The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2004–2006
P&G stopped inventing everything and bought proven ideas from outside
P&G's Connect + Develop open innovation produced 35%+ of its innovations and billions in revenue; Pringles Prints went from concept to launch in under a year.
Procter & Gamble
The solution
P&G's R&D once treated every product idea as an inside job, taking about two years and full internal investment to launch something like Pringles Prints.
Connect + Develop flipped the funnel: search for proven technologies and partnerships outside the company first, then integrate them fast.
The strategy was producing more than 35% of the company's innovations and billions of dollars in revenue by the time its architects described it in HBR (2006).
Pringles Prints — trivia, facts and jokes printed on crisps — went from concept to launch in less than a year at a fraction of the old cost by borrowing a partner's printing technology.
Why it worked
- Outside partners had already de-risked the technology.
- Time-to-market collapsed from years to months.
- Licensing let P&G pay for results instead of bets.
- The model scaled across dozens of product categories at once.
What can be applied
When your R&D can't keep pace, the scarce asset isn't ideas — it's the ability to find and integrate ideas that already exist elsewhere.
Aftermath
Connect + Develop became P&G's standard innovation operating model and a widely taught example of open innovation, with business-school cases documenting how it works.
Sources
- Connect and Develop: Inside Procter & Gamble's New Model for Innovation
- Case 8: The Procter & Gamble Company – A Unique Innovation Approach
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