First Steps: Instituting P&G's R&D Corporate University
Case Study by Lisa Owens & Edward Klein
There are at least 1600 Corporate Universities in North America (Meister, 1998). Each one has a unique history. The following is a description of the development of one such Corporate University.
In 2001, the Research & Development (R&D) Leadership at Procter & Gamble (P&G) called on R&D’s Human Resources (HR) director to create a formal training program specifically for R&D people. Although R&D training programs had been in place in the 1980’s and 90’s, the programs were abandoned in the late 90’s due to resource issues and competing priorities throughout the company. The current leadership requested that HR develop a corporate university. By definition, a corporate university ties corporate learning efforts directly to overarching business goals. (Todd and Dresner, 2004) And, that’s what happened.
A total of five Colleges make up the R&D University, one college for each level (band) in the company, starting with incoming scientists and managers at Band 1 up to directors and top technologists at Band 5. A goal for these colleges was to increase levels of marketable innovation, in large part, by increasing networking across business silos to encourage cross-fertilization of thinking.
The leadership support was awesome, but how does one get started on such a task? How does a single HR professional think about the task of creating formal training to meet the needs of over 8000 R&D people across technologies which range from nanotechnology to consumer research and which includes such disparate businesses as Tide detergent, Charmin’ toilet paper, Actonel (osteoporosis drug), Hugo Boss fine fragrance, Olay skin care products, and Folgers coffee?
P&G’s R&D organization did just that. Here we describe how this was accomplished, some of the major issues faced, the solutions developed and the successes achieved.
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