Raffley once said that his goal is to make half of P&G's innovation come from channels outside the company, which is 20% in 200 1 year and 35% in 2005. His explanation is: "there are inventors everywhere, and we are as likely to find inventions in the garage as in the laboratory." Since invention is "such a difficult job", the speed of innovation in 2005 is twice that of ten years ago, why not seek creativity and technology in the whole talent pool? Although this is contrary to P&G's long-standing working principle of "all the answers are in my hands".

The personnel department of R&D is worried that this means the beginning of outsourcing. However, Laffly stressed that he did not intend to reduce the strength of R&D. The main idea of P&G is to introduce technology from entrepreneurs. For example, 200 1, the company bought an "electric toothbrush" from the inventor John Aucharles.

Getting ideas from outside the company also means working with other companies. Rafley even pushed Procter & Gamble to form an alliance with its competitors. He set up a joint venture with Clorox, a rival brand of Procter & Gamble in mop and purified water, in order to seek a partner of tooth paste packaging materials. Together, they launched a product-packaging material. As a result, this material became the best-selling food packaging material in the United States, which brought a win-win situation to both companies.

Procter & Gamble has also redefined its relationship with suppliers. Raffley said: "In the past, we seemed to throw the contract out of the wall to them. Now they are more like an extension of our laboratory. "

The concept of "Lianfa" completely changed the company's innovation process and brought some new products, including Crest whitening toothpaste and Olay brand skin care products.

P&G is getting more and more benefits from the annual R&D budget of $654.38+0.8 billion. In the company's latest annual report, Rafley revealed that in 2002, P&G's R&D expenditure accounted for 4.5% of sales, and in 2005 this proportion dropped to 3.5%.

Rafley said that this does not mean that the company intends to "outsource" innovation, and the company should always maintain a core technical team composed of insiders to promote the innovation process. But after all, this is an important change in the way of thinking.

Lively explained the reason for the acquisition of Gillette. Gillette's excellent ability in business innovation is the main reason for P&G's acquisition.

Refley believes that "innovation is the driving force of the consumer goods industry. In Gillette's business and our business field, two-thirds of the brands are in the leading position in the industry, which is mainly due to their outstanding performance in innovation. " After Lafley returned to Procter & Gamble, he implemented a "slimming" plan to reduce brands, which will be completed in the summer of 20 15. Jon Moeller, CFO of Procter & Gamble, said earlier that Procter & Gamble will complete the plan of selling 100 brands by this summer, which is one year shorter than the "slimming" time in two years proposed in August 20 14.