Believe in Innovation to Win

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President Bruce Williamson has begun transforming the company with a very simple idea: Instead of taking our (remarkable) technical expertise and creating products we hope customers will like, we are going to go to the customer and say, "What can we do to help you?" In essence, Williamson has restructured the company leadership with believers who share this customer-driven mentality, which now drives both short-term and long-term product development and brand management.

Those who did not want to change are gone. Those who stayed are required to spend 20% of their work week thinking, innovating, creating value-added improvements.

A Culture of Innovation

The world's most innovative companies—think Amazon (AMZN), GE (GE), Nike (NKE), and Procter & Gamble (PG)—demonstrate that innovation is an essential part of their organization by giving it the same level of status, clout, equality, and attention as they do their fundamental core competencies (e.g., operations, customer service, quality). Why aren't many other companies doing this, too?

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has an answer. He told Business Week's Robert D. Hof: "I think it's cultural. You have to have the culture, and you have to get it right." The world's most innovative companies are authentic in word and deed. And it all starts at the top.

The Sterno leadership team's faith in their innovation initiative is real—individually and collectively. And because they believe, they evangelize. You have to believe—as they do—that this new way of doing business will lead to success. You have to believe—as Wall Street does—that innovation is essential, not just important. (The difference is simple: The important, you put on a to-do list; the essential goes on a to-die-for list.)

The question to ask is this: Are we going to intentionally, strategically, and tangibly align and operate the company around a culture of innovation, or do we just hope the company will evolve into something close enough?

G. Michael Maddock is founding partner, and Raphael Louis Vitón is president, of Maddock Douglas, a company that invents, brands, and markets products "for companies driven by innovation." .