When James Kilts joined Gillette in 2001, the 100-year-old company already had a respectable legacy of inventive thinking, with headline products like the Atra, Sensor, Venus and the Mach series under its innovation belt. Yet Kilts wasted no time introducing into the firm his four building blocks for innovation: communicate a vision, get the right people, stay clear of building consensus, and look externally. ‘It starts with communication’, Kilts said. ‘You need to ensure that your organisation understands that innovation is not confined to the R&D function or to other technical areas. We created a simple vision two years ago: build total brand value by innovating to deliver consumer value and customer leadership faster, better and more completely than the competition.’ But having a clearly articulated message only works if you have the right people 3 and give them the freedom to take chances. ‘You’ve got to hire and retain people with energy and people who love to change and learn’, Kilts said. ‘And you need to encourage risk taking. One of the themes in our company is to remember that the opposite of success is not necessarily failure but inertia.’ While risky ventures often spark debate, contention comes with the territory. ‘Real creativity can be very contentious, and you need to encourage people to challenge [current thinking] and maintain an attitude that they’re unafraid to disagree with authority figures’, Kilts said. ‘Consensus building is not always the best way to promote innovation.’ In fact, sometimes the popular consensus can be dead wrong. Kilts, who prior to joining Gillette held top positions at Nabisco and Kraft Foods, recalled that when Oscar Mayer looked at possible modifications to its Lunchables line of children’s lunch packages, the product group considered 3 and rejected as terrible 3 the idea of adding a drink to the product. Shortly thereafter, the president of that division met with a customer who voiced the same idea. ‘The president went back and told the product group, who said they thought it was the worst possible idea, “Well, I’m going to do it anyway”’, Kilts said. ‘That little idea, called the Fun Pak or Lunchables, doubled the size of the business.’ Kilts notes ‘companies need to look outside their own doors and use benchmarking as a source of new ideas’. ‘Talk with people in other industries about what they’re doing and what they’re accomplishing’, he urges. ‘I’ve gotten a lot of good ideas from other industries.