Pharma

Take a look inside Pfizer’s pretty non-Pfizer innovation room

Up on the seventh floor of Pfizer’s cold, black-and-gray exteriored world headquarters in New York […]

Up on the seventh floor of Pfizer’s cold, black-and-gray exteriored world headquarters in New York is a weird little room with a quirky little poster that will be used (and copied) more and more if Pfizer does things right.

It’s the “Innovation Room” for Pfizer’s innovation team, which occupies the seventh floor in New York. The space has germinated many of Pfizer’s Dare To Try initiatives – the project Pfizer’s used to try and encourage innovation within the company.

It seemed out of place – a room more likely to be a found in a bootstrapping accelerator than a Big Pharma company. A poster on the door to the room has caricatures of Pfizer team members who offer practical (put the furniture back where you found it) to inspirational (bring freshness) advice. Exercise balls blend with post-it notes about policy and vision.

Creating a more innovative mindset is an ongoing obsession with large healthcare companies. Pfizer’s no exception. They host worldwide internal conferences on the topic, push projects such as Dare to Try and keep tinkering with ways to bring startups into Pfizer. So it’s interesting to see where some of this thinking is hatched.

I took some photos earlier this year and Wendy Mayer, Pfizer’s vice president for worldwide innovation, answered some questions about the space and where Pfizer’s heading with innovation. She even shared a little Pfizer innovation slang. Below are some excerpts from that interview.

Q. How long had the Innovation Room been around and what is the goal?

A. We introduced the innovation room last year because most of our space in the New York headquarters is currently configured as private or semi-private offices and traditional conference rooms. Our direct team needed this space because so much of what we do requires collaboration and team brainstorming. We needed a space that would allow the team to work together in an environment that was more conducive to creative development.

We also need to set an example and create a space as a demonstration for what an innovation space should look like and give them the availability of the space for their own innovation/creative discussions.

Q. What kind of things happen in the innovation room?

A. We have tried to convey that it should not be used for traditional team meetings, as the purpose of the room is to inspire new thinking, not just be a space for traditional business meetings.

The goal is to provide a space that is inspirational, playful, and aligned with our philosophy that innovation requires certain behaviors such as playfulness, collaboration (we call in greenhousing) and signaling (providing a clear sign of behaviors or actions you want people to do).

Q. What is the best idea to come out of the work in the Innovation Room?

Most of the work for the development of our Dare to Try innovation and experimentation program was done in that room.

Q. You mentioned certain behaviors. What are they?

A. Our innovation program emphasizes 7 behaviors and the innovation room tries to foster them.

  • Greenhousing (collaboration on building ideas)
  • Playfulness
  • Freshness (giving people inspiration from new places)
  • Signaling (a physical or verbal sign about how to behave)
  • Bravery
  • Momentum (keeping projects moving forward)
  • Realness

This is a space that enables these behaviors to thrive and thus helps to drive innovation.

Q. Can you give me a little history on the poster?

A. The poster was just a fun way to signal that this room is different from the typical Pfizer conference room, and to display it in a fun way. The pictures are the team members of the Worldwide Innovation team.

Q. Maybe this is a stereotype, but I always think the 7th floor must be less formal than Pfizer floors. Is this true?

A. No, the 7th floor isn’t really more casual. There are some other innovation spaces on other floors that strive to achieve the same thing – give people a space to get out of their traditional work mode and come up with more creative, innovative ideas.

Q. How are you scaling innovative thinking this year?

A. This year we are working with other sites to develop a more consistent and connected accessibility to innovation spaces across Pfizer locations. We are using the name InnoSpace, which is the name that is currently being used in our Groton site. In addition to more innovation work space, they also have some technologies such as 3D printing or Google Glasses for colleagues to see, try out, and consider how it could be used in their work.

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