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OF SUCCESSFUL FAILURE TEXT: MATTlAS ANDERSSON PHOTO: PONTUS JOHANSSON

"By all means, fail and fail of ten - but do it early on, so it costs less. Combine chess and poker, and realize that your

Inatural instincts can be completely misleading." Meet SCA's Bengt Järrehult - innovation guru, two-time professor and

the man behind "Dr. Beng's Innovation Blog." .................... ~/////////////////////////A'////////////~ .................... . 10 ne morning halt a century , ago, a 6-year-old boy was i walking past the herring ! boats in Härnösand har-~or in northern Sweden. He marveled ~t the seemingly imperturbable boats poating on the water, moored to wood­~n posts. : The young boy took hold of one of ~he heavy ropes and pulled to test it. iNothing happened. So he got areally ~ood grasp, pulled and strained. Af ter

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,

half a minute, the heavy boat moved gently through the water.

"That made a big impression on me - that, with persistence, you could ac­complish what seems to be impossible and move something enormous," Bengt

; Järrehult recalls.

FOR COLLEAGUES IN the SCA Group, he is best known as the man be­hind "Dr. Beng's Innovation Blog." On the company's intranet, J ärrehult dis-

cusses innovation in instructive, clearly reasoned installments. Portions of his popular blog will be published for a wider audience in April at sca.com/ DoctorBeng.

"The blog is pro of of an impressive openness on these issues," Järrehult says. "Many colleagues from other or­ganizations are impressed that there is so much leeway at SCA."

Järrehult has played a key role in placing innovation at the forefront at

!A~,~ordlnato Bengt Järrehult It Is Important to dare to fatt. but falt earty and at low eost. sueeeed faster.

CA, as a strategically important area operations. In the last few annual

.... "T1'T~. innovation has had a section of OWll (read more in the 2010 annual

at sca.com). . "My role as 'wise man' in the com­pany is really nice," Järrehult says. r'I have influence without any formal power base." I Along with the blog, lectures and his lob at SCA, he is als o an adjunct pro­fessor at Lund University's Faculty of ~ngineering and a visiting professor at fts School of Economics and Manage­ment. j "One of my bosses said that I must

work very efficiently or else sie ep quickly," Järrehult says.

From the fishing har bor of nd, the road led to Chalmers

niversity of Technology and then out nto the world. First to Germanyas a

cal sales representative for the '"''''_"" ... ". group AkzoNobel, then on to

Asia with responsibility for an enor­mous geographic region - the triangle between India, Taiwan and New Zea­land.

It was in Taiwan that Dr. Bengt Jär­rehult became "Dr. Beng." "The Chi­nese have a hard time pronouncing con­sonants at the end of words," he says. "They were given my business card with all the appropriate ceremonies, and when they read it I became 'Doctor Beng.' They thought it was pretty funny when I explained that it was slang for Doctor Stupid in my language."

JÄRREHULT COMBINES HIS passion for innovation and development with a healthy dose of humor and self-depre­cation.

"People I meet briefly will prob-ably remember me as a short guy with a slight stutter and a bow tie," he says. "In Asia, I always got food stains on my nice ties, so since then I always wear a

BOOKRECOM­MENDAnONS Bengt Jlrrehult d.vours books about Innovation. He,. are his flve favorltes:

"Grabblng Llghtnlng" - Gina Core'" O'Connors and others

"Making Innovation Work" -Davlla, Epsteln and Sh.lton

"Ten Rules for Strategic Innova­tors" - Govlndar.Jan and Trimble

"Vlr.1 Change" -.... ndro Herrero

"Business Model Generation" -Alex.nder Osterwalder

bow tie on specialoccasions." Järrehult came to SCA in 1997. One

of his first projects was developing a more energy-efficient way of producing paper towels and toilet paper.

"We failed, and we failed expensive­ly," Järrehult recalls. "It's a credit to the company that they rook it so weil, that we were able to give it a try and faH without being east aside."

He keeps coming back to the impor­tance of having the courage to risk fail­ure as a key to successful innovation.

"One of the most important conclu­sions in this field is to fail early and at a low cost in order to succeed faster," says Järrehult, who does not equate successful innovation with the amount of capital invested.

"Innovate or die!" Most organiza­tions subject to competition have heard this slightly intimidating dictum - pref­erably in combination with some uplift­ing account about charismatic entre-

I!~OFI

People I meet briefly will probably remember me as a short guy with a slight stutter and a bow tie. In Asia, I always got food stains on my nice ties, so since then I always wear a bow tie on special occasions.

preneurs who by dint of hard work and personal brilliance achieved enormous success (and riches) more or less overnight.

While järrehult subscribes to the view that innovating is necessary for long-term survival, he has a much more nuanced understanding of in­novations - both in the way they are sparked and who is behind them.

"It's rarely a lone Einstein that's be­hind an innovation," he says. "Studies of primitive peoples living isolated in small groups indicate that they of ten develop much more slowly than larger groups."

THAT IS ONE REASON WHY SCA, as a complement to its in-h ou se work, practices what is known as open in­novation, where employees collaborate with organizations outside the com­pany.

"Every type of innovation is im­portant," järrehult says. "But it's the big breakthroughs that create major opportunities. Today many - mainly large - companies invest only in small successes and miss the big opportuni­ties."

One reason is that people are biolog­ically program med to put a far higher value on what they have than on what they might get, which means that we ding to the one bird we have in hand, even though the odds are good that we can grab a whole flock in the bush.

they assess risk and opportunity," järrehult says.

The same is true of compa­nies, which he divides into two categories: chess players, whose strategy is to play in order not to lose (and win by surviving), and poker players, who play to win (and willingly put up with losing

a little in order to win big time in the end). "Most companies are chess play­

ers," järrehult says. "But to be success­ful today requires the ability to com­bine chess and poker -learning to lose a little in order to win big." ...

FACTS

Innovations come in many shapes and sizes - from small improvements that save money to larger-scale im­provements to major breakthroughs, milestones that change the rules for the entire industry.

"Researchers have shown that most people make illogical choices when L.

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l [1·2011) SHAPB SCA'uj