A few years ago, researchers at Cincinnati-based consumer goods multinational Procter & Gamble (P&G) made a breakthrough that could revolutionize how food is wrapped and stored. But there was one problem, as Chris Thoen, director of innovation and knowledge management at P&G, recounted during a recent conference at Wharton's Mack Center for Technological Innovation. Despite a portfolio of more than 300 products worth nearly $80 billion, P&G didn't have a strong presence on supermarket food-wrap shelves, and it would take millions of dollars of marketing, packaging and other costs to change that.
The good news was that one of the multinational's biggest rivals, The Clorox Company, did have that presence, thanks to Glad food wrap. So P&G approached Clorox with an offer to collaborate. Seven years later, Glad's Forceflex -- using P&G's technology, which embeds a kind of cement in small dimples in the cling film to increase its stickiness -- is a top-selling product and Glad is now a joint venture of the two companies, with P&G owning 20%.
"Glad had a great name in marketing and in manufacturing, and we brought a product technology in," said Thoen, describing just one of several approaches to collaboration that have had a dramatic impact on how the company has become more innovative over the past decade.
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Author: Knowledge@Wharton
