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Procter & Gamble's Clay Street Think Tank
By Edie Weiner

Procter & Gamble, one of the world's largest corporations, has decided to use design as one of its key competitive advantages. The infusion of such a non-quantitative element into the success of the company has proven both energizing and challenging. While A.G. Lafley, the CEO, has shown unwavering support for this directive, it is hard for the rank and file, scattered everywhere around the earth, to understand that design is now a large chunk of their company's future.

To promote the innovative thinking that would inspire new design, meeting the organization's goals, P&G created its "Clay Street" Project. Clay Street is set in a remodeled commercial building in the heart of Cincinnati's inner city, just a few miles away from headquarters but vastly removed in many ways. The five-story building is designed with wide-open spaces and all kinds of portable things to sit on, write on, and play with. Young stars from P&G's operations all over the world are assembled as teams who come together for two to 10 weeks to work on breakthrough corporate initiatives.

P&G invited me in to help these teams, and I have now kicked off several Clay Street teams. My role is to get them to completely reassess their frames of reference, to obliterate their biases. For example:

• Is the global market really mostly people 25 to 55 years old, or is it quickly shifting toward those under 25 and over 60?
• Isn't everyone in the world physically challenged in some way?
• Isn't a Laundromat mostly a waiting room, and what does that mean for product and service possibilities?
• Do movie theaters make most of their profits on movies, or on concessions, and what does that answer hold out for the future vision of any company?

By exposing many of the global trends affecting P&G's markets and the developments that affect its business models, these exercises open up a world of possibilities for innovation, design, and production.

The experience "has completely reshaped our ability to see the world," says Claudia Kotchka, vice president for design innovation and strategy. "It's no longer about what we think it is. It's now about what it really could be. Liberating insights have led us to propose whole new possibilities, which will affect the kinds of foresight we choose to exercise and many of our future offerings and directions. I think we are finally convincing many in the company that future vision is not always about charts and graphs."

About the Author
Edie Weiner is president of Weiner, Edrich, Brown, Inc. 200 East 33rd Street, Suite 9I, New York, New York 10016. E-mail weinerbrown@earthlink.net. She is co-author (with Arnold Brown) of FutureThink: How to Think Clearly in a Time of Change (2006).

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