P&G Celebrates Seven Top C+D Partners for Accelerating Innovation, Increasing Productivity

CINCINNATI--(BUSINESS WIRE)--They helped get products to market in half the time. Drove global innovation breakthroughs. Helped build connections, collaborations and product equity.

“Our Connect+Develop partnerships are helping us deliver game-changing innovations and strengthen our productivity culture”

They are P&G’s (NYSE:PG) top Connect+Develop open innovation partners. And this week, as part of its Annual C+D Partnership Celebration, P&G is recognizing seven, among its hundreds of partners, for their innovation and collaboration that have driven business results.

“Our Connect+Develop partnerships are helping us deliver game-changing innovations and strengthen our productivity culture,” said P&G Chairman of the Board, President and Chief Executive Officer Bob McDonald. “We celebrate their work, and thank them for their partnership.”

The collection of winners are widely diverse: from small firms to global operations to academia. Some are located near P&G’s global headquarters in Cincinnati, others are scattered around the world. “Their collaboration with our teams has been seamless and wholly focused on helping deliver a superior product for consumers,” said Laura Becker, General Manager P&G Global Business Development.

This year’s winners are:

• 2012 Connect+Develop Partner of the Year
  MonoSol of La Porte, Indiana
  
  MonoSol partnered with P&G to develop Tide Pods, launched this year as the biggest innovation in laundry in 20 years and achieving a 68% share of the unit dose segment in just months. Tide Pods is a three-chamber liquid unit dose that cleans, fights stains and brightens. Key was MonoSol’s innovation of a clear film that separates the chambers, dissolves completely even in varied degrees of cold water yet holds up to wet hands. “We wouldn’t have been able to deliver the biggest breakthrough in laundry in 20 years if we hadn’t partnered and collaborated with MonoSol on a solution to what seemed to be an unsolvable proposition,” McDonald said.
• James N. Gamble Product Innovation Award
  Zobele Group of Trento, Italy
  
  This award celebrates innovation in product formulation, packaging or technology that’s proven game-changing in delighting consumers, delivering value and driving business results.
  
  Zobele teams partnered with P&G to create a special scent-releasing membrane that made Febreze Set & Refresh a globally winning product. In addition, Zobele helped deliver the innovation to market in months versus years. The teams went on to reapply the membrane technology to Febreze Car Vent Clips and to the new Honeywell Febreze Freshness Floor Fans launched this summer in North America. “Zobele has been a highly collaborative partner, expanding our capability and capacity. Together, we’ve crashed through deadlines and delivered beyond expectations and sales projections,” Becker said.

• Innovation Capability Award (two winners)
  • Beanstalk of New York
  • d&a Visual Insights of Israel
    

  This award celebrates partnerships that have enabled successful execution of C+D work.
  
  Beanstalk is P&G’s exclusive global licensing agency, working across all brands in the Company, helping develop and execute licensing strategies and partnerships. They have worked to build dozens of licensing agreements that have grown P&G brands and brand equity, including Tide, Dawn, Cover Girl, Scope, Bounce, Max Factor, Febreze and Old Spice.
  
  d&a Visual Insights, a P&G partner for five years, provides P&G C+D teams unique landscaping, mapping and insight generation using their own proprietary technologies and algorithms that support P&G’s ecosystem analysis platform. d&a has successfully delivered more than two dozen projects across P&G functions and BUs.

• Trademark Licensee Partner of the Year
  Butler Home Products of Marlborough, MA
  
  This award celebrates commercial innovation partnerships that have driven breakthrough business results.
  
  Butler, a P&G partner for 12 years, became the first company to launch a nationally recognized consumer brand into the household cleaning tools category with their Mr. Clean partnership. They then expanded to include Dawn cleaning tools and to date, sell more than 100 P&G branded cleaning tools and accessories across North America, with an averaged 20% sales growth for the last several years. Butler also developed the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser mop, which quickly became the top selling mop in North America.

• Public / Private Partnership (two winners)
  • University of Cincinnati Simulation Center of Cincinnati
  • Center for Competitive Creative Design at Cranfield University of Cambridge, England
    

  This award recognizes outstanding public / private collaboration, including work in securing external funding sources and access to IP or capabilities.
  
  The UC Simulation Center was created in 2008 to link undergrads, graduate students and post docs with corporations in a variety of engineering and design problems ranging from routine to world class. Sim Center teams have worked on dozens of P&G projects over the years, giving P&G teams access to solutions and talent, while providing students opportunities to work on real-time projects. P&G has hired nine students through the program, with several more going on to work at many of P&G’s suppliers and partners.
  
  The Centre for Competitive Creative Design (C4D) is an international, multi-disciplinary design center that connects post-graduate programs, research, executive training and industry in collaborative projects. Partners since 2008, P&G and C4D have worked on a range of projects across the Company, helping P&G brands, business units and categories build design-driven technology development as a core capability.

Since its start, Connect+Develop has linked with thousands of external innovators from big businesses to individual entrepreneurs, delivering breakthroughs in packaging, manufacturing, new business models, trademarks and licensing as well as technology and innovations for new products. Today, more than 50% of P&G’s innovations contain a key element of external partnership. Hits include Tide Total Care, TidePods, Downy Single Rinse, Clairol Foam, Olay Smooth Finish, Febreze Set n Refresh, Vicks Humidifiers, Bounce Drier Bars, Swiffer Dusters, Olay Regenerist, CoverGirl LashBlast Mascara and Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, to name a few. For more on P&G Connect + Develop: pgconnectdevelop.com.

About Procter & Gamble

P&G serves approximately 4.6 billion people around the world with its brands. The Company has one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Pampers®, Tide®, Ariel®, Always®, Whisper®, Pantene®, Mach3®, Bounty®, Dawn®, Fairy®, Gain®, Charmin®, Downy®, Lenor®, Iams®, Crest®, Oral-B®, Duracell®, Olay®, Head & Shoulders®, Wella®, Gillette®, Braun®, Fusion®, Ace®, Febreze®, Ambi Pur®, SK-II®, and Vicks®. The P&G community includes operations in approximately 75 countries worldwide. Please visit http://www.pg.com for the latest news and in-depth information about P&G and its brands.