SVP, Corporate Product Innovation Estée Lauder

Anne Carullo

the innovator’s interview
May 2009 The Innovator’s Interview highlights unique innovations from a wide range of industries, and is an opportunity for futurethink and some of today’s leading innovations to share insights and ideas.
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the innovator’s interview

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Anne Carullo the background

This Innovator Interview series highlights leading innovators at Fortune 500 companies. In contrast to past interviews, focusing on a single innovation, this series examines the state of innovation at global organizations. We spoke with both innovation leaders and practitioners, within varying business units and organizational structures, across a broad range of industries both for–profit and not–for–profit. The interviews offer a unique insider’s view into the world of innovation—what makes it work, what holds organizations back, and what critical advice new innovators need to know to be more successful with innovation overall.

the interview futurethink recently tapped the mind of Anne Carullo, SVP–Corporate Product Innovation at Estée Lauder to learn how the cosmetics giant innovates. Read on to learn why the customer isn’t always right, how hiring the Top 2% isn’t necessarily good for innovation, and the importance of looking backward for new ideas.

You said that innovation at Estée Lauder is different than how other leading innovators do it. Can you elaborate? Innovation is a central theme to the corporate mission of Estée Lauder Companies and much of that stems from the Product Development department, which differs from other organizations in that Product Development is not part of R&D or Marketing. We’re a very specific group of people that work on development with R&D and Strategy with Marketing. The senior heads report directly into the Chief Innovation Officer as