The General Mills Worldwide Innovation Network (G-WIN) shared key insights of its X3 Process, a new approach the company developed to provide a step-by-step road map for its open innovation projects. During a presentation at CoDev 2012, an open innovation conference in La Jolla, CA, the G-WIN team said the new process has been instrumental in General Mills’ recent innovation projects, and hopes other businesses, organizations and individuals will find the X3 Process valuable to their projects as well.

“Since formally launching the G-WIN open innovation program at General Mills five years ago, we learned that our scientists were excited about the open innovation tools available to them; however, they didn’t necessarily know how and when to use them most effectively,” says Mike Antinone, associate director of G-WIN. “It became evident there was a need for a facilitator or road map for the entire open innovation process, something that would let our scientists be scientists, and let the process be the general management solution to guide them.”