Like a good consultant, I had 106 slides on best practices in innovation — too many to digest. So I whittled them down to an executive summary with four simple points, each tied to an individual: an "Innovation Mount Rushmore." The virtual monument worked as an effective way to synthesize a complex field, and served as the basis for chapter 3 of The Little Black Book of Innovation.
The original Innovation Mount Rushmore had four faces:
1. A.G. Lafley, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Procter & Gamble, whose "consumer is boss" mantra urges innovators to always take an external perspective. Get out in the market and invest the time to understand the customer better than they understand themselves.
