Ellen Byron at The Wall Street Journal this morning reports that P&G and Google are swapping employees to promote understanding and innovation.

A couple of fast thoughts: Promoting this kind of “corporate semester abroad” is a great idea and so interesting for an organization that has been compared to the military.   (The WSJ article notes employees are sometimes called “Proctoids.”)

It should be remembered that P&G has track record around bringing outside talent and ideas “in.”  

This new program clearly an outgrowth of something that has been germinating for a while.

P&G, for example, is the driving force behind InnoCentive, for example. It’s the first online platform that lets companies like Eli Lilly, Procter & Gamble, and Dow AgroSciences, which collectively spend billions of dollars on R&D, post scientific problems confidentially and ask the scientific community to tackle them.

InnoCentive taps into its network of more than 120,000 scientists, retired scientists, and students in more than 175 countries. Individuals who deliver solutions that best meet 

Innocentive’s challenge requirements receive financial awards ranging up to $1,000,000. P&G has also opened their research doors to thinkers, inventors, designers, and others around the world to tap their expertise. P&G’s goal is to source no less than  50 percent of all new products from outside the corporation. The strategy is called Connect + Develop and it’s transforming the way P&G handles research and development—and simultaneously shifting the way P&G is perceived by the public at large. Some of Connect + Develop’s better known product development success stories include Bounce, SpinBrush, Oil of Olay, and Swiffer. 

For all this “product” innovation, P&G brands clearly still have a lot to learn.  Don’t we all.

The WSJ article points out that Google employees were shocked when a Pampers promotion didn’t include the all powerful mommy blogging community.  Then again, P&G was surprised to learn that a Google employee didn’t understand the importance of the color orange to Tide’s brand.