Strategic Innovation: Embedding Innovation as a Core Competency in Your Organization

CHAPTER FOUR

Leader Accountability and Development

At our 2000 Leadership Conference outside Washington, D.C., Whirlpool's top three hundred leaders first heard the phrase “Innovation from Everyone and Everywhere.” This was the moment that we communicated that innovation would become one of our most critical strategies to move toward our enterprise-wide vision of Every Home, Everywhere. We usually invite only eighty of the top leaders to this yearly conference, but engaging Whirlpool's leadership in innovation was so critical that we almost tripled our list of those invited.

This conference will go down in Whirlpool history as one of the most interesting and motivating. Attendees literally began to embody the spirit of innovation. Our last night ...