Anthony W. Ulwick

ARM & HAMMER

Arm & Hammer’s Animal Nutrition business (Church & Dwight) was determined to grow. Scott Druker, director of the business, chose to employ Strategyn and its Outcome- Driven Innovation methodology to formulate and drive its growth strategy. A mere year after adopting Strategyn’s “Jobs-to-be-Done” thinking, the business experienced over 30% revenue growth, far

outpacing its competitors. Scott sat down with Tony Ulwick to talk about their journey.

Ulwick: Scott, how would you describe the problem that Church & Dwight was trying to solve?

Druker: We had gone through several product development efforts and launches in recent years that were disappointing despite the technical success of the products. The commercial response was lackluster. So, not wanting to repeat history and recognizing that innovation was an important aspect of our growth strategy, we asked ourselves, “Okay, how can we do things differently?” I was familiar with your work, and I thought it would be an interesting approach to take given the challenges we were facing with our animal nutrition products in the dairy market.

How would you describe Arm & Hammer Animal Nutrition’s traditional approach to innovation?

We relied largely on discussions that we’d had with customers, with people in the industry that we worked in, the dairy industry in particular. We’d talk to nutritionists and to dairy producers, asking, “What are some of your biggest issues?” We mainly focused on the nutritionists, who are the people the dairy producer hires to help put together the ration to feed the cows. Our products go into those rations, so even though the dairy producers are buying the products, most of our efforts were focused on the nutritionists.

Would it be fair to say that before using ODI, part of the issue was not knowing which customer to target to obtain the needed insights?

We’ve always known the end customer is the dairy producer, and ultimately the dairy cow, but yeah, we were basically getting our innovation information from a consultant that was being hired by the dairy producer. So yeah, I think absolutely part of our issue was we weren’t identifying the right people to speak to.