Charting an Innovation Direction...The Eli Lilly Way

Lois Kelly of BeeLine Labs wrote recently about a conference she attended at Columbia University where Mark Kershisnik, the executive director of Eli Lilly's market research and US marketing services, spoke about his company’s innovation mission. Kershisnik said that Lilly’s sustainable success is rooted in a shared, common purpose that everyone in the global company is passionate about:

“Developing innovations to help patients succeed in the ways they want to lead their lives, which goes far beyond developing scientific innovations.”

“We exist to solve tough problems that help to get people healthy and earn a decent return on our investments. This is a deep-rooted belief throughout the company. This is what motivates us,” said Kershisnik.

Admittedly, at first blush, this sounds like marketing-speak but instead, Eli Lilly has developed the approaches, processes and programs that enable this innovation mission. (Both Lois and her colleague Francois Gossieaux have provided ample examples in their blogposts – well worth reading.) I was particularly moved by the company's oncology on canvas project, which enables cancer patients to express how they deal with their disease though stories and art. What's notable is that Lilly didn't start this community after launching a new oncology drug - they started it before having any oncology drug offering.

I write frequently about how companies can identify ways to make innovation a natural part of their organization in a method that is consistent and repeatable. And I also write how important it is to put the customer at the center of any innovation effort. Before you approach strategy, you've got to get clear on your intent. In other words, what problem are you trying to solve? For Eli Lilly, it was positioning the problem away from developing drugs to help sick people to developing drugs to help people lead healthy lives.

If you want to be strategic with innovation, if you want to get it to succeed and not be wasteful, the thing you need to do is concentrate your firepower around some kind of mission. It’s gratifying to see a giant pharmaceutical company actually walk the talk.