While they are far from alone in the field of sponsoring what I call In-preneuring, Procter & Gamble have gone to some lengths to organize the process through what they call Futureworks. They invite others to bring them innovations in areas that connect with P&G brands for co-development.
Futureworks creates, incubates, and scales tranformational new business models, new categories, and service experiences with consumer-driven, disruptive market innovation. P&G FutureWorks has a diverse, experienced, entrepreneurial team, and is closely connected to P&G’s key leadership and their strategic goals. We work across brands, categories and functions, identifying opportunities and partnering accordingly.
They call it open innovation: the practice of accessing externally developed intellectual property in your own business and allowing your internally developed assets and know-how to be used by others. basically Futureworks is P&G’s entrepreneurial new-business generator and they already have over 1,000 agreements in place. Don’t be afraid of the giant!