Eastman Chemical Company (ECC) has long recognized the importance of innovating products and processes in a manufacturing environment (1). However, as a direct result of our quality effort that began in the early 1980s, we became increasingly concerned over the health of company-wide processes, including the innovation process. These concerns were related to both external and internal changes in our environment. Externally, we were entering an increasingly competitive global environment, with diminishing capital availability in a capital-intensive industry. Internally, our organization was moving from a product-oriented, strong functional environment toward a market-oriented, matrix business center approach. In 1988, a major effort was launched to study and improve the ECC innovation process. This article describes the approach and results of that study, as well as the improvement opportunities for the ECC innovation process. INNOVATION AT ECC Innovation in the broad sense can mean creativity applied to any job or activity to make things better. As we will use the word here, however, we refer to those activities that result in a new or improved product or manufacturing process. Although there was not a well-defined process for innovation within the company at the beginning of this effort, the process operated generally as shown in Figure 1. The starting point was thought of as the identification of a need, usually coming from a customer, but sometimes coming from someone within the company. For example, the need for a more capable manufacturing process might have been identified by someone in the manufacturing organization. Even new technical discoveries have to be related to a customer need at some point before work can continue. Our innovation process included defining these needs: How will they help the customer, what product or process performance characteristics are needed, and just how large and urgent is the need? Eastman Chemical Company Research had generally served as the keeper of many of these needs, particularly those that may be thought of as requiring a breakthrough or providing what is commonly referred to as a revolutionary product. Scientists in Research had access to a data base of needs, and worked on those that were assigned by their supervisors or were of personal interest. There was a limited interaction between Research and the business centers to identify and validate a need. Once a concept for how to solve a need was generated, the concept was explored and further developed by the individual scientist before others became involved. At some point, the scientist began seeking assistance and input from others. Once the concept had been defined well enough to verify that it was viable and fit with business strategy, an Innovation Concept (IC) was normally initiated. The IC process represents the company's structured project management process for an innovation project. Following a successful formal review of the concept by the ECC innovation committee, an IC team was formed (2). The team usually included membership from Research, Development, Manufacturing, Marketing, and other functional groups as appropriate. Their job was directed toward commercialization of the new product or process. Up to the time of this improvement effort, Research and Development had been viewed as the owner and driver of the innovation process; innovation was not clearly a company-owned process. In fact, other groups such as Manufacturing and Marketing were not always kept well informed about current and future innovation projects, or about what the innovation process had produced in the past. Innovation projects were often seen as interruptions to normal activities; Manufacturing was asked to allocate production time and resources to an innovation project for which they had limited information and interest. Likewise, Marketing people were rewarded for sales of existing products and many times viewed new products as problems rather than assets. …