Accelerating Innovation at Scale

When a design leader with 25 years of experience across construction, healthcare, and consumer goods decides to rebuild the innovation engine, the results can be transformative. Chris Gurr, Senior Director of Industrial Design at Newell Brands, has done exactly that—creating InnoGEN, a methodology that compresses months of traditional innovation cycles into days while delivering breakthrough ideas for iconic brands like Rubbermaid, Mr. Coffee, Coleman, and Bubba. By putting generative AI at the center of ideation and transforming workshops into high-velocity prototyping sessions, Gurr's team is redefining what it means to innovate at the scale of a major consumer goods company. In this conversation, he shares how InnoGEN has become the go-to platform across Newell and why hands-on making—not endless planning—is the key to bigger ideas, faster.

1. What does innovation mean to you?

We created a new innovation methodology called InnoGEN to deliver Bigger Ideas, Faster. We re-thought our process to center on Gen AI insights and innovation helping identify more consumer relevant, higher impact ideas.
With Exec sponsorship, InnoGEN has quickly become the go-to innovation platform across Newell delivering breakthrough ideas for brands such as Rubbermaid, Mr Coffee, Coleman and Bubba.

2. How does your team generate new ideas?

With InnoGEN we put emphasis on deep XFT learning (insights, competitive landscape, innovation archive, macro trends, constraints etc) ahead of ideation. We take these inputs and build a team of AI Personas that the XFT can work with during the in-person workshop.

When we come together we hit the ground running with hands-on creative work. In the space of a few days we generate 1000's of ideas, multiple prototypes, and assets for testing. By planning ahead and working at high-fidelity we are able to run quant studies very soon after the session. The net result is that we compress the whole front end of the development process.

3. Can you share 1-3 unique innovation tactics your team relies on?

Hands-on: We don't sit around planning and strategizing when we are together in person. We make stuff. We pack the room with creatives and leverage AI to enable non-creatives to bring their ideas to life like never before.

Multiple cycles: Gen AI accelerates innovation. We cover multiple cycles of divergence and convergence in the time it would traditionally take to cycle once. The result is that we think more broadly more often, leading to more diverse ideas.

Co-Creation: AI Personas keep the voice of the consumer ever present. We compliment this with Co-Creation sessions run on day two or three. Gen AI means we can bring better quality assets sooner and create more live during consumer discussions.

4. Do you have any specific rituals for resetting your team to be creative?

Space and time are our major reset for the teams. We get them out of their day today environment and bring them to our world-class Design Center. There teams can take advantage of our dedicated AI Lab, our Usability Labs, our state-of-the-art Model Shop and the expertise of our Design teams.

5. How do you identify trends? What resources does your team use to spot trends and consumer insights?

We use a number of services such as Trend Hunter, WGSN and Kantar which we combine with proprietary research. We also put great emphasis on consumer immersion activities to get our teams out and into the environment of use.

6. Has there ever been an instance where another industry has influenced an innovation at Newell Brands?

Yes. We are always looking at what is happening outside of our walls. We recognize we don't have a monopoly on good ideas and actively seek out new innovation collaborators, tools and approaches. InnoGEN was created after researching several external AI led innovation processes.

7. What makes an innovative culture? How do you create a culture of innovation?

A cornerstone of our approach is experimentation. We encourage a test and learn environment where everyone has the expectation to try and the permission to fail. Innovation is championed at the highest level where successes are highlighted and celebrated across the business.

8. Looking to the future, how will Newell Brands continue to be a leader in innovation?

We will continue to prioritize consumer insights and lean into macro trends.

With InnoGEN we aspire to lead the industry in the use of Gen AI for innovation. We anticipate making Gen AI more vertically integrated in the business, connected to key software platforms and synthesizing business knowledge.