Unleashing Innovation How Whirlpool Transformed an Industry

Nancy Snyder is the Chief Innovation Officer at Whirlpool Corporation, where she has been since 1999. With Snyder at the helm Whirlpool has recently undergone one of the most successful innovation turnarounds in corporate history. This is both an account of how that took place, and a guide for leaders and managers to develop innovation strategies within their own companies. Snyder's method was to build innovation throughout every level of the Whilrpool organization, not just from the executive team or from R&D. When she started there the appliance industry was in a slump and WP had a reputation for stodginess. They made a conscious decision to turn this around and currently Whirlpool runs the most cutting edge brands in major and minor appliances - including Jenn-Air, Amana, KitchenAid and most recently merged with Maytag. Underlying the ideas put forth in the book is that people at every walk of life can innovation and that human nature drives people to create. This book shows how any company can build innovation into every employee's day to day job function, how to work on a macro level to embed innovation into company systems and business models and how to peg innovation to the bottom line.

Nancy Tennant Snyder is corporate vice president for leadership and strategic competencies for Whirlpool Corporation, reporting to the chairman and CEO, Jeff M. Fettig. BusinessWeek named her one of twenty-five Innovation Champions in the world.

Deborah L. Duarte is a consultant who is an expert in the areas of innovation strategy, leadership and executive development, organizational design, project leadership, virtual teaming, and executive coaching.

Snyder and Duarte have coauthored twobest-selling books: Mastering Virtual Teamsand Strategic Innovation, both from Jossey-Bass Publishers.