Robert Brands explains why innovation needs rules, not less structure. He separates new product development from long-term development, discusses when to patent versus keep trade secrets, and points to Airspray's sale at 15 times EBIT as proof that a strong IP portfolio pays off.
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Hello, I'm Paul Sloane. I'm a writer and speaker on innovation, and I'm joined today for this interview by Robert Brands, who is the author of a book, Robert's Rules of Innovation, which I have here. I don't know whether you can see that. And I found it a very interesting book, and I want to ask Robert some questions. So Robert, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself?
Yes, hey, good morning, Paul. Thanks for having me. Basically, I'm an innovation practitioner. I've been in business for many years, primarily in packaging, so in product innovation, and I've run from startups to a $1 billion company. And I tried to capture in Robert's Rules of Innovation what really the 10 imperatives are on how to create and sustain innovation.
So I guess the first question might be, Why do we need rules for innovation? Surely innovation is something creative, spontaneous, impulsive. It's a great idea that you have and you implement. Surely if you put a set of rules together, you're constraining people's creativity.
Yeah, and it's actually quite the opposite, Paul. I basically am trying to create a structured, repeatable process. So think about that— structured, repeatable process. And for that, you need some rules, some rules of engagement. And some guidelines to create some consistency in the approach. For instance, ideation should not happen when you run out of ideas or have a lack of sales. It should be a process that happens regularly and structured so that you can feed it into your new product development process. And along comes issues like inspiration and accountability and ownership, observe and measure the key KPIs leading and lagging indicators to really help you to deliver innovation year on year.
So you mentioned accountability there, and I was interested to see you made great emphasis of that in the book about accountability in the innovation process and for the new product development team. Why do you think that is so important, Robert?
Well, it's like accountability is nearly the foundation of any good operating company or team. So especially in innovation where it's all about change and risk-taking, accountability is really important, and it's important to make progress, to make a step-by-step step forward. The best way to really look at accountability and make it work is a saying that Ronald Reagan created, which was trust with verification. Basically, assign responsibilities, trust people, but accept that you are able to verify the steps going forward. And with that, I was able to really deliver at least one new product per year with my team that I operated with for many years and delivered new products for 15 years in a row.
That's good, that's good. You also talk in the book about new product development and long-term development, NPD and LTD. What's the difference between those, and what's the relevance of the two?
Yeah, really great question. There's really 2 key things of resources constraints and demand. One is new product development. New product development, in my eyes, is from concept to launch. So you know what you want to launch, and you need to go through these stages to get it out into the market. Long-term development is really still in that early ideation pipeline where you have to filter and validate and build a business case to ultimately get to MPD. The reason why I raise it and talk about it so much is that you often have a conflict of resources. You know, there's always short— shortness of money and people, and in between long-term development and MPD, you need to make sure that although often the resources are mixed, that you really separate them with objectives, targets, and milestones. To get the desired results.
Yeah, and you talk in the book about patents and intellectual property and the importance of protecting your intellectual property, but patents are expensive, they take a long time to gain, it can take 18 months to get a patent registered, meanwhile you're losing time. When would you advise a smaller company with limited resources to invest in a patent, and when would you advise them just to give get on with it and race to market or use a trade secret?
Yeah, so that's a good question as well, and I will give you my practical entrepreneurial advice, but I would definitely say talk to your lawyer about this in the different cases. First of all, let me address when to do it and not to do it. If you have a trade secret or a know-how that you are using inside your manufacturing process, I would say don't patent it. Try and keep it protected. Even put it in a black box when you have big customers visit. Because if you patent it, you expose it and put it out in the public, people can copy it and use it in their manufacturing process and you would never know. So that's a good example of not to do it. But to be honest, patents are a great way to protect the territory that you're trying to build. It is a great way to create value of the company. And in the company that I was involved in, which is called Airspray, that created the little foaming pumps for hand soap, etc., the company ultimately was sold at 15 times EBIT, all because of the IP portfolio. In today's world, it's important, especially in the US, to file first and fine-tune later, because it's not anymore in the world the first to invent, but it's first to file. So look at it critically. If you feel you have something really unique and special, try to get the protection and also look at the alternatives, because once you are inventing something, you normally know the alternatives, and try to make your patent as broad as possible with the claims so you're protected going forward.
Okay, that's really good advice. So I'd like to finish by asking, who do you think this book, Robert's Rules of Innovation, who would really benefit by reading this? Who's the target audience? and what are the key benefits they would gain from reading the book?
Yeah, thanks, Paul. I would say that Robert's Rules of Innovation really tried to share on how we were successful in creating innovation and bringing new products to market year after year with a structured repeatable process. So it describes the 10 imperatives on how to create and sustain innovation. To me, it's kind of fundamental what I describe. But when you read it, all the pieces are coming together and you realize, ah, I knew this, but I never put the whole picture together. From inspiration to risk-taking to accountability, all the way down to the reward system, it spells out the word innovation. And it applies from small companies to large ones. I've had CEOs of divisions of General Dynamics really take the book apart and using it in a proper way, and I've had small startup companies read it and understand what they had to do and build over the years to come. So it's a broad book, it's an easy read, but it gives you a framework to really look at creating and improving your innovation capabilities.
Yes, I read it and I thought it was a very good, solid, reliable framework that anyone wants to hang a structure for how they should do their new product development. So Robert, I'd like to thank you and wish you very good luck with the book.
Thank you very much, and thanks for your support, Paul.
