Joe McPherson established the Innovation Management program at SRI, capping a world-recognized career in research and consulting in applied creativity. In doing so, he established a record for longevity of a “temporary” employee.
Joe was director of human resources development at Dow Chemical Company and editor of Creativity Review magazine when in 1965 he was offered a one-year fellowship at SRI while on sabbatical from Dow. He established a subprogram on creativity in the Theory and Practice of Planning program (TAPP) under Bob Stewart and quickly became a regular speaker in the Executive Seminars in Business Planning. He never returned to Dow.
McPherson’s chart on Idea Killers was translated into many languages and displayed in hundreds of offices around the world.
About 1969, he designed the first Innovation Search—a structured approach to bringing out the latent ideas of employees and friends of a corporation—as a source of new or “renewed” products, expanding markets, and innovations in the internal operations of a company. Innovation Search projects for clients always involved staff members selected from SRI technical laboratories, often resulting in follow-on research opportunities. Searches were conducted for clients in England, the Netherlands, Japan, Italy, and other countries and for government agencies as well as for some SRI internal organizations.
Joe also produced a series of reports on creativity, on innovation management, and on managing social change for the Business Intelligence Program, spreading his expertise among over 400 clients. Variations on the Innovation Search process have proliferated in the consulting industry.
Joe was so open, enthusiastic, and encouraging, you always did for Joe—not just your best work—but the best work you had ever done.