Recently, several industry leaders got together to discuss ways for entrepreneurs to grow their businesses. These business-savvy executives included Dr. David Dalton, CEO and president of UNIVEC Inc. and Health Resources Inc.; Daniel Schultz of the Raytheon Technical Services Company; and Marilyn Johnson, vice president of Market Development at IBM.

Their discussion centered on innovation, and they remarked that innovation today is not what it was yesterday. Johnson said innovation “is no longer an individual toiling in a laboratory, coming up with some great invention. … It is multidisciplinary, it is global, and it is collaborative.”

STRATEGIC ALLIANCES

When Dr. Dalton created and patented his first innovative product¯non-reusable syringes aimed to decrease chances of disease transfer from contaminated needles¯he had to find a way to distribute the product.

Creating a private channel was not an option, however, considering the expansive size of the United States. Instead, Dalton negotiated distribution contracts with the largest pharmaceutical distributors in the country, such as McKesson, AmerisourceBergen, and Cardinal Health. By leveraging these distribution contracts, Dalton grew to be the only African American-owned and operated pharmacy benefit management company in the U.S., handling over 50,000 contracts with pharmacies nationwide.

For globetrotting Schultz, forming partnerships is second nature. Recently contracted to build three free-span bridges over some of the country’s largest rivers, Schultz became aware of oil and gas transportation troubles in Kazakhstan. Schultz said, “Well, since we just hired all these people and coordinated all this transportation to bring … bridging equipment, we went over to Chevron Texaco and said, ‘How about if we support you and all your oil and gas work?’” This unforeseen alliance resulted in Raytheon quadrupling their business in the former Soviet Union.

THINK BIG AND GO BEYOND

Schultz was quick to emphasize the importance of going beyond their comfort zone. While Raytheon is most widely associated with defense technology, Schultz acknowledges that the company’s diverse business is what makes it so successful. With base operations, logistics, and maintenance support services on the continent of Antarctica, Raytheon Technical Services Company helps the National Science Foundation with what Schultz said, “are some of the most incredible scientific experiments ongoing.”

It was in this harsh environment that innovation struck one of Schultz’s men: if they were shipping materials to Antarctica, it was entirely feasible to make shipments worldwide. And with that one observation, a new branch of business was born. Schultz remarked, “They came up with a whole new plan, hired a whole dozen new people … and we went into a whole other business area.”

CREATE THE RIGHT ENVIRONMENT

With regard to passing innovative thoughts and leadership style to his management team, Dalton commented, “I think the most effective way to pass on leadership of any company is to develop an appropriate culture. … Our company is very entrepreneurial. We give our associates free reign to try things and fail. … The second thing is that we also promote from within, so that once the culture is within the environment, the promotion continues to go into upper management. … Those individuals have been exposed and shown that they do have the right thinking within the environment that we need to do business.”

Schultz recounted, “When I first got to Raytheon, our award fees were … in the 84, 85 percent range. … Today, we are at 97 percent across all of our groups. … One of the things I did is [ensure] each of my program managers had two hats. His first hat was program execution, and the second hat that he wore was his growth hat. I challenged them for their compensation and said, ‘If you can’t grow into other areas, not just your particular program, then your compensation’s not going to be tied to that.’ As soon as you see that¯compensation is a motivation in industry¯you started getting people to think outside the box, and it became something to drive their growth.”

STAY CONNECTED WITH THE PEOPLE

Innovation may give business owners the necessary boost to take off, but as Dalton, a board member for Baltimore’s Urban League, said, “The other point is to not lose connectivity to the marketplace. McDonald’s certainly does that. How many ways can you make a hamburger? But they stay connected with the community.”