Behind new products likeis a web of different innovation arms — from startup accelerators to breakthrough groups — that were able to take unproven ideas to established product lines with multi-million dollars in sales.
"You've got to have a culture that values, and fosters, and curates, and challenges, and develops innovation. It's got to be literally in your DNA; it's got to be in your bone marrow," he said "If you're not failing, you're not trying hard enough. If you can learn from someone else's failure, all the better."
MetalMaker 3D, for example, was a member of the 2018 class of startups. The company, which can create a prototype metal casting in one day versus the traditional 30-day production time, now supplies to Stanley Black & Decker. To encourage more localized innovation, it has what is known as "Innovation Everywhere," a program intended to give hundreds of teams across the enterprise the opportunity to pursue their own, smaller transformation goals. Employees may want to band together to, for example, reduce the amount of digital waste that Stanley Black & Decker stores on external servers.
Once a month, they meet to discuss recent breakthroughs and promising startups. Occasionally, the group will bring in an external speaker like Jim Scholefield, the chief information and digital officer at drugmaker Merck & Co., and Christy Wyskiel, senior advisor to the president of Johns Hopkins University.