Recent concerns about energy resource sustainability and security of supply have raised awareness that oil and gas production faces significant challenges that can only be met through highly innovative technology. Crude oil and gas customers demand sustained low-cost supply. This drives the international oil companies (IOCs) continually to reinvent their businesses in order to sustain them in response to competitive pressures on access to resources, operating cost and capital efficiency. BP is one of the largest IOCs and has been in the vanguard of the industry's transformation from relatively simple geological structures on-shore, to continental shelf off-shore development, to arctic and deep water developments, involving highly complex geological systems and new, massively complex, computer controlled, mechanical structures and equipment. The technology underpinning this transformation includes innovation in drilling, seismic acquisition and interpretation, numerical simulation of reservoir performance, engineering materials for extreme temperatures and pressures, deep water robotic vehicles, and many others. Together, these advances have transformed the industry within the last 30 years, and the pace of change is accelerating. As with other industries, BP's oil and gas production business segment strives to sustain and improve its competitiveness through innovation, both to improve its existing operations and to create new opportunities. As part of this, the Engineering and Production Technology group (EPT) introduced an innovation process in 2000 that is ongoing into 2007. Given that industry innovation initiatives often fail to persist more that 2 or 3 years, it is instructive to inquire into what underpins the endurance of the EPT process and what has been learned from it. In this article, we summarize how we manage the innovation process and share what we have learned as a series of lessons. Establishing the In order to prosecute this agenda, an Innovation Board was formed and tasked with delivering innovative results in the areas of: 1) business transformation, 2) top-line revenue growth, 2) cost reductions, and 3) health, safety and environment. The started as a result of top management challenging the company for internal, organic growth. The technology group recognized they possessed many technologies which, if developed and utilized, could be valuable in all the areas listed above. The EPT vice president set up a fund to provide the methods, funding and-most critically-allocate time to develop those ideas into growth. The methods and funding to provide individuals the opportunity to innovate is called creating space. Innovators can now bill their time to the for approved projects so they can justify their time spent on innovation. The continues to report to EPT senior management and is allocated funding in order to support the internal costs and associated external expenditure. The seeks innovative ideas from any member of EPT and then provides support to develop the project to the point where it represents enough value for development by the formal RD these have proved to be a key factor in the durability of the process, namely: * Membership is by personal invitation of the EPT vice president (under appropriate advisement). This ensures that membership is recognized as a significant opportunity within overall career development. * Membership rotates, such that new members cycle onto the and retire as their career circumstances evolve. This leads to a continuous refreshing of membership, and hence, personal energy and ideas. * Membership is managed to ensure representation of the geographical spread of EPT, the mix of technical disciplines and mix of cultural background, gender and experience. …