Fareed Khan, the Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing at Chicago-based USG Corporation recently discussed the strategies that the venerable building-supply company (formerly US Gypsum) is using to address the high priority that the organization puts on innovation.

In the the Q&A session that followed the presentation that he delivered at the Business Marketing Association luncheon on May 17, Kahn responded to the question:

What are you doing now that you were not doing 5 years ago…and what do you expect that will you be doing in 3 years that your are not doing now…to try to build USG’s innovative capacity?

This audio excerpt (click here to listen or download) with his answer is a bit grainy, but USG’s innovation strategies are razor-sharp…and they have helped the company earn recognition as a winner of Chicago Innovation Awards in two of the five years that the awards have been in existence.

If you have trouble hearing the audio, here are a few key points from Kahn’s response.

There are three buckets that we have created, with some focus and some organizational resources around them.

• There is a big area around process innovation…there is a group focused around really thinking about breakthrough ideas that change the way our (manufacturing) processes …
• A second area is traditional R&D…we have a research center in Libertyville…where people are thinking about chemistry and the next generation of products
• The third area is business innovation…we have created a little incubator…it has an internal board and seed money…and we take idea for businesses and we take them through different stages.

If you’d like a more complete transcript of his reply to the question, just send an e-mail to contact@re-inventing-innovation.com.

And you can find more information about Kahn’s presentation in a report by Michele Beaulieux about the May MarketingMasters Luncheon on the Chicago BMA site.