Empowering ‘Aha!’:

How Clorox Sustains

an Innovation Culture

Companywide

Ralph Loura

Vice President - CIO

The Clorox Company

Greg Piche

Innovation Sourcing Lead

The Clorox Company

Abstract

Empowering 'Aha!': How Clorox Sustains a Culture of Innovation

Companywide

For the past 99 years, Clorox has been a pioneering Bay Area company

with leading brands recognized around the world.

“Fostering a culture of innovation is one of the keys to this $5.2 billion

company's longevity”, says CIO Ralph Loura, who champions a model of

"connected thinking" that helps IT and everyone at Clorox deepen and

strengthen their links to the growing the business.

In this presentation, Ralph and Greg will talk about the processes and

learnings from Clorox’s ”!NNOVENT!" platform to support employee

ideation and collaboration.

This idea-generating portal not only involves “American Idol”-like voting

(minus the singing and dancing), but more importantly encourages peer

commentary and cross-functional collaboration – with hundreds of ideas

for new product ideas generated across Clorox's global employee

community.

Ralph’s BIO

• Ralph Loura is CIO for The Clorox Company, where he is responsible

for the company’s worldwide use of information technology. In his role,

Mr. Loura leads the global IT organization and directs the company’s

strategic technology initiatives in support of Clorox’ goal of making

everyday life better, every day.

• Prior to joining Clorox Mr. Loura served as SVP and CIO for Medicis,

VP and CIO for Symbol Technologies and held IT leadership positions

at Cisco Systems, Lucent Technologies and AT&T Bell Labs.

• Mr. Loura received a master’s degree in computer science from

Northwestern University and a bachelor’s in computer science-

mathematics from Saint Joseph's College. Mr. Loura serves on

several customer advisory boards, on two non-profit boards, and is

involved in furthering the practice of Technology Leadership through a

number of CIO councils and peer-based organizations.

About The Clorox Company

The Clorox Company is a leading manufacturer and

marketer of consumer products with fiscal year 2011

revenues of $5.2 billion.

With 8,100 employees worldwide, the company

manufactures products in more than two dozen countries

and markets them in more than 100 countries.

Portfolio of Leading Brands

Innovations at Clorox

• 3D Innovation

– Desire,

– Decide and

– Delight

• Cat Litter Innovation

– Bacon Scented Litter Video

– http://youtu.be/GMPxWSL89-8

FreshStep® Viral Video

Website: http://www.freshstep.com/bacon

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=GMPxWSL89-8#t=86 (30 sec clip)

Innovations at Clorox

• Green Works®

• Brita® Bottle

• Güd™ & QR Codes

• Hidden Valley® for Everything

Greg’s BIO

• Greg Piche is the Innovation Sourcing Lead at The Clorox Company.

He is also the founder of CloroxConnects (www.cloroxconnects.com),

an internal-external innovation network, and co-founder of !NNOVENT,

an internal-to-Clorox entrepreneur contest. Greg is responsible with

assessing new technologies and market opportunities and with

discovering new sources of innovation.

• Greg brings over fifteen years of national and international professional

experience to Clorox in manufacturing operations, product

development and internal ventures.

• Greg's work has been published in numerous business journals,

including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Motley Fool

and The Harvard Business Review.

Innovation Powered by

Design “+” Thinking

• Design thinking

– An iterative approach to building solution

sets for needs

• What’s the “+”?

– Deep consumer immersion and insights

– Our “Secret sauce”

CloroxConnects

An immersion engine

•Collaboration hub for Consumers, Inventors, Partners, and

Employees.

•Ideas, themes, trends and needs can be harvested from these

online forums

!NNOVENT – Design “+” Thinking For All

!NNOVENT goals

– Create a pipeline of growth ideas from anywhere

– Create a pipeline of capability

Round 1 - DREAM !T

– Social ideation, peer comments & suggestions, voting

Round 2 - DRIVE !T

– Top 30 ideas (by votes) build business cases, receive connected-

thinking training and cross-functional support

Round 3 - DO !T

– Teams of 5 develop specific plans for the top 7 business cases, selected

by a panel of senior business leaders.

Present business plans to Executive Committee members in June.

Results: 2011

– 300+ ideas

– 1000+ comments

– 700+ people

– 4 ideas caught

Results 2012 (ongoing)

– 400+ ideas

– 2000+ comments

– 1000+ people

Key Insights to Drive Innovation

• INCENT for peer collaboration & social ideation

– It’s perfectly okay to build on last year’s ideas – yours or others

– Provide “Bravo” points and iPad drawings for submissions of ideas OR

comments

– Encourage employees to form teams – stronger together

– Cash awards for final teams

• RESOURCES are needed to nurture ideas into innovations

– Give employees TIME to work on their ideas – for workshops, testing, etc

– Give them TOOLS – business case templates, Connective Thinking

classes, training from venture capitalists, resources from other functions

• PLATFORMS of technologies are of secondary importance to ease

of use

– Eliminate barriers to participate

– Empower office workers & plant employees, from work or home

Innovations at Clorox

Liquid-Plumr® Double Impact®

Website: http://www.liquidplumr.com/

http://www.facebook.com/LiquidPlumr

Video: http://youtu.be/Z7fz0jpuLkM (30 seconds)