Innovation can deliver a desirable experience for your customers, and sustainable growth for your company. Many companies, however, struggle with how to deliver top-line growth and deliver true business innovation. Meanwhile, come companies have become astounded by the curve balls being thrown at them because of rising energy costs in the global economy.

Getting corporate innovation right goes beyond delivering the next generation product. If you want to deliver something that creates value for customers, you need to take a holistic look at innovation. This approach requires a total solution based on the right business model, the ability to leverage partnership relationships, and the desire to reach customers through different channels. Cheryl Perkins practiced this holistic innovation model while she was chief innovation officer for Kimberly-Clark. This model has become the underpinning of her strategic innovation consulting practice called Innovationedge. She says, "We started the practice to deliver a roadmap so companies can get their leadership teams focused on key priorities and capabilities so they can start to innovate."

Because so many products have a tie in some way to IT, CIOs plays a critical role in driving innovation more than they did a few years ago. Perkins says that CIOs and their teams can harness the important discrete pieces of information that sit in various departments across the company. She adds that even regulated products have discrete information residing in different departments. She says, "The IT team puts critical support systems and information systems in place so you can capture the knowledge and transfer it. This process is critical to speed to market. If you don't have this flow of information and data throughout the corporation, your time to market will be delayed. Without the IT team, the data and knowledge can't be transformed into new solutions."

Bio
Cheryl Perkins is founder and president of Innovationedge, a strategic innovation consulting firm for corporations and entrepreneurs. Prior to starting Innovationedge, she was senior vice president and chief innovation officer for Kimberly-Clark Corp., a Fortune 500 consumer paper goods company. She oversaw the company's innovation process, systems, and tools. She was also responsible for research and development, engineering, design, new business, global strategic alliances, and environment, safety and regulatory affairs. In 2006 Business Week magazine chose Perkins as one of the Top 25 Champions of Innovation in the World. Also, in 2006, Consumer Goods Technology magazine named her as a top executive responsible for driving vision within the consumer goods industry. This year she received an innovation award at the Indira India Innovation Summit in Mumbai, India. She has 10 U.S. Patents and several more pending.

Resources
Innovate  - Interview with Cheryl Perkins, Chief Innovation Officer of Kimberly-Clark
The  Appleton Blog
Reuters  - Cheryl Perkins Receives Innovation Award

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