Innovation at Timberland

1. Was iF set up for success? What worked? What should have been done differently?

IF was set up for success. After Jeff Swartz and Ken Pucker decided to increase product variations, in-line team designers felt overwhelmed to create both fashion and functional products. As Clark said, since innovation was the responsibility of the in-line team designers, the new strategy compromised innovation. In order to fulfill the new strategy and at the same time secure innovation, it was right for Timberland to set up an independent R&D group---iF.

The mission of iF is to identify and develop innovative and high impact concepts (products, processes, and materials) that will enhance and extend Timberland's brand equity, foster business opportunities, and drive profitability over the long term. We can evaluate iF's effectiveness by comparing its achievements and its mission.

In terms of innovation, iF definitely succeeded. Its pipeline was always full of ideas. Despite the failure of Travel Gear, it realized PreciseFit and Miōn, which are promising with predicted success. These results can also be deemed as business opportunities fostered by iF. Timberland's financial ratios reflect that its profitability has been improved a lot since the set-up of iF. Although the top executives didn't mention iF when attributing the growth to several factors, iF was actually playing the role behind some of the factors. For example, boots developed for firefighters, police, SWAT team members by iF contributed to the growth of urban segment which was among the growing new customer segments. The relationship with NSC had potential to turn into an opportunity for Timberland to work with the government.

What lagged the performance of iF was the lack of communication with mainstream in-line teams. This doomed the failure of Travel Gear. There could be a structure remedy to facilitate the connection between innovators and mainstream businesses. I quote the paragraph below from a reading materiall [1]----Innovation groups can be told at the outset that they have a responsibility to serve the mainstream while also seeking bigger innovations to start new businesses. This can be built into their charters and reinforced by overlapping relationships-whether it involves representatives from mainstream businesses rotating through innovation groups or advisory boards overseeing innovation efforts.

2. Why did Travel Gear fail while PreciseFit looked more promising?

The failure of Travel Gear lies in several basic reasons, while the seemingly success of PreciseFit lies in the opposite of those reasons.

First, although both concepts were approved and then distributed according to the final decision from the senior management, iF launched Travel Gear into practice too fast without enacting a complete preliminary business plan. As Chris Heffernan doubted about his assignment---there is a lot of work to be done and a chance we would learn that our product concept was flawed. However, in the case of PreciseFit, iF hired a team of Harvard Business School students to make a concrete plan before handing this concept