a complex challenge that must support and inform effective investment decision making AND provide value based information to Corporate Management in terms they accept. There is no universal formula, the right tools depend on the objectives of the new business effort, corporate culture and the executives in charge.

Building on our experience and benchmarking with other companies and academic experts, we have developed a set of financial, strategic and execution metrics focused on both individual venture and portfolio results. These metrics have helped us manage and improve our portfolio as well as build credibility with the corporation. Rich will candidly discuss the sometimes painful learning process, Intel’s current application of tools and measures as well as future steps.

Key learning’s you can leverage:

• Driving alignment of Metrics to your objectives and corporate culture must be a process unique to your company

• Metrics must support both venture optimization (doing the right thing) and portfolio performance (measuring return)

• Application is Everything. How you USE metrics is critical to keeping the learning process on track and avoid inhibiting Innovation

KIMBERLY-CLARK CORPORATION

Measuring & Managing Your
Intellectual Asset Portfolio

Amy M. Achter
Director, Corporate Intellectual Asset Management
Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Having a robust innovation pipeline and portfolio is critical for growth. Understanding how your IA portfolio aligns with business and innovation strategy and having the capability to actively manage that alignment is a combination of determining the appropriate IA metrics and then applying them to overall estate management.

Intellectual Assets, like any other corporate assets, need to be considered in the business context to truly understand their value. At Kimberly-Clark, the IA Management team has made great progress in further defining their IA estate and being able to move from simple questions like “how many filings did I have last year” to:

• How much of our estate do we practice?

• What are our jewels?

• Which of our patents cause the most issues for our competitors?

• How much are we investing in growth vs. protection of current business?

To answer these questions, we need to know what we have and we need to be actively managing it. The first is accomplished through classification and taxonomy. The second is accomplished by aligning with the business, innovation and technical strategies and by providing supporting processes & tools. Metrics and application of those metrics becomes the enabler for this to happen.

In this session, Amy will discuss how Kimberly-Clark has approached IA Management and specifically IA Portfolio Management. She will share some of the key metrics that drive this alignment as well as the overall process managed by her organization for aligning the IA estate with the business and innovation priorities.