Consistent success in the consumer products industry requires an intimate understanding of consumer needs and a savvy approach to meeting the objectives and requirements of ever-more-powerful retailers. Companies must understand their customers and respond to their changing preferences with speed and precision. Creative product packaging must be designed to meet the diverse requirements of many channels while preserving adequate product standardization and cost controls. Leading consumer products companies agree that the key to driving top-line growth is innovation.

"Every consumer goods company is pursuing growth. As such, effective innovation represents one of the greatest challenges. To be truly effective you need to be able to create and execute great new ideas, while protecting and developing the core business at the same time..."
Alan Harris, CMO, Kellogg

"Innovation is our lifeblood—new ideas and new products that make consumers' lives better, build customers' sales and profits, and build P&G's market share, sales, profits, and Total Shareholder Return,"
A.G. Lafley, CEO, Procter & Gamble Company

Booz Allen Hamilton(BAH) has studied innovation closely and has recently drawn some very powerful conclusions. The broad conclusion is that spending more money on R&D will NOT result in more innovation. BAH argues for improving the innovation process itself:

    * "[recent] factors have increased the competitive value of a fast and effective innovation engine. Yet of all the core functions of most companies, innovation may be managed with the least consistency and discipline."
    * "No single approach to spending money on innovation development is universally recognized as the most effective strategy."
    * "In short, when a company is seeking to grow through innovation, it’s more important to develop a robust business model and good cross-functional capabilities than to boost the R&D budget."

We agree with BAH. We think the challenge is about transforming your process of innovation, not merely grinding more resources (financial, temporal, and mortal) through it!

Your innovation process is unique. One size will never fit all in the world for product development. That is why PLM from Siemens PLM Software could be your best next step.

By combining the data management, process management, and alignment capabilities or Teamcenter Enterprise with the secure and scalable collaboration capabilities of Teamcenter Community, you will create an innovation environment that is robust and efficient, and that is tuned to the way that YOU innovate. Read more about what Business Week has said about Siemens PLM Software’s ability to power global development collaboration.