This post is an excerpt from an interview with Andy Mills, the president of Medline Industries, a big maker and distributor of health care supplies. Mr. Mills discusses the difficult road to innovation and how to cull winning products from products with little or no future.
Question: Tell me about your approach to innovation.
Answer: I like to refer to it as Darwinian, but it’s also a very democratic approach. One of the biggest assets of the company is our sales force. They’re approaching 1,300 people now, and the philosophy of the company has been that we should let the sales team and senior sales management decide the emphasis for which products we should be pushing and promoting.
Full Interview » Want to Innovate? Get Ready to Kiss Some Frogs