Although Whirlpool’s Nancy Snyder had to abandon her initial strategy of using a 75-person innovation team to vet product ideas and create new ones, she knew Whirlpool’s structure could support innovation. With a doctorate in organizational behavior, Snyder recognized that although creativity is an innate human behavior, people needed training to build their skills. For that reason, she brought innovation training to Whirlpool—coursework mandated for all salaried employees and tied to their bonuses. She also established an intranet as a central place for communicating and monitoring innovation, and she made the training materials available there to hourly workers. The training equipped the selected employees to serve as “I-mentors,” who would foster new ideas within their business units. They apply their learning not only to generate ideas for new products but also to solve business problems within the company. Once the I-mentor format was in place, Snyder brought greater structure to the process. Top managers now evaluate new proposals at monthly meetings. Projects that clear initial hurdles receive an executive sponsor to shepherd them through the next stages. Software tools enable Whirlpool to track an idea’s progress through the pipeline and measure it on several dimensions, even its intangible value. Managers receive concrete innovation goals, and their performance is measured. Bonuses are at risk for managers who don’t hit their innovation target. Ideas that came out of the new process include a fast-fill water dispenser built into a refrigerator’s door and a portable device called a Fabric Freshener, which uses steaming and air-drying to remove wrinkles and odors from dry-clean-only garments. After Whirlpool adopted the new system for innovation, the company’s performance turned around. By 2006, the company could identify more than $2.5 billion in worldwide revenues as stemming from brand innovation.

• Does the idea-generation system that Nancy Snyder set up at Whirlpool resemble the matrix organization structure? If so, how?

• Previously, new-product development at Whirlpool was centered only in its engineering and marketing departments, but CEO David Whitwam and Nancy Snyder modified that practice. How does a change in the division of labor affect organization structure?